Ideological warriors like Dina Nath Batra should have no part to play, no influence to wield in the writing of Indian textbooks or on the content of the national syllabus. As a reporter, I met Batra in 2014 when Penguin India, to general bemusement, agreed to pulp extant copies of scholar Wendy Doniger's award-winning book The Hindus: An Alternative History.

I went to the school he ran in southwest Delhi and he proved, for the record, to be a genial companion. He is a man of considerable experience and achievement. But he is, without question, a crank.

Our discussion, apart from Batra's digressions into the existence of nudist colonies in Calfornia, mostly centred around the lack of cultural education imparted to Indian schoolchildren. But no one who is thinking critically would accept Batra's version of Indian culture and history. His myriad objections to passages in books amount to one overall objective - a desire to eliminate complexity.

And India and Hindu culture is nothing if not complex. As the reviled Doniger notes, there is no "single authoritative or essentialist view of what Hinduism is". Any one version, she writes, "of this polythetic polytheism (which is also a monotheism, a monism, and a pantheism), including this one, is no better than a strobe photograph of a chameleon, a series of frozen images giving a falsely continuous image of something that is in fact constantly changing."

Batra's desire to "Indianise"our children's education means force-feeding them RSS-sanctioned pabulum. No wonder, the Indian Express reports, that his organisation has written to NCERT to demand the excision of thoughts by the likes of Rabindranath Tagore.

Batra's organisation has written to NCERT to demand the excision of thoughts by the likes of Rabindranath Tagore.

A sample passage, from a Class 12 textbook, that Batra wants removed: In this system the status was probably determined by birth. They (Brahmins) tried to make people realise that their prestige was based on birth such parameters were often strengthened by stories in many books like The Mahabharata. Of course, Batra objects to any passage that suggests some Mughal leaders may have been open-minded, even tolerant.

The point is not that textbooks are infallible, it is that they should be ring-fenced from the political prejudices of the day. Textbooks, whatever the interpretations of their authors, should be largely based on verifiable fact and academic consensus. Of course, academic consensus can shift or change, and so emphases might change in textbooks from one generation to another. But better subtle inflections in emphasis than wholesale rejections of historical fact.

And while a good lesson for our children might be that textbooks should be questioned, that reading for oneself outside the prescribed text is the key to critical thinking, it's probably best if we don't fill textbooks with the dodgy meanderings of discredited ideologues in the first place.

Batra should not be taken seriously because he is not a disinterested academic. He is, for all intents and purposes, an activist. But he appears to have the ruling party's ear. More worryingly, the ruling party's vision for Indian schooling appears to be one of quasi-martial discipline, a false sense of cultural superiority, and scant room for questions or doubt. Batra is prejudiced and narrow-minded. He and his ilk must be resisted, by parents in particular.

Indian schooling, at all levels, is appalling. Year after year, surveys show that Indian children are not being taught basic skills, including reading at age-appropriate levels. As with much else, the divide is growing between those who can buy their children the necessary skills and those forced to rely on government schools. But the likes of Batra should concern us all because he wants to deny an essential part of what it is to be Indian: diversity - in language, in viewpoints, in religious belief, and thought.

Urdu and English words, for instance, tell us something about our history. In the prologue to India After Gandhi, Ramachandra Guha wrote that, "Because they are so many, and so various, the people of India are also divided." He used a verse from Ghalib to make his point, the same Ghalib who Batra would see struck off the syllabus.

Tagore, whose views on patriotism as opposed to humanity Batra so abhors, described nationalism as "carnivorous and cannibalistic." And what nationalism regurgitates, the indistinguishable mess it makes of the guts of our history, softened by chewing, is what Batra wants us to swallow.

Our past cannot be wished away, cannot be replaced by imagined glory. Instead, what we need is the opposite of what Batra and his saffron-clad colleagues want: not a simple narrative, but a more complicated one; not an unquestioning perspective but a critical one; and not shallow patriotism but a deeper love for our country founded on an understanding of our syncretic culture.

Textbooks are being rewritten. Is it too much to hope that the basis should be academic, not political or ideological?

Also read: BJP distorting history: Savarkar outshines Gandhi in Rajasthan textbooks

See the article here:

Why Dina Nath Batra wants Tagore, Urdu, Mughals removed from school books - DailyO

(by Ben Rothke)

Learn a few pages in the Mishnah Berurah and youll come to the phrase hamachmir tavo alav bracha. While the Chofetz Chaim didnt coin the phrase, he made it his calling card. He will accept an opinion, but commend those who want to be strict. These stringencies apply throughout Shulchan Aruch Orach Chaim, even though most of the topics do not deal with potential capital crimes.

Had the Chofetz Chaim written on Yoreh Deah hilchos Avodah Zara, I think its safe to say the phrase would be pervasive.

In a new book, Alternative Medicine in Halachah, Rabbi Rephoel Szmerla attempts to make the halakhic case for alternative medical treatments. Its a heavy tome; 11 English-language chapters and about 400 pages of Hebrew appendixes.

Yet in close to 200 pages, I was struck by the fact that never once does Szmerla use hamachmir tavo alav bracha. This is noteworthy given that avoda zara is one of the 3 prohibitions one must give up their live rather than violating.

Some of the therapies to which the book details the practical halacha include:

Remote healing Reiki Acupuncture Kinesiology Dowsing Homeopathy and flow essences Gem therapy Geobiology and Feng Shiu Hypnotherapy Yoga Therapeutic touch Shamanic healing

Szmerla is a proponent of these alternative therapies. Hes been involved with so-called energy medicine for twenty years and is something of an evangelist for this cause. For this reason, his devotion to this project, perhaps, the author struggled to provide a cogent rationale for his arguments. He also represents a curious trend among some elements of the Orthodox Right to declaim modern science as wisdom. The sinuous logic often takes some unorthodox and untraditional turns.

A Scientific Halakhist?

The failure centers on the authors attempt to be the medical and halakhic expert. This was not a challenge for some of the twentieth centurys leading halakhic authorities. For example, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein frequently called on the scientific knowledge of his son-in-law Rabbi Moshe Tendler, who had received his Ph.D. in microbiology from Columbia University. In Israel, Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach relied on experts in biology and physics when addressing halakhic issues related to these fields.

But it is troubling in this more recent project. While he quotes extensively from myriad new age sources, Szmerla does not reference any non-alternative scientists or medical doctors. What is more, the books bibliography lists a mere 29 citations, none of which are science-based works. The result is a goodly number of botched scientific proofs and impreciseor wrongterminologies. One example is his equating data and evidence as being the same.

Sometimes, the scholarship just does not back up the claim. For instance, an aura, according to new age thought is an emanation that encloses a human body. However, the myth-buster Joe Nickell writes that tests to observe alleged aura emanations have repeatedly met with failure. Nonetheless, Szmerla writes that it is worthwhile to note that there exists scientific data supporting the existence of the aura.

Rabbinic Authority

Its not just Szmerlas understanding of science that is lacking, his disdain for the halakhic process and understanding of the nature of halakhic development are also quite troubling. His portrayal of the rabbis of the Talmud deserves specific mention. Szmerla portrays rabbis of the Talmud as gullible. He writes that halachic determinations do not require the rigorous evidence of scientific double-blind studies. This is plainly crass, ignoring the fruitful scholarship conducted by Rabbi Nahum Rabinovitch, among others. The rabbis of the Talmud certainly didnt use a chi-squared test or regression and correlation analysis as we know it, they did operate with sophisticated levels of statistical analysis, the best of what was known to them in their time.

To boot, Szmerlas proof for this criticism is rather simplistic. For example, he notes that in the eyes of the Torah, any phenomenon that has been validated three times is considered authentic. He is referring to the Talmud in Shabbat 61a that discusses when amulets are to be approved as medical devices. He takes a discussion limited to amulets and applies it to all medical therapies. In any system, be it legal, mathematical, or theological, one cant take a limited item; and pro forma apply it globally.

Further, Szmerlas methods are precarious from a practical halakhic perspective. He assumes to know exactly what the Talmud is discussing, and can precisely correlate it to a particular new age therapy. Contrast that with the notion that the Talmud states in Shabbat 35a: that we are not experts in identifying medium-sized stars to determine nightfall. If we cant expertly identify the size of the stars in the sky, its hard to understand how he can know the specific new age therapy. Yet, Szmerla does exactly that. For example, the Talmud in Horayot 12a discusses the concept of a babuah di-babuah, a shadow of a shadow. Szmerla writes that this description is identical to the description of the aura given by energy healing practitioners, a therapy he therefore allows.

He also ignores notions of rabbinic consensus and debate. In the foreword, Rabbi Shmuel Meir Katz of Lakewood writes that a hallmark of a genuine moreh horaah is the intellectual honesty to examine an issue from various standpoints and the capability to honestly evaluate dissenting opinions. Yet, one of the most egregious problems with Szmerlas approach is that he does not significantly reference those dissenting opinions. He writes that there is scientific data to support his findings, but much of his data is based on vibrational medicine, to which a 2008 study by noted researcher Edzard Ernst found that the evidence is not fully convincing for most complementary and alternative medicine modalities.

Finally, he writes the efficacy of homeopathy has been well-established. That simply is not true. No large-scale study has found homeopathy any more effective than a placebo. Yet that assertion is what allows him to permit ineffectual therapies, as he believes that any phenomenon that has been validated three times is considered authentic. With enough of a sample size, its easy to get three cases of anything. Science would call that the placebo effect. Szmerla would call that authentic.

An Orthodox Counterculture

Looked at more broadly, this book reflects disturbing trends in some subculture elements of Orthodoxy to disdain modern science and certain medical developments and to engage new age therapies.

Why the opposition? For Szmerla, modern science is not God-focused. He contrasts the opinions of atheistic scientists with those of the creators of alternative therapies, who he feels realize that their healing powers originate from the Divine. Both characterizations are overly generalized, and his simplistic observation does nothing to support his claims. The author does not explain why alternative therapies, which may have their ancient roots in Krishna or Vishnu, may be more acceptable or effective than those from non-believing scientists and doctors such as Linus Pauling or Franois Jacob.

What Hath the New Age Movement Done to Us?

The New Age movement, with its acceptance of occult practices, pantheism, and a spirituality without borders or confining dogmas that is inclusive and pluralistic is anathema to halakhah. Rabbi Szmerlas book, I fear, reflects a trend within some parts of the Orthodox Right to eschew modern science and contemporary medicine.

This comes at a significant cost. The authors weltanschauung leads him to be a promulgator of bad science while misrepresenting Chazal. The danger with Alternative Medicine in Halachah is that the author oversimplifies both halakhah and the often-complex fields of science and medicine. This leads to his acquiescence to therapies that other major poskim outright forbid. Perhaps more disturbing than the poor scholarship in this book, is the underlying trend it illustrates.

Ben Rothke lives in New Jersey and works in the information security field. He blogs about information security at The Security Meltdown and is the associate editor of the Information Security Journal: A Global Perspective. He writes technology book reviews for Security Management, and reviews of books on Jewish thought for The Jewish Press, The Lehrhaus and Times of Israel.

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A Critical Look At A New Sefer: Alternative Medicine in Halachah - Yeshiva World News

Pamela Ryder writes sentences like no other writer I know. I remember my first encounter with her fiction, a story called Hovenweep as it appeared as the opening story in Gordon Lishs The Quarterly #29, a story that begins, We are too much in the open here: sky, sky, slick rock, heat, and high above us the circling birds. What is this word Hovenweep? I remember asking myself. Might it be a made-up word to go along with the world of a made-up fiction? It was a dizzying reading experience right out of the gate, one filled with the sensations that I go out seeking when I pick up any work of fiction, any work of art: to be bewitched by what I see and hear, by what I hold. I was immediately held. And was not let go, and did not want to let go, for all the sentences that then followed. We are left too much unshadowed by the shape of them, the second sentence then went on to say, escaping past the canyon walls, winging down the stone, unshaded by the deer-stripped juniper that juts above the river. I knew I was in a place. I was placed inside this place: a place of shadow and light, stone and bird. I was sold, not so much by what was being said, but by how the sentences were being delivered and slung, fasted as they were to the page, and to my eye. I could not, I dared not, I did not want to look away. The magic of fiction was taking place here in this moment: the given being displaced by the made. I remember, too, soon after I read this story, taking it in with me to a fiction class I was teaching and reading the story aloud to my students, and trying not to stop at the end of each sentence to marvel at the joys to be found at the stoppage of every period: the shapes of the sounds, the rivers that Ryder was able to carve out of stone, the images of blood squeezed from ink. That story, Hovenweep, a word I still to this day dont know what it means or if it is a made up word or if it, perhaps, makes reference to a kind of flower, or weed, a thing of the actual world, later appeared in Ryders second book, the collection of stories A Tendency to Be Gone. Open this book to any page and read at random any one of the sentences youll find there and expect to be immediately transported to worlds made of dirt and stone and heart. Yes, more than anything else, Ryder is a writer of ferocity and the bravest of hearts. Her new book, Paradise Field, digs even deeper than ever before into the fertile ground of family and fathers and daughterhood and tells us what it is to live and die with strength and grace and indignity and meaning, what it means and what it feels to be, in the end, left alone to our own devices. What it means, in the end of all endings, to tend to those emotionally loamy gardens, to give due passage and a ritualized bidding adieu to those we call our ownin this case the father of this book, a WWII fighter pilot, a man who most often, in Ryders own words, was a man gone, flying to parts far-flung. I had the pleasure of asking Ryder some questions by email about this latest book and her life as a writer and what it is that keeps driving her sentences.

Peter Markus (Rail): I don't know where to begin. I have so much I want to say. Let's begin at the beginning, then. What gave rise to the writing of this book? And before even this book: what gave rise to you reaching for a pencil? As a writer of such lush, lyrical fictionsa writer, I often say, unlike any otherwhat is it that keeps you coming back?

Pamela Ryder: Peter, these are complex questions, so I need to break it down a bit. So to begin with, What keeps me writing? Its the singleness of itthe separateness of writingthat is a reflection of how I see myself in the world: somehow not fitting in very well, and now, finally, getting older, not wishing it were any other way. Writing is a solitary business, as is all of this lifeof this everything, and in the end, no matter what comfort one attempts to cultivate to convince ourselves that we are loved, or that we will never be abandoned, or that we will be rememberedit is all rubbish, you see. Standing alone: that is what remains. Separateness is what endures. That being said, writing is a form of preparation for mea humbling practice for that final aloneness. A trial of sorts, for what is coming: a journey unaccompanied, unattended. Traveling light.

As to: Why did I start to write? I was an utterly dismissible child: awkward, unattractive. Little was expected of me. My childhoodessentially one of self-loathing, was interruptedno: redeemedby my solitary rambles outdoors, not in deep and lovely woods, but in shabby, empty tracts of land in our neighborhood where whole blocks of suburban houses had once stood, having been smashed flat and hauled off to make way for an interstate highway coming through. The old yards and gardens went to weeds, the driveways cracked. As a kind of wilderness grew in that ruined landscape, so did a peculiar pantheism grow within me. I collected stones and seeds and leaves and featherstook them to my roomcherished objectsa solace. And when, at some point during my adolescence, I was requiredcommandedas perhaps we all had been in school, to go home and write a poem, I wrote The Highway. The poem was quite long. Rhyming. I mourned my scrubby little Eden coming to an end as the surveyors made their marks for road-cuts and as the asphalt rolled in. But I knew that, now no matter what happened to those beloved and blighted yards which had been a sanctuary, they were there on the pageand would endure, would remain there, safe on the page. When I turned it inthis poemI was told (teachers, principal), Oh, come on, you didnt write this yourselfnot you. Not someone like me. But it was me. It was more me than me. I had written something so wonderful it couldnt have been me. Dismissible me. And I felt something akin to joy.

I did not continue writing after that, however. The old patterns of self-doubt and insecurity, of fear of failure, kept me from writing for decades. But the objects stayed with me. I pick up stones to this day. Pebbles in the gutter. Leaves. Twigs. Anything. They fill my stories.

I came to write Paradise Fieldthe stories about the final years of a WWII bomber pilot and the adult daughter who cares for the old manbecause of my fathers death. The book is my father and I. His flight from the family. His final years, final indignities. My ineptitude, resentments, recollections. The unfathomable notion of approaching death, and the decrepit attempts to keep it at bay. Paradise Field was a way to preserve him, preserve us. He was gone, the years he was my father had vanished, and it was too late to do anything about it except to write it. Too late to make amends for the words never spoken, the regrets. I knew I had to write it because it so pained me to do so. I remember Gordon Lish speaking on what to write about. He advised that we recognize those objects that we find so engaging, so beguiling, that we cannot look away from them. Write that, he said. But he also advised that we attend to those objects from which we want to turn away. From which we want to avert our gaze. Those, too. Write that.

Rail: There are these sentences which make me think of you, your way as a writer: There is grit in her nails, a twig in her hair, a found piece of bone in her pocket. She is a child who peeks under rocks, who likes the millipede that rolls into a perfect sphere when touched. Though likely not intended, these words serve as a kind of metaphor to the kind of writer I believe you to be: the dirt beneath the nails, the world you are so attuned with in your hairtwig, flower, skythe found objects you carry in your pockets and pull out and pull sentences and stories that are rooted and then chiseled to such things: bone, stone, rock, father. Would you say that I am onto something here in terms of your approach to writing fiction?

Ryder: The writing is indeed rooted in the objects that draw me to them. I almost said the objects that fascinate me, but that isnt it at allno, no. I believeI knowthat the artifacts I hold dear have lives of their own and, therefore, stories of their own. You dig a hole for whatever reason (to find water, or plant a rosebush, or bury a father) and you find there in the dirt: a shard, a rusty buckle, a boneand now in your hand are the artifacts that make the story. And it neednt be many objects to make the story. (In fact, if there are too many objects in the story, the objects wont cling to each other, but will run away from the writerscamper off the page, setting the story adrift.) And you take those artifactsthe buckle, the bone, the shardand place them in the mindset of a magic pouch, and spill them onto the table, and as conjurer, you present those now sacred pieces in what only appears to be a chanced arrangement, then toss again, place them this way and that, here and there, now you see them, now you dont and now you do again.

Rail: The word daughter is such a charged word in this book. Some words, I often say, in the hands of one writer, mean so much more than they do in the hands of every other writer. Daughter, Id go so far as to say, is a word that now belongs to you. You have claimed all authority over this word, have made it entirely your own. You also place the name, Pamela, in the few places where and when the daughter is given a name. In choosing to do so, are you making it a point to say that this fiction is truth? Not that a fiction that is made up is any less true, yes? But Im curious to hear you speak to that sometimes fine line that this book in particular seems to be straddling and maybe even going so far as to call it into question?

Ryder: This is a startling question. But, yes. The word, daughter is charged. I hadnt accepted this notion until you asked. Charged. Daughterthe sound and meaning of it seems peculiar to me, almost alien. Daughter as outsider. And yes, again: that giving the daughter my name is a way of saying that the stories are true. And, where the daughter needs to be named, what better name could I give her? What other name would do? But back to what is true and what is not: when it comes to writing, what is truth outdoes what is true. What is true must be shaped into a greater, more powerful truthin the telling of it. At the end of As Those Who Know the Dead Will Do, the daughter and father go looking for an old B-17. So sure the father is of the location of an old airfield, that they hikethe father: heart-sore, the daughter: dubiousat night, in the desert, towards the shape of what seems to be a junked plane up ahead. But it is not a plane at all. Just a boulder looming in the desert dark.

What was true was that we actually did find the planehe and Irusting to pieces at the end of an overgrown runway. We climbed up into the ruined, crumbling cockpit, and he sat in what was left of the pilots seat. But I was afraid we were trespassing, that we might be caught. Lets get out of here, I said. Hell, my father said, I flew this thing. But I made us go. I made him leaveus leavetoo, too quickly. His storyand minecut short by my foolishness, my faintness of heart. So, when I made it into a story, I wrote that we never found a plane at all, which was the same as running away from it, leaving it too soon. What we had lost.

Rail: You speak about the writers solitude, the fact that we stand alone, and your fiction certainly is singular, and perhaps through its separateness it will, I hope, endure. Of course its also true that those books and writers who seek out their own singularity, or can't help but be because such separateness is the source and nature of their song, are also those books already on a trial of sorts, for what is coming: a journey unaccompanied, unattended. I love that. Here's the question I am trying to ask: Is it possible, though, that language itself might connect us, or make us at least a little less alone? Or doesnt it quite work like that, in the end of ends, especially?

Ryder: No. Never less alone. If anything: more alone. Listen: Heres how it goes. I have terrible-looking hands. I was always ashamed of my hands. I remember Gordon Lish advising the writer to acknowledge his othernessbecause thats where the story is. Easier said than done, confessing ones otherness, and then finding a way to turn it into prose fiction.

The day I faced up to my hands was this: I was about to be married. A wedding band was required. The ring salesman (I say salesman, because there is a crassness to the word, instead of jeweler) had me put my hands right up there on the counter, on a velvet pillow, on display. A spectacle of the grotesque. The ring man had a hard time pushing the ring over my big knuckle. And the ringa simple bandwhen finally forced onto mewas an absurdity on my hands. An excrescence. I went home and wrote it, and freed myself: My hands are not hands you would like to have. Hard, you might say, if you saw my hands, homely, big-knuckled hard and unpretty. And then there it wasan admission of my peculiarity which would be the story, confirmed by the language, the delivery, the diction.

Rail: The anecdote about your first poem and the something akin to joy that it delivered to you as a childeven if your teachers rejected it and didn't believe that such a thing could come from the Pam that they believed they knew you to bedoes the fiction that you deliver to the page nowand specifically in this new and, dare I say it, your strongest, most tenderly dangerous book, though I relish every sentence you've ever delivered to the pages of all of your three booksis there in them that sensation that is something akin to joy?

Ryder: Yes. Akin. When it comes out right on the page.

Rail: Id like to hear more about Lishs dare. Look away but say. Or look closer at what you might not want your gaze to see. To say what otherwise might not besaid, seen, otherwise not seen. And what you do saythe act of its sayingis an act of, what? Would the word love suffice? The solitude of such a momentthat wish to turn away, to avert, but in the end being able to stay: the making that might come of that! Paradise Field, its really spectacular. How I wish I had a better word. But a spectacle, a marvel, no doubt! Thank you!

Ryder: No. Not love. Not at all. You say you wish you had a better way of saying it. Me too. But I have often thought that banana feverSeymour Glasss afflictionwould certainly do.

Rail: Twice now youve mentioned the advice, the teachings, the influence of Gordon Lisha writer, editor, a man famous, Delillo once said, for all the wrong reasonson you and your work. What else might you have to say about how Lishs words and his approach to being a writer have shaped you and your fiction?

Ryder: He told me: One day youll thank me for all the times I said, No. And I do. Simply put: If not for Gordon Lish, I would not be a writer.

Rail: Talk to me some more about the delivery of your fiction, its diction, how a story is, in your words, confirmed by the language. How often does the language fall short and fail to offer up its blessings?

Ryder: If the language falls short, I have only myself to blame. And if the language fails, so does the story. Language always prevails over content. Youve got to let the language win out, even if it changes what you think you want to say. When it appeared my father wasnt getting better, I asked him what song hed like sung at his funeral, just in case was how I put it. He actually said, Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonderthe Air Corps song. But the language of that title didnt fit the story and didnt sound right. So the storythe retelling, became this (the father speaking first):

No flowers. A song might be nice. One of my favorites. Which one?just in case, the daughter said. You pick, he said.

Rail: My own father is in a similar landscape as the father here in your book: a mind in its own flight, a body that knows only the space that is his bed and the few tangible things still in view for him to latch hold of and see with his eyesluckily a river he always loved and taught me how to love. Your book really hits home. It is a hammer-song to the heart, and I know that others of our aging generation who are now caretakers of our parents will be moved by the story that youve delivered to us. Not that a work of fiction has to do or be anything, not that a story must instruct us in any way, and yet I find myself better prepared, more firmly footed, for what I know is ultimately coming, that "final aloneness. So here again, Pam, from the core of me my thanks.

Ryder: No, I thank you, for this interview. And for telling me the circumstances of you and your father, and that outside his window runs a riverthe tangible element of passage. What more suitable a view?

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Through the Viewfinder: Pamela Ryder with Peter Markus - Brooklyn Rail

Indias prime minister Narendra Modi met President Trump for the first time last week.

Modi and Trump are similar in many ways: both are populist nationalists who draw large crowds, and both are dedicated to putting their countries first, economically and strategically. Yet while Modi is wildly popular among the Hindu-American community in the United States, Trump did not even get a tenth of its vote. Why it is that Hindu-Americans, a group so favorably disposed toward a right-wing Indian leader, voted overwhelmingly against the candidate from the right in the United States?

Hindu-Americans are a high-income, family-values oriented group, yet vote for Democrats in overwhelming numbers. This paradox can be explained by the nature of Hinduism as a religion, Indias historical social, cultural, and agricultural patterns, and Indias experience with British colonialismall factors that influence Hindu-Americans to vote for the Democratic Party.

While Hindu-Americans are one of the largest religious groups in the United States, they do not yet have the clout, influence, or even general public recognition that other large religious groups in the country have, such as Catholics, Jews, and Muslims, though there are advocacy groups such as the non-partisan Hindu American Foundation (HAF).

Perhaps this is because they have been taken for granted as a Democratic Party voting bloc. According to data from the Washington Post, fewer than 7 percent of Hindus are likely to have voted for Trump. Only a slightly larger percentage of Hindus voted for Mitt Romney. Hindus strongly favor the Democratic party over the Republican partymore so than almost any other ethnic or religious group in the United States.

According to data collected by Pew in 2015, there are now 2.23 million Hindus in the United States, making them the fourth largest religious group in the country after Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Hinduism belongs to a family of religions known as Indic or dharmic religions. Hinduism is the largest dharmic tradition in the United States. Two other dharmic religions also have large populations in the United States: Sikhism, with around 500,000 individuals, and Jainism, with around 180,000 adherents. There are also large populations of Muslims and Christians from the Indian subcontinent in the United States. Approximately 16 percent of Muslims in the United States are from South Asia (around 600,000 people). Additionally, there are smaller populations of Buddhists and Zoroastrians (Parsis) from South Asia in the United States.

Hindu-Americans have the highest retention of any religion in the United States, with a full 80 percent of those raised Hindu still identifying with Hinduism as adults. In comparison, the rate among mainline Protestants is only 45 percent. This is not surprising due to the nature of Hinduism, whose philosophical and cultural traditions encompass several religious viewpoints including monism, pantheism, panentheism, henotheism, monotheism, polytheism, and atheism. Most Hindus are either immigrants or the children of immigrants from India, Nepal, Guyana, and Suriname, although there are some from non-desi (South Asian) backgrounds.

Given this diversity, how can we explain the fact that Hindu-Americans political preferences and social norms generally point them in the direction of liberal politics in the United States? After all, as The American Conservatives executive editor Pratik Chougule has pointed out, Indian-American (including Hindu-American) economic interests, merit-based educational aspirations, and family-values are much more aligned with the Republican Party.

There are several factors that explain Hindu-Americans mentality, political patterns and views on economic and social issues.

There is the nature of Hinduism itself. The worldview of Hinduism is different from the Judeo-Christian tradition that often informs the right in the West, though it has many more commonalities with the Greco-Roman pagan tradition. Hinduism advocates a live and let live attitude toward theological viewpoints. Its plethora of customs, philosophical systems, and regional traditions embrace diverse ways of understanding the divine, as well as ordering life in this world. Hinduism is the collective wisdom of sages, seekers, gods, and kings accumulated over several thousands of years. In short, it is not monolithic. Hinduism says that people take multiple spiritual paths and reach the same goal: the paths of knowledge, action, devotional worship, and meditation. The Rig Veda, composed over 4,000 years ago, states:

They call him Indra, Mitra, Varua, Agni, and he is heavenly nobly-winged Garutmn.

To what is One, sages call by many names they call it Agni, Yama, Mtarivan.

(Rig Veda 1.164.46)

This can be reworked for the modern world and would still be valid under the Hindu perspective: They call him Bhagavan, Allah, Jesus, Buddha, and he is heavenly, shining Krishna. To what is One, sages give many a title Ohrmazd, Ishtar, Zeus, Osiris, Amaterasu. This means:

In the Indian belief, no one religion can have a monopoly on truth. A common Indian metaphor, about blind men and an elephant, tells of how some blind men touch different parts of an elephant, and then compare notes to find that they are in complete disagreement about the shape of the elephant. The analogy, which is with religion, argues that only by putting together the experiences of all the blind men (individual religions) will gain us an approximate understanding of the whole (truth).

In the realm of earthly action, the duty of humans is defined by dharma, a word that is difficult to translate but whose shades of meaning include righteousness, duty, calling, and order. The Mahabharata tells us that dharma is subtle, and as such, doing the right thing in a certain situation is often circumstantial. However, the concept is usually linked to duty. To do ones dharma is to do ones duty to the utmost, which is why suggestions by some Republicans that Hinduism doesnt align with the constitutional foundation of the U.S. government, or that Hinduism is a false faith with false gods, are deeply problematic to the Hindu community. Observant Hindus dont necessarily agree with the secular, materialistic worldview that characterizes many on the left, but they see the Democratic Party as less hostile to the Hindu tradition than the Republican Party.

Two prominent Indian-Americans, Bobby Jindal, former governor of Louisiana, and Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina, are both converts from their respective religions (Hinduism and Sikhism) to Christianity and are thus not really strong advocates for Indian religions. Bobby Jindal in particular has acquired a reputation for trying to disassociate himself from his roots. Because of the nature of Hinduism, it is difficult for many Hindus to understand why someone would want to leave the religion. Most Hindus do not appreciate Christian evangelization because Indian identity is strongly linked to religion (relative to say, Chinese identity, which is more ethnic and linguistic).

On the other hand, there are four Hindus in Congress, all of whom are Democrats. Hindu-Americans have an especially strong advocate in U.S. Rep.Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii). She was the first Hindu-American elected to Congress, and has since been a staunch champion and advocate of Hindu causes. She was instrumental in bringing Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the United States.

Hinduism is already an eclectic tradition; American Hinduism is even more so. Many young second or third generation Hindus also identify primarily as Hindu, although in a different way than first generation immigrants. Older Hindus are more ritualistic and temple-oriented. Younger Hindus, particularly those born in the United States, either see their Hinduism as more of a tribal badge and are cultural Hindus or are more interested in Hinduism as a philosophy, or a collection of metaphorical lessonsan interest they often discover through their own study of ancient Hindu texts with universal application, including the Vedas, Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, Ramayana, and Mahabharata. This newer Hinduism is in contrast to a more traditional and conservative Hinduism, which is often a reflection of factors specific to pre-modern Indian culture and history, and more influenced by later Hindu literature, the shastras (codebooks relating to rules and conduct) and puranas (traditional lore and myths). This individualistic, non-institutional approach resembles the spiritual but not religious approach toward religion often adopted by individuals less in tune with their religious traditions; in other words, people who are non-conservative in their attitude toward religion.

If religious issues are taken out of the picture, it would seem that Hindu-Americans potentially have a lot in common with a more conservative worldview. Affirmative action and higher taxes both hurt Hindu-American communities. Most Hindu-Americans are well-educated, legal immigrants who have waited their turn to enter the United States. Additionally, some Hindu-Americans are not favorably disposed toward Muslim immigration due to centuries-old tensions between Hindus and Muslims in South Asia. Yet Hindu-Americans lean toward Democrats on many non-religious issues as well.

On the topics of immigration and civil rights, because most Hindu-Americans are Indian-Americansa minority in the United States whose descendants were once subject to British colonialismcombating racism (real or perceived) is particularly important to Hindu-Americans. Hindus and Muslims are, so to say, on the same side in the United States, as they might not be distinguishable to the European-American population. This predisposition for racial grievance among Indians can be taken to absurd lengths by second-generation Hindus (and Indians), many of whom drinkup the more extreme kool-aid of identity politics on college campuses. Because of the perception that the Democratic Party is more friendly toward immigrants, civil rights, and non-Western cultures, many Hindus support the party en masse in a tribalistic manner. On a related note, Hindu-Americans also want more legal, educated immigration for their kinfolk back in India; any scheme to curb H-1B visas is met with hostility on the part of the Hindu-American community, particularly because they contend that allowing more Indians into the country would be to the advantage of the United States.

The support of most Hindu-Americans for the Democratic Party in the United States is not necessarily tied to support for left-wing or right-wing politics in the American sense. Many Hindu Democratic voters in the United States are also strong supporters of the right-wing, Hindu-nationalist party currently in power in India, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The partys name means the Indian Peoples Party. Yet conservatism in the Indian sense is not particularly related to the American classical liberal tradition of individualism and small-government, although the right in India is generally more business-friendly than the left. The guiding philosophy of the BJP is Integral Humanism, an ideology that sees humans as both spiritual and material beings and seeks a compromise between capitalism and socialism. This philosophy resembles theories of Catholic economics and the One-Nation conservatism found in Britain that views society as organic and values paternalism and pragmatism; in the United States, some Republicans such as Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower had similar views. Very few Hindu-Americans, including business-friendly and socially conservative ones, identity with the Republican orthodoxy that emphasizes cutting taxes and services and reducing the size of government. It is an alien ideology to the Indian tradition, despite Indians being the single wealthiest Asian-American group in the United States in terms of median income.

In the Indian tradition, it has long been assumed that the well-off must assist with uplifting the poor, who would otherwise be incapable of doing so on their own. Perhaps this is because Indian society was inherently biased against individuals working their way up. According to the Hindu epic, the Mahabharata, one of the prime duties of kings is government-sanctioned charity. More communitarian views of society (reflected by governance) are common in Asian cultures relative to Western societies. India has traditionally functioned as an interconnected society of villagers and peasants. Rice agriculture is an intensely cooperative activity. According to research in Science magazine, rice-growing societies are less likely be individualistic. As Thomas Talhelm, who led the study, explained: Families have to flood and drain their field at the same timeSo there are punishments for being too individualistic. He also noted that rice paddies require irrigation systems: That cost falls on the village, not just one familyso villages have to figure out a way to coordinate and pay for and maintain this system. It makes people cooperate. As such, an individuals or a familys self-interest has limited relevance in understanding Hindu-American political leanings.

Just as in the United Kingdom, the Conservatives recently beat Labour among Hindu and Sikh voters, Hindu-Americans current leanings toward the Democratic Party could change in the coming decades. The Republican party is becoming more economically populist and may become more influenced by Catholic notions of distributism. These trends could make the Republican Party more like the British Tories. In this scenario, more minorities might embrace the Republican Party.

Akhilesh Pillalamarri is an editorial assistant at The American Conservative. He also writes for The National Interest and The Diplomat. He is part of the Hindu-American community.

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Hindu-Americans Don't Vote Republican - The American Conservative

There are at least twenty distinct options on God, found throughout history and afoot right now.

We can say there is considerable variety in the approach to God as long as we admit that variety is just a pretty word for disagreement.

What does disagreement show?

Theological disagreement shows us that humanity has never ever agreed about Who or What or Whether God is. Your own view of God (find it in the list below) will always be a minority opinion, outnumbered by all the other opinions combined.

Here are the twenty:

Polytheists say there are many Gods, as many as you like, into the millions if you prefer, perhaps billions, one for every pair of human eyes. You may worship and adore all the Gods.

Henotheists admit many Gods too, but you may only have time to devote yourself to one, and thats okay because these are not self-doubting, jealous Gods.

Kat-henotheists also acknowledge many Gods, but you should dedicate yourself to a single God at a time, moving from one God to another God at different phases of your life, perhaps the phases offered in As You Like It by Shakespeares intellectualist idler, Jaques, who espies seven stages of life, beginning with infancy and ending in the second childishness of old-aged senilitysans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. There are Gods aplenty for each stage.

Trinitarians affirm one God but this God is to be worshiped and adored in three persons: Father, Son (Jesus), and Holy Ghost. To other monotheists like Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Bahais and Caodais, and to polytheists and atheists too, Trinitarian math is elusive (1+1+1=1?) and susceptible to being labelled a petite polytheism of three distinct Gods. Trinitarians vigorously defend the oneness of three.

Dualists acknowledge two Gods, one very very Good and the other one very very Evil. The need for two rests upon the worlds oscillation between beauty and ugliness, delight and dread, kindness and cruelty, irises and ebola viruses. In a family of Dualists you may hear the following dialogue: Child: Mommy, did our good, loving and compassionate God create the talon, the fang and the claw? Mom: No, sweetie, the other God, the God of cruelty, made those. As if you needed to be told, you should adore the very very Good God.

Monotheists declare there has only ever been one good God to worship and adore. Several distinct and opposing monotheistic religions claim this God and define him in many different ways, with many different hues.

Dystheists say theres one God who is not really all that good, given conspicuous evidence from our bloody red in tooth and claw, predator-prey natural world. Adore with caution.

Pantheists state that God is identical to the many things of the physical, material world, and when you adore the many things of the material world you adore God.

Pan-en-theists claim that God is within the many things of the material world but distinct from the many things of the material world. You may adore this God in your esteem for the material world, or adore this God as something above the material world.

Deists insist there is one God who created the universe but thereafter took no interest in it. You do not adore this God because this God cares nothing about you, either because he doesnt know you exist, or because he cares about you as much as he cares about the life of an oyster or a gnat (with due apologies to The World Parliament of Insects, Mollusks, & Affiliated Clam Culture).

Daoists maintain that God is not a person at all but an Impersonal Force that pervades the universe and may be tapped-into by humans but requires no adoration. (Cf. Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Rey of the Star Wars mythos.)

Extra-Terrrestrialists say that what humans have been calling Gods are actually space-visiting galactic beings who used modest ingredients and measuring spoons to un-miraculously originate life on Earth and thereafter vacationed in rural New Mexico.

Monists proclaim there is only one item in existence: God. God is everything, everything is God, and everything is only one thing, God. Variety is a delusion, and all the words we have for the many existent things are superfluous. Thin the dictionary to the letter g and the word God. (Pantheism is different in that it admits the existence of many things).

Anatheists say God cannot be rendered into any image or concept, because the God that can be imagined is not the real God. Our mystics proffer this deity and claim to adore God immediately; that is, without the mediation of holy saints, holy buildings, holy worship services, bells, books, candles, or even thoughts and words. Mystics often claim an ineffable experience and then write inch-thick books describing it.

Euhemerists say all Gods were once humans who at some point achieved apotheosis, elevation to divinity. Adore the worthy ones. (Some Buddhists may be here.)

Misotheists follow Prometheus and hate all Gods because Gods are completely overbearing, pompous, fat-witted despots. Adoration is inapt.

Skeptics doubt not only avowals about God but also all claims to all knowledge. A Skeptic might say, You you claim to know God exists and you dont even know if Charlemagne existed.

Atheists find no persuasive arguments for God, no convincing idea of God on offer in six thousand years, and therefore say there must be no Gods. (Some Buddhists may be here).

Agnostics remain unconvinced by every argument for Gods existence but prefer to withhold judgment as to whether God exists by saying I dont know if theres a God. Agnostics are no kind of believer in God and do not hedge their bet by attending religious services or by prayingjust in case theres a God.

Ignostics advise us to give up the word God and rub it from the worlds lexicons and never utter it again. Why? Because it has been proved over many thousands of years that humans are utterly ignorant about what the word God signifies, as established by our extensive disagreements concerning God, evinced in this very roster of twenty.

Featured image Confusion by lisa-skorpion via Flickr

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Read more here:

20 Options on God (Find Yours Here) - Patheos (blog)

July 8, 2017 by Jeffrey Gantz

One hundred and fifty-seven years after Gustav Mahlers birth on July 7, 1860, he could hardly have imagined a better birthday present than the performance of his Second Symphony, the Resurrection, that Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra gave to open Tanglewoods 2017 season.

Mahler premiered the Resurrection in Berlin in 1895, to a mixed reception. The certainty of its redemptive Finale would give way to the pantheism of his Third Symphony, the mortal humor of the Fourth and Fifth, the mortal tragedy of the Sixth, the mundane humor of the Seventh, and the death struggle that is Das Lied von der Erde and the Ninth and Tenth. But Mahler never outgrew the hope of the Resurrection. It was the piece he conducted at his Vienna farewell concert, after he had resigned as director of the Vienna Hofoper. It was the first of his symphonies that he conducted in New York (1908), and the first that he conducted in Paris (1910).

The Resurrection symphony also prompted the late New York businessman and financier Gilbert Kaplan to acquire the autograph manuscript of Mahlers score and take up the baton. Kaplan conducted Mahlers Second on more than 100 occasions, and he recorded it twice, with the London Symphony in 1987 and the Vienna Philharmonic in 2004. Kaplans philosophy of the Resurrection was that the angels are in the details, but theres more to the heaven of this symphony than his literal readings dream of. On a rainy Friday, Nelsons took it by the devils horns, so to speak.

You dont need Mahlers program to understand that the opening Allegro maestoso is a funeral march, or that its the hero of his First Symphony whos in the coffin. But that opening outburst in the cellos and basses can be calm and resigned or big and angry. Nelsons went for big and angry. Recorded timings for this movement range from 17-1/2 minutes (Otto Klemperer in 1951) to 25-1/2 minutes (Otto Klemperer in 1971); Nelsons took 25. He gave the initial theme drama, space, and articulation, making palpable those bars where the cellos and basses, now downward slipping, recall the passage in the first act of Wagners Die Walkre when Hunding orders Sieglinde to prepare food and drink for Siegmund. The wistful, yearning E-major second theme was fraught, almost self-consciously so, but on its second appearance, in the development, Nelsons conjured what T. S. Eliot called the agony in stony places. He was ferocious where Mahler introduces the plainsong Dies Irae (Day of Wrath) to the march, then tender when the yearning theme rises to a hopeful F-sharp, a moment many conductors gloss over. The coda was measured but never sagged.

Mahler marked a five-minute pause to follow the Allegro maestoso. Perhaps he thought his audience would need that much of a break to recover from the gravity of the first movement; perhaps he thought that the Andante moderato would be jarring if it followed immediately. Contemporary audiences hardly need five minutes; conductors these days usually take a brief pause. Nelsons took three minutes, which seemed just right.

The Andante moderato flashes back to happy time in the heros life; Mahlers program describes it as a memory, a ray of sunlight, pure and cloudless. The movement has been described as both a minuet and a Lndler; Nelsons gave it the courtly delicacy of the one and the rustic sway of the other. One could have asked for more animation in the stately first trio, but the transition from the second trio back into the main subject was seductive, and the drawn-out conclusion was a benediction.

In the third movement, I lost Nelsonss thread. Titled In ruhig flieender Bewegung (In Peacefully Flowing Movement), its Mahlers remodeling of his Des Knaben Wunderhorn song Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt, wherein St. Anthony, finding his church empty, goes to preach to the fishes, who listen attentively before resuming their venal ways. Mahler describes the movement as a return to this tangled life of ours after awaking from the blissful dream of the Andante moderato. Peacefully flowing describes what Nelsons gave us, but at his moderate tempo the movement was mild-mannered, with no hint of mincing sarcasm, and the climaxes didnt have room to register. Even the moment when the ocean seems to open up and reveal Wagners Rhinemaidens wanted magic.

Mahler was, he tells us, at a loss as to how to redeem this distorted and crazy world until, in 1894, he attended the funeral of conductor Hans von Blow and heard a choir sing a setting of Friedrich Klopstocks poem Auferstehen (Rise Again). In short order, he fashioned the final two movements. The fourth, Urlicht (Primal Light), adapts another of the composers Knaben Wunderhorn songs. Nelsonss mezzo, Bernarda Fink, sang without a score and with admirable purity and gravity she never sounded operatic. She also conveyed meaning without overenunciating. What she didnt do was project.

Mahler concludes the Resurrection with his own version of the Klopstock chorale, but not until the Day of Wrath arrives and the dead rise, march, and stand for Judgment though as Mahler advises us, There is no Judgment, only A feeling of overwhelming love. This fifth and final movement sprawls and is hard to hold together. It begins in chaos before we hear the Resurrection theme, which, it turns out, is a rhythmic variation on the Ewig motif from Wagners Siegfried: Ewig war ich, ewig bin ich (Eternal I was, eternal I am) is what Brnnhilde sings to Siegfried after hes braved her ring of fire. You can hear a foreshadowing of the Resurrection theme as early as bar 48 of the Allegro maestoso which makes you wonder whether Mahler didnt know where he was going with this symphony from the outset.

Andris Nelsons conducts BSO, TFC, Bernardam Fink, and Malin Christensson (Hilary Scott photo)

I wasnt always sure where Nelsons was going either. This movement was mighty Mahler at the decibel level but some sections were hustled and others went so slackly that the phrasing flatlined. The soprano, Malin Christensson, had sung previously with Nelsons and the BSO in Februarys Bach B-minor Mass; she was pleasing then and pleasing Friday, but she rarely rose above the tumult.

What Mahler called Der groe Appell (The Great Call), however, was perfectly calibrated antiphonal offstage brass fanfares set against an onstage flutes nightingale, which Mahler called the bird of death. And it was gratifying to see the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, all in white, off book. The choruss first word, Auferstehen, was hushed (which is the norm in a good performance) but also gentle (a pleasant surprise). Bereite dich, so often barked, was a full-throated cheer. Nelsons integrated the tempos of Sterben werd ich, um zu leben and the slightly faster Was du geschlagen in a way that few conductors do, and the climax was fervent.

The reading overall was expansive at 87 minutes (excluding that three-minute pause). As a live performance (real or imagined shortcomings aside), it measured up to Claudio Abbados legendary 1979 BSO guesting and, yes, Benjamin Zanders offering this past April with the Boston Philharmonic. Next to more compact, natural recordings by the likes of Otto Klemperer and William Steinberg, Nelsonss interpretation could sound studied, but for every perplexing moment, came two or three breathtaking ones. The clarity of the orchestra was remarkable throughout; the counterpoint between the upper and lower strings felt palpable, and the winds and the brass executed with ravishing beauty. A CD of this night would be among the best in the catalog. Happy birthday Gustav!

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Nelsons Leads Tanglewood Resurrection - The Boston Musical ... - The Boston Musical Intelligencer

ABEAN Contains Twelve Statements

Although I cannot provide a comprehensive critique of Hinmans ABEAN argument in just two blog posts (of reasonable length), I can at least briefly touch on each of the dozen statements in that argument.

[NOTE: ABEAN is an acronym that refers tothe claim that some Aspect of Being is Eternal And Necessary.]

The statements in ABEAN are numbered (1) through (11), but there is an additional statement that Hinman should have made, but that he did not make clearly and explicitly. There is a little bit of text in brackets following premise (4):

[=GOB]

There is a similar notation following premise (6):

[=SON]

The notation following premise (6) merely indicates an acronym that will be used as shorthand for the phrasea Sense Of the Numinous, a term that was already being used in premise (6). So, the notation following (6) does not assert anything or add anything to (6).

However, the notation following premise (4) asserts a substantive claim, which Hinman ought to have spelled out as a separate premise:

(A) The Ground of Being is identical with anyaspect of being that is eternal and necessary.

The notation [=GOB] does NOT merely specify an acronym for a term already present in the argument; rather, it introduces a new and additional concept into the argument, a concept that is very unclear. Since premise (A) includes at least threeunclear terms (The Ground of Being, any aspect of being that is, and eternal), I judge this premise to be VERY unclear.

The ABEAN Argument is VERY UNCLEAR

The main problem with the ABEAN argument is that it is UNCLEAR. This is the same problem that I encountered repeatedly in my analysis and evaluation of Norman Geislers case for God in his bookWhen Skeptics Ask. The problem is not so much that ABEAN uses false premises or invalid inferences. The problem is that nearly every claim in the argument is unclear, making it nearly impossible to rationally evaluate the argument.

In my view, ten out of the twelve statements that make up ABEAN are VERY UNCLEAR. Only one statement in ABEAN is clear, and there is one statement that is somewhat unclear (but less than very unclear). So, in my view, more than 80% of the statements in ABEAN are VERY UNCLEAR, and less than 10% of the statements in ABEAN are clear (only 1 statement out of 12). Given the prevalence of VERY UNCLEAR statements, it is reasonable to characterize the whole argument as being VERY UNCLEAR, and thus for all practical intents and purposes it is impossible to rationally evaluate ABEAN. As it stands, ABEANis little more than a heap of words without much intellectual or philosophical significance.

If Mr. Hinman were to provideclear definitions for the many problematic words and phrases in his ABEAN argument, then it would be possible to rationally evaluate this argument, but I suspect that if he could have provided such definitions then he would have done so already. So, Im doubtful that he will be providing clear definitions for all of the many problematic words and phrases in ABEAN.

Here is my view of the general unclarity of Hinmans ABEAN argument (click on image below for a betterview of the chart):

The unclarity that I based this chart on is the unclarity of the meaning of several problematic words and phrases:

The terms necessary and contingent are also problematic words, but Hinman provides fairly clear definitions of these two words, which in turn made it possible for me to evaluate the inference from premises (1) and (4) to premise (5) as being an INVALID inference (see Part 2 of this series). The one time that Hinman provides clear definitions, makes it clear that ABEAN is a bad argument. This is why, I suspect, that Geisler and Hinman are so unclear and fuzzy-headed when they argue for God. When they think and reason clearly, their arguments for God fall apart.

I judged premises (1), (2), (4), (A), (5), (7), (8), (9), (10), and (11) to be VERY UNCLEAR because they each contain at least two different unclear words or phrases, which Hinman failed to adequatelydefine or explain.

I judged premise (6) to be UNCLEAR, but not to be VERY UNCLEAR, because of the use of the phrase a sense of the numinous in that premise. Given the subjective nature of that concept, it would be difficult for anyone to provide a clear definition of that phrase, and Hinman did make a brief attempt to provide some clarification of this term, but his attempt was inadequate in my judgment. As it stands, this phrase is too vague to allow one to make a rational evaluation of the truth or falsehood of premises (7) or (8)with any degree of confidence.

How Many Possible Interpretations are there of ABEAN?

The easiest sort of unclarity to fix is ambiguity. There are eight different unclear words or phrases used in ABEAN. (NOTE: some of the unclear words and phrases in the list above are not used in the ABEAN argument, but are used in definitions of terms.) Most of these unclear words or phrases have MANYdifferent possible meanings, not just two. So, most of these unclear words or phrases have a more serious problem than that of being ambiguous between two alternative meanings.

But, for the sake of illustration, lets assume that all eight unclear words or phrases each have only two alternative meanings. Lets also assume that these words or phrases are consistently used with the same meaning inall premises where they occur. How many different possible interpretations of ABEAN wouldthere be, based on those assumptions? There would be 2 to the 8th power different interpretations of ABEAN:

2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 4 x 4 x 4 x 4 = 16 x 16 = 256 Different Possible Interpretations

There are well over two hundred different possible interpretations of ABEAN if the unclear words and phrases in the argument each have only two possible meanings. But most of the unclear words and phrases have a more serious problem of unclarity than this, so it would not be unreasonable to estimate that there is an average of three different possible meanings for each of the unclear words and phrases. How many possible interpretations of ABEAN would there be on that assumption? There would be 3 to the 8th power different interpretations of ABEAN:

3 x 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 = 9 x 9 x 9 x 9 = 81 x 81 = 6,561 Different Possible Interpretations

Given these two estimates of the number of different possible interpretations of ABEAN, it is reasonable to conclude that it is very likely that there are more than 200 but less than 7,000 different possible interpretations of ABEAN. So, I would need at least 200 blog posts to adequately evaluate all of the various possible interpretations of ABEAN. Not gonna happen. Wouldnt be prudent. I have better things to do with my time.

One Premise in ABEAN is OK

Im OK with premise (3):

3. Something did not come from nothing.

The wording and clarity could be slightly improved:

3a. It is NOT the case that something came from nothing.

I accept this premise as true, although Im not entirely certain that it is true. I think it is based on the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and Im inclined to accept that principle (i.e. Every event has an explanation.)

A Couple of Other Problems with ABEAN

I havemany objections and concerns about ABEAN in addition to the basic problem of unclear words and phrases. But I will just mention two of those problems here. One objection concerns the statement that Hinman failed to make clearly and explicitly:

(A) The Ground of Beingis identical withanyaspect of being that is eternal and necessary.

Premise (4) asserts that Some aspect of being is eternal and necessary. The word some is ambiguous here, just like the word something as used by Aquinas and by Geisler in their arguments for God. What premise (4) actually means is this:

4a. Some aspect or aspects of being are eternal and necessary.

There is no reason or justification given for limiting the relevant aspects to just ONE aspect. So, we have, yet again, an ambiguity in quantification that leads to confusion and illogical inferences. If there are many aspects of being, and if more than one aspect of being is eternal and necessary, then that casts doubt on premise (A). If there are multiple aspects of being that are eternal and necessary, then it is doubtful that we ought to identify the Ground of Being with that collection of aspects.

This is particularly the case if an aspect of being is an individual thing or event. The concept of an aspect of being is VERY UNCLEAR, so it is not at all obvious that we can rule out the possibility that individual things or events could count as aspects of being. Clearly, Mr. Hinman would NOT accept the idea that the Ground of Being is composed of various individual things or events (that would lead us in the direction of Polytheism or Pantheism), so the identification of the Ground of Being with some aspect or aspects of being might well turn out to be an incoherent claim, a claim that contradicts the implicationsof Hinmansconcept of the Ground of Being.

This is one more example that illustrates the need for clear definitions of problematic words and phrases such as an aspect of being and the Ground of Being. Without such definitions, we may well be stumbling over various logical errors and incoherent claims.

I also have a problem with premise (9):

9. GOB = God.

First of all, this premise needs to be spelled out in a clear sentence of English:

9a. The Ground of Being is identical with God.

Although Hinman fails to provide a clear definition of the Ground of Being or ofthe word eternal, I strongly suspect that by eternal he means outside of time, and it is clear that Hinman believes the Ground of Being to be eternal. Given these assumptions, it follows that the Ground of Being cannot change.

But God is a person, or at least a being with personal characteristics like can think, can communicate, can make choices, and can perform actions. But only a being that can change can have such personal characteristics. Therefore, given the assumption that the Ground of Being is something that is outside of time it follows that the Ground of Being is NOT identical with God. Premise (9) appears to be false.

So, premise (A) might well, for all we know, be an incoherent statement, and premise (9) appears to be false.

Read the original here:

Hinman's ABEAN Argument Part 3: More Objections - Patheos (blog)

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It is most disturbing that for the second time in almost 315 years the celebrated S&P (Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community of London), an affiliate of its mother synagogue in Amsterdam (of which many of my ancestors have been members for generations), is at the center of a major eruption within Orthodox Judaism due to the small-mindedness and deliberate misinterpretation of their rabbis views by some of his colleagues.

On the 20th of November 1703, the venerable Chacham David Nieto (1654-1728), chief rabbi of the S&P and a great Talmudic scholar, philosopher, mathematician, and author of his remarkable magnum opus, Matteh Dan, was accused of being a secret follower of the Dutch, Jewish, Portuguese-Spanish world class philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), who had turned his back on Judaism and declared that God was transcendent but not immanent, denying His involvement in the affairs of humankind and even His being the Creator of the universe. This doctrine, called pantheism, also suggests that God is not a Personality to Whom we are able to speak, or Who can reveal Himself to humankind through some type of verbal communication.

Chacham Nieto, in an attempt to refute deism (a very popular belief among philosophers of his time), which teaches that the living God created the universe but is no longer involved in it or in the affairs of humankind, said that God and nature are one and the same. By this he meant to say that God is not only transcendent but also immanent and, as such, deeply involved in the world. Unfortunately, he used the same words that Spinoza had used to explain his pantheistic views: God and nature are the same. Misunderstanding Chacham Nietos words, the Maamad (lay leadership of the S&P) thought that he was supporting Spinozas pantheism. They accused him of heresy and wanted to fire him. When this matter came to a head, shaking the foundations of the community, with far-reaching consequences for its future and for Judaism in general, they wisely decided to ask the opinion of the world-famous Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Ashkenazi (c.1660-1718), also called the Chacham Tzvi, the former chief rabbi of the Ashkhenazic community in Amsterdam who was then living in Altona, Germany. The rabbi convened his beit din, studied all the relevant material from both sides, and vindicated Chacham Nieto completely, telling the leaders of the S&P that they had misunderstood their rabbi and that he must continue as their religious leader (1). This ended a most unfortunate controversy and dangerous development within Judaism.

Now, more than 300 years later, a new scandal with major ramifications is again erupting around the S&P this time, regarding a lecture on homosexuality given by its venerable Senior Rabbi Joseph Dweck. In this case, however, it is not the lay leaders of the S&P who accuse their rabbi of heresy (in fact, they are standing with him) but some influential rabbis in England and abroad who felt the need to accuse Rabbi Dweck of heresy. In a tirade of mostly meaningless words, they attacked his integrity, faith and scholarship, calling him a wicked person and using even worse descriptions. By doing so, they showed ignorance, bias and self-interest and, above all, as in the case of Chacham Nieto, they completely and probably deliberately misinterpreted what the rabbi said.

In this remarkable lecture at the Ner Yisrael Synagogue, where the congregation is led by my dear friend Rabbi Dr. Avraham (Alan) Kimche, Rabbi Dweck presented an entirely new way of understanding homosexuality. Drawing on non-Jewish historical sources, he explained that homosexuality was an accepted lifestyle in the ancient non-Jewish world and, quoting many Jewish classical sources, he then specified what the prohibition of homosexuality in Halacha is all about and what is not prohibited in a same-sex, male loving relationship. He presented the different points of view and their nuances, and expressed the idea that current Western attitudes toward sexuality force traditional Judaism to rethink some of its core values, as it has always done when challenged. While it is true that Rabbi Dweck used some unfortunate phrases in the heat of his argument (What speaker doesnt, from time to time?), nothing that he said was outside the boundaries of established Halacha.

In fact, much of what he argued had already been said by Rabbi Chaim Rapoport, a great halachic scholar in London, in his well-known book Judaism and Homosexuality: An Authentic Orthodox View,for which I wrote an approbation and which carries a foreword by Emeritus Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks and a preface by the late Dayan Berel Berkovits of the Beth Din of the (Orthodox) Federation of Synagogues in London.

However, that didnt stop Rabbi Dwecks rabbinical opponents from deliberately misrepresenting him. Nothing but fear, lack of knowledge about homosexuality, and personal (not so kosher) reasons seem to have motivated them.

One rabbi felt the need to scrutinize all of Rabbi Dwecks lectures from the time he came to live in London a witch hunt of sorts looking for possible mistakes the rabbi may have made in earlier lectures so as to undermine his reputation, as if no Orthodox rabbis ever make mistakes in some of their rulings. He completely ignored the fact that Rabbi Dweck comes from a different Sefardic-Syrian tradition with its own (halachic) practices and religious outlook on life.

Rabbi Dweck is married to the granddaughter of Chacham Ovadia Yosef, zl, former chief rabbi of Israel. But that didnt prevent the current Chief Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef and his brother Rabbi David Yosef both sons of Rav Ovadia from refusing to see him (their own nephew) when he asked for a meeting. In fact, both wrote a letter to the Sefardic communities of New York and New Jersey condemning Rabbi Dweck (while never mentioning his name!) and asking for his dismissal, thereby showing lamentable small-mindedness, a lack of general knowledge, and ignorance of the Jewish religious philosophical tradition.

I have been told by reliable sources that by now Rabbi Dwecks weekly lectures have been cancelled and his former lectures removed from the Internet. Not only is this a grave injustice but it greatly harms his remarkable and most successful influence in London and beyond, in bringing people closer to our holy Torah.

The great danger of this unfortunate affair is not just the controversy surrounding Rabbi Dweck. More than anything else, it is an indication of where British or perhaps all European Orthodoxy is heading. When Orthodox rabbis are told that they are no longer able to speak their minds, offer new insights into Orthodox Judaism, or try to find solutions to serious problems by using innovative ideas, we are faced with a rabbinical world that is wearing blinders, is comprised of yes-people looking over their shoulders, and is generating a hazardous small-mindedness that has far-reaching effects.

Sure, there have always been differences of opinion within Rabbinic Judaism. This is healthy, and Judaism has only benefitted from it. But this was always done in a framework of well-informed argument and discussion, not in tirades of meaningless and hateful statements.

One of the biggest problems of current mainstream Orthodoxy is that it believes it is always right, knows all the sources, and doesnt need to be apprised of new information coming from our traditional sources. The consequences are that it is rewriting Orthodoxy in ways that sometimes make authentic Judaism unrecognizable.

What rabbis like those attacking Rabbi Dweck do not realize is that they are slowly but surely becoming irrelevant. They may be great Talmudic scholars, but instead of using their exceptional knowledge to make Orthodox Judaism more and more vibrant, they drown in it and become stuck in the quicksand of intransigence, which they themselves have created.

The danger is that in their stubbornness they take down all of British Orthodoxy, which seems to be unaware or too immature to understand what is happening.

The task of great rabbis is to jump aboard the sinking ship of Orthodoxy, with knives between their teeth, ensuring that a fearless Judaism, in full sail and in full force, will sail the ship of Torah into the midst of the sea of our lives.

I call on:

The venerable British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis and his beit din to unequivocally condemn the attacks on Rabbi Dweck and stand staunchly behind him;

Emeritus Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks to join Rabbi Mirvis in this endeavor;

My dear friend Rabbi Dr. Alan Kimche to resume Rabbi Dwecks lectures in his community without further delay;

The relevant parties to restore Rabbi Dwecks lectures on the Internet;

The S&P to continue to show courage and to oppose with full force any attempt to fire Rabbi Dweck and/or discredit him;

The New York and New Jersey communities to immediately invite Rabbi Dweck to be their scholar in residence again;

Chief Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef, Rabbi David Yosef, and other rabbis to cease harassing Rabbi Dweck and subjecting him to a meaningless inquisition; to begin listening to what he has actually been saying; and to stop the witch hunt, which has no place in authentic Orthodox Judaism.

And I call on Rabbi Dweck himself to continue leading and inspiring the S&P with pride and self-confidence and spreading Torah wherever possible. Let him not forget the wise words of Jonathan Swift: Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent (2).

Let us hope that this story will end in the same way as did the attack on Chacham Nieto, once again proving the power of Judaism when confronted with the lamentable closing of current rabbinic minds.

*****

(1) See ResponsaChacham Tzvi, responsum # 18 (Amsterdam, 1712). See also: Jakob J. Petuchowsky, The Theology of Haham David Nieto: An Eighteenth Century Defence of the Jewish Tradition (NY: KTAV Publishing House, 1970).

(2) From Swifts satirical essay, Various Thoughts, Moral and Diverting, first appeared in Miscellanies in Prose and Verse (Leicester, UK: Scolar Press, 1711).

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A Modern Day Inquisition: Rabbi Joseph Dweck - The Jewish Press - JewishPress.com

This is my last column describing the meaning and history of Progressive Christianity. Finishing our historical journey, let me mention a few more people who have contributed to Progressive Christian thought.

Martin Buber (1878-1965) was an Austrian-born Israeli Jewish philosopher best known for his book "I and Thou," which focused on the way humans relate to their world.

According to Buber, we frequently view both objects and people by their functions. Doing this is sometimes good: when doctors examine us for specific maladies, it's best if they view us as organisms, not as individuals.

Scientists can learn a great deal about our world by observing, measuring and examining. For Buber, all such processes are I-It relationships.

Unfortunately, we frequently view people in the same way. Rather than truly making ourselves completely available to them, understanding them, sharing totally with them, really talking with them, we observe them or keep part of ourselves outside the moment of relationship.

Buber calls such an interaction I-It. It is possible, notes Buber, to place ourselves completely into a relationship, to truly understand and "be there" with another person, without masks, pretenses, even without words. Such a moment of relating is called "I-Thou."

The bond thus created enlarges each person, and each person responds by trying to enhance the other person. The result is true dialogue, true sharing. Buber then moves from this existential description of personal relating to the religious experience. For Buber, God is the Eternal Thou. Yet another concept of God to consider.

Charles Hartshorne (1897-2000) was an American philosopher who concentrated primarily on the philosophy of religion and metaphysics. He developed the neoclassical idea of God and produced a modal proof of the existence of God that was a development of St. Anselm's Ontological Argument.

Hartshorne is also noted for developing Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy into process theology, a component of Progressive Christianity. One of the technical terms Hartshorne used is pan-en-theism. Panentheism (all is in God) must be differentiated from classical pantheism (all is God).

In Hartshorne's theology, God is not identical with the world, but God is also not completely independent from the world. God has his self-identity that transcends the Earth, but the world is also contained within God. A rough analogy is the relationship between a mother and a fetus. The mother has her own identity and is different from the unborn, yet is intimately connected to the unborn. The unborn is within the womb and attached to the mother via the umbilical cord.

Next, Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976) was a German Lutheran theologian and professor of New Testament at the University of Marburg. He was one of the major figures of early 20th century biblical studies and a prominent voice in liberal Christianity.

Bultmann is known for his belief that the historical analysis of the New Testament is both futile and unnecessary, given that the earliest Christian literature showed little interest in specific locations. Bultmann argued that all that matters is the "thatness," not the "whatness" of Jesus; i.e. only that Jesus existed, preached and died by Crucifixion matters, not what happened throughout his life. Bultmann contended that only faith in the kerygma, or proclamation, of the New Testament was necessary for Christian faith, not any particular facts regarding the historical Jesus.

Finally, Marcus Borg (1942-2015) was an American New Testament scholar, theologian and author. He was among the most widely known and influential voices in progressive Christianity. As a fellow of the Jesus Seminar, Borg was a major figure in historical Jesus scholarship. The Jesus Seminar was a group of about 150 critical Biblical scholars and laymen founded in 1985. Members of the Seminar used votes with colored beads to decide their collective view of the historicity of the deeds and sayings of Jesus of Nazareth. They published their results in three reports: The Five Gospels (1993), The Acts of Jesus (1998), and The Gospel of Jesus (1999).

As Friedrich Schleiermacher argued that while we cannot know God in a scientific way, humans have a sense and taste for the infinite, no one can know Progressive Christianity from these four short articles. However, I hope you now have a sense and taste for what we are about. If you would like to learn more, join us at United Christian Church, Levittown.

Sources: Wikipedia and Jewish Virtual Librar

Keith A. Pacheco, Langhorne, is an aspiring peacemaker and a student of nonviolent communication.

Excerpt from:

On religion: Being aware of our connectivity to God and each other - The Intelligencer

Stephen Hawking, arguably the most famous living scientist in the world, now says that the intervention of a divine being in the creation of the universe is not necessary.

Never mind that the title of his last book, The Grand Design, seems to contradict this assertion. What we have here is the failure to philosophize.

In his 1988 book, A Brief History of Time, Hawking was widely seen to accept the role of God in the creation of the universe. In that book he wrote, If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason for then we should know the mind of God.

He now intones, It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.

But it was never necessary for a thinking and feeling person to invoke a Creator to explain creation. So the question is, what does Stephen mean by God, and what do we?

This is the ultimate example of how the word is not the thing. The word God can stand for anything, with perhaps as many definitions as there are humans on earth. But is there an actuality, which the completely silent mind can directly commune?

Obviously I feel there is, since its one of the main themes of this column. But Im not trying to convince anyone of it, simply saying: question, experiment and find out for yourself.

Refuting theism does not mean invoking concepts like pantheism and panentheism. Doing so prevents the experiencing of immanence. Conceptualizing has to completely cease for experiencing that which is called God.

Unwittingly, Hawking is making a case for how scientific discoveries and knowledge are compatible with a mystical understanding of God.

Science has been steadily undercutting the human projection of an all-knowing separate Creator, while making the miracle of intrinsic, ongoing creation more and more evident. Theres no need for a Creator standing apart and setting the whole shebang in motion (and occasionally intervening.)

On the other hand, Hawkings view of the universe and human beings has unexamined philosophical assumptions woven into it. These can be seen when we unpack statements like:

The fact that we human beings who are ourselves mere collections of fundamental particles of nature have been able to come this close to an understanding of the laws governing us and our universe is a great triumph.

As many contributions as Stephen Hawking has made to science, the idea that human beings (and more to the point, the human brain) are mere collections of fundamental particles is, to my mind, a deeply mistaken view of the universe and the human beings place in it.

It is mere reductionism, which is necessary for doing science, but represents the rejection of the human capacity for holistic perception, which is essential to being fully human.

It is also deeply anthropocentric, putting the human mind, with respect to reason and its capability for scientific knowledge, at the center of creation.

Im not arguing for keeping some projection of God at the center of creation; Im saying there is no center of creation.

There is ongoing creation however, and it is a mystery that science will never be able to encompass with knowledge, no matter how far science extends knowledge. Experiencing the numinous only takes place when the movement of knowledge and the known has ceased.

Hawking sets up a classic straw man when he says that the discovery, in 1992, of a planet orbiting a distant star was the first blow to Newtons belief that the universe could not have arisen from chaos.

That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions the single sun, the lucky combination of Earth-sun distance and solar mass far less remarkable, and far less compelling as evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings, he writes.

Hes not arguing against an immanent God in this revealing bit of diversion, but against the insight that there is no disorder or chaos in nature, because there is an underling order in the universe since the beginning of time.

Hawking is proffering the dogmatic atheists view that everything is randomness, and that chance can account for everything we see, everything we are, and everything we are capable of being.

That is simply false. Its actually order all the way down, not chaos evolving into order, culminating in the human mind. Thats as anthropocentric in its own way as the Christian belief that the earth was made for man.

The universe wasnt created out of chaos; indeed, it wasnt created at all. There is no such thing as chaos, or disorder for that matter, except with man and creatures like him, wherever they may exist at our stage in the cosmos.

God is synonymous with the universe, as well as non-separatively beyond it. Evil has no supernatural aspect either (though, unlike the universe/God, is man-made).

This means God is a completely different actuality than Stephen Hawking or anyone can conceive or imagine.

Martin LeFevre

Read more:

The Universe Is the Mind of God - The Costa Rican Times

The philosopher William James was one of the turn of the centurys greatest examiners of the religious experience, noting its varieties and studying its phenomena, albeit with the kind of distanced, unheated air characteristic of an academician of that era. But the psychologist Carl Jung was the thinker who intellectually legitimized the religious impulse as a constituent part of the human species.

Jung said that a fundamental part of life is an intense desire to know the divine, a yearning to experience that which is larger than the self. For modern man, a loss of the religious center resulted in all kinds of maladieselevated concerns to realize ambitions, inordinate delight over material possessions, anxiety over the retention of passing beauty, strength, grace, etc. Caretaking of the soul was a remedy for these things, though for modern man an acceptance of that fact proved difficult. Hence, neurosis.

Its not surprising that a being with so limited a life span and skill set, but with such unlimited imagination and intuition, would look up from his stone ax at some point and stare out into the horizon. The earliest evidence of worship seems to stretch back even as far as the Paleolithic, when burial rituals provided food and weapons for a type of transcendence for the deceased.

Adopting a burial itself, rather than abandonment, makes no sense except as a religious practice, if it was ever more than that at all. There might be modern hygienic reasons for caretaking of corpses, but that would unlikely have been a concern of ancient peoples, and even so there are easier ways to rid oneself of pestilent nuisances than burying them.

So there must have been some early concept of a spirit, one that could dissociate itself from the physical body. The idea of another life into which that spirit passedwhether or not it was conceived as eternalwas at least something that was in play from earliest history.

But contemporaneously with that concept is evidence of a totemism of some type, involving hybrid creatures, half-man and half-animal, as depicted on cave walls. So not only did the early worshipers have one of the essential notions of any religiontranscendence, as expressed through passagebut they also had anotherthe notion of a deity (atonement, another definitive notion, could be equally as old, depending on the reason sacrifices and scapegoating were practiced: as a means to appease the gods for sin, or as a means to flatter the gods for favors).

Eons passed, and the gods became plenteous. No longer was the bulbous-figured fertility goddess with enormous breasts the only shape that the divine took. Gods of all kinds appeared, and for all purposes. Gods associated with the cycles of life, with the passage of time, with joy and pleasure, and with fear and loathing, sprang forth to claim their due. And these gods claimed that due in the form of statuary and other means of depiction, which required obeisance. The gods couldnt very well remain out in the cold and heat, so they were given houses, or temples, and at that point mankind was at a place very near the place we currently possess.

The point of all this is to say that one aspect of the religious impulse Jung spoke of is the theophanic desirethe need for the god to manifest. Its not enough for the gods to have names and functions; they have to have faces. After all, we are sentient beings and ultimately cannot be contented with things that remain purely ghostly.

One of the telling features of our times is that the religious impulse in the first world has been transitioned, or transferred, to causese.g., the identification with certain political and environmental stances. In the first world, the vestiges of orthodox worship of a deity remain, of course, but more and more the majority of people profess a spirituality rather than a religiosity, one that rids itself of the traditional aspects that are at odds with the secular episteme.

So God has lost his face and bodyhas un-manifested, as it were. Now, god is often meant, if not written, with a little g, and is accompanied by a superfluity of pronouns to cover all bases. Its fair to say that the old practice of pantheism has returned, the finding of the godlike in all thingsparticularly seas and trees and bees, etc.with its attendant rituals of ecological adoration and stewardship.

But from the purely anthropological standpoint, I dont think it will last. Theres too much history that says otherwise. Witness New Zealands recent bestowal ofpersonhood upon the Whanganui River, the third largest in the country. Its importance to the natives is ancient, but this is the first time that a natural feature has been given equivalent rights with human beings.

Where it gets really interesting is the fact that the river will have guardians, who will for all intents and purposes enjoy the rights of the Whanganui and enforce obligations owed to it. They will, in a legal sense,bethe river when the river needs to leave its ancient banks, put on a suit, and go to the bank or to court.

Poseidon became the manifestation of the Sea, Aphrodite of Love, Artemis of the Hunt, and on and on. Whether they sprang from sea foam or erupted from a volcano, the gods eventually took a shape. And once they had, they expected and received their due from their disciples.

Is such obeisance really distinguishable from the recent theophany of the Whanganui, and the many gods that will doubtless join her/him/it in due timeEverest, Amazon, Eriewith their claims upon our consciences?

Considering the world we live in now, whos willing to bet against this happening? We may have phones and jets, but one wonders how fundamentally different we are from our forebears when it comes right down to things such as these. A.G. Harmon teaches Shakespeare, Law and Literature, Jurisprudence, and Writing at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. His novel, A House All Stilled, won the 2001 Peter Taylor Prize for the Novel.

Above image by Miguel Virkkunen Carvalho, used with permission under a Creative Commons License.

The rest is here:

New Names for Old Gods - Patheos (blog)

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We know that Nature is actually responsible for most of what religious people attribute to God- the perpetual creation, formation and maintenance of all Life in the Universe (i.e. the Deistic creative quality). We also know that Nature is everywhere, pervading all things at all times, just as God is described as being (Omnipresent) andmore

There is to be found in Nature, an incredible, all-encompassing life-force or power, which I call the Omnia (Latin for all or everything). This word not only denotes all energy/matter in the physical Universe, but also the innate quality of that matter, through the laws of Nature, to self-organize, replicate, move toward complexity and (inmore

I have always admired C.S. Lewis with the respect due to a loyal opponent. He certainly wasnt a mystic Christian, but he was no mindless fundamentalist. Although an apologist for a state religion I cannot condone or glorify, Lewis always wrote with a strong heart and intellect, and his arguments, though too boxy for mymore

In my interactions with the hundreds of other Pantheists Ive met online, Ive encountered an extreme medley of diverse and sometimes contradictory beliefs, with distinctions that cover the whole spectrum of thought and views that run the gamut between the extremely open-minded, New Age or Eastern-influenced mysticism, to the empirical, evidence-only materialist or reductionist Atheist.more

The words, spiritual and spirituality mean different things to different people, but in the Pantheist community, it generally means a heightened awareness of reality, a deeper consideration for the natural world and our place within it; a more pervasive, expansive and preeminent knowledge of self and the interconnectedness and interdependence of all things. And addingmore

A follow up I wrote to Pantheism, a collection of quotes I shared part 1 widely and quickly realized that what I had meant as a simple introduction to the philosophy seemed to create at least as many questions as it attempted to answer. I submit part 2 as an attempt to elaborate on somemore

Agnostic doubter

Scientific pantheism: Revering the Universe,Caring for Nature, Learning from Science, Promoting Human and Animal Rights, Celebrating Life. Reason plus passion. 100% strong naturalist. http://www.pantheism.net - http://www.facebook.com/Pantheism

Author, artist, vegan, philosopher, poet, friend. Nostalgic, sentimental, complex and passionate. I write, draw, paint and sculpt when inspired. Love travel, hiking, good movies, good food, good music, animals, nature and the outdoors. Mythology, history, science, biology, psychology and metaphysics are of particular interest... that and anything horror, sci-fi or fantasy related.

Science and experience teaches us that everything is connected... so intimately connected that in describing reality, words lose their meaning. And all I feel about all that is a sense of awe at this grand and amazing divine universe.

Admin. A lover of Science, Nature, and our amazing play. On a quest to soak up being HERE, in all its beauty and pain.

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When asked my religion I kindly say, "I have my own way of beliefs." Mainly due to the fact not many people understand what I try to say when I say there is a little truth in each religion but I do not fallow any specific one.

Want to learn more

Vedantist

Ontologically I favor the idea that existence encompasses all possibilities.

All one, all God!

I am a scientis and a professor of Environmental Science. I am an adopted son of an Assiniboine family, and a Sundancer. My philosophy shares a great deal with Pantheism. There is an element of sympatico that I would like to explore further.

To be honest I have never heard of pantheism before but would love to learn. I don't believe in a god, at least not a heavenly father that created everything and everyone, a being that people pray to and worship. I do believe everything is energy. When we die our energy returns to the earth, sky and space. I 'm looking for like minded people. If you think I'd fit in, learn and contribute to the group, I would love to be added.

We are all one. I try to remember this as I go about my life, in this seemingly mad world.

1

"It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together" - Ben Kenobi

Open

One

Pantheism

Continued here:

Views | Pantheism.com

BERLIN/LONDON In her early 20s, Kristiane Baker was having the time of her life. She was living her dream as a presenter for MTV Europe, brushing shoulders with celebrities like Mick Jagger and Bono on a regular basis and getting paid to do it. From the outside, it was everything she had ever hoped for. But on the inside, she sometimes felt a crushing sense of depression and anxiety that she couldnt shake.

And then she met Imran Khan, the famous Pakistani cricketer who through music would lead her to Islam and a new sense of inner peace.

He was my introduction to Islam, she said of Khan. I like to say I wasnt looking, I was found.

As a German growing up in Hamburg,Backer had always been passionate about the arts, so when she heard a qawwali, the devotional form of music often associated with Sufi Islam, during a trip to Pakistan to visit Khan, it was no surprise that she was intrigued and moved by its beauty. What was different this time though, was the depth she experienced with every note. Each lyric seemed connected to a higher form of love that could not be felt between humans.

Beyond the music, Backer said she was very much touched by the humanity of the people, by the hospitality, by the warmth, in Pakistan. Everyone she came across, no matter what their financial situation, was willing to donate funds to Khans charity project, a cancer hospital in Lahore.

We met people who were very poor in the mountains, in the northern areas of Pakistan, who welcomed us with generosity, she said. Men in rags with teeth missing dropped a few rupees into Imrans hands for the hospital. Women took off their jewelry and donated it for the hospital.

Backer was in awe. She was taken aback by the stark difference between the attitudes she experienced in the entertainment industry life, especially the superficiality of Western pop music, and the spirituality she witnessed in Pakistan.

It would be three years before she finally converted to Islam, but the trip had struck a chord.

Backer began researching about Islam, spending many days with Khan constantly exposed to his religion and way of life. This, she would later admit, helped her to spiritually awaken and discover a way of life that she could truly identify with.

I read a lot of books, and what I discovered was mind-blowing, she said. It was like a whole new universe. I was intrigued from the first book I read, and I wanted to know more. I realized there is one God ... and that were self-responsible for our own deeds and [that] babies are born pure, not as sinners. ...I also learned how verses from the Quran can help me in my daily life.

Backer was inspired by it all.

I was convinced, she continued. I converted because I wanted to bring God into my life, and I wanted to purify myself to taste the spiritual fruits I was reading about.

But just as Backers interest in Islam was growing, something in her life shifted again. Khan, the man she had hoped to marry, abruptly ended their relationship and married another woman.

At that point, Backer no longer had a direct reason to understand Islam. If she had recoiled against Khan and his religion, it would have been understandable. Instead, she embraced the faith without skipping a beat and converted.

Islam provided Backer with the solace and strength to remain dignified throughout Khans instant and very public marriage to another woman. What began as a journey of discovery prompted by love for a man became a discovery of eternal love for someone else: God.

It was her newly adopted faith that helped Backer reconcile life in a glitzy pop icon world where she had previously felt unsure of her place and find meaning in European culture.There were no more clouds in her life; the confusion and inner conflict had lifted.

Backer, now 51,is one of the most well-known German converts to Islam. But sadly, her conversion was not well-received by everyone at home.

When it became known that I am a Muslim, a very negative press campaign followed, Backer said. I was an award-winning TV presenter, a popular icon over there for over seven years, and suddenly I was accused of being a supporter of terrorism. The papers suggested I had lost the plot. Soon after, I was sacked from all my TV programs and practically lost my entertainment career in Germany.

This reaction had surprised Backer, because while she did enjoy an increased sense of modesty in her Muslim life, she had never associated Islam with the compulsion to wear burqas or found the stereotype of repression of women in the religion to ring true in her personal experience.

The first thing I changed was my sense of dress a little bit, she said. I ditched the miniskirts I felt more feminine Who needs those whistles on the streets?

I was working in this industry where the motto was: If youve got it flaunt it,'" she continued.And now [I was] suddenly learning about the concept of modesty. You know, how its actually more dignified for a woman to cover her assets and not show them to everybody.

But others didnt seem to understand her abrupt identity change. She found the double standard towards Muslim women confusing.

Its fine if you show your tummy and have a piercing in your tummy and wear miniskirts, but its not fine to wear long clothes and a headscarf? Thats wrong.

Her parents also held these unfair perceptions of Islam, and though they loved her in spite of her conversion, they struggled to move beyond them.

Courtesy of Kristiane Backer

They had some serious prejudices against Islam and especially Muslim men prejudices that Imrans way of ending our relationship had only confirmed, Backer recalled. I tried to explain to them that I had discovered the religion for myself and had made it my own. Imran had merely opened the door for me My father even mentioned the word pantheism in his view, Muslims wanted to take over the whole world. He eventually asked me to stop talking about Islam and from then on, the topic became taboo in the house.

The reactions frustrate her to this day. In Backers experience, German identity is not all that different from Islamic identity, so why should she have to choose between the two?

Being German, she said, doesnt mean drinking beer and being nationalistic. I wholeheartedly believe and know that Islamic values are compatible not only with German values, [but] with European values generally. Islam is a religion for all times and all worlds and therefore also for Europeans in our day and age. Im living proof.

And the Germans before her were proof as well, Backer said. In embracing Islam and Eastern culture, she was merely following in the footsteps of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Martin Heideggerand Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller German thinkers who were influenced by Eastern and Islamic texts, includingthose by Persian poets Jalaluddin Rumi and Hafez.

But Backers own convictions couldnt change the perceptions at home, and she found many German doors closed on her. She decided to relocate permanently to London, where she had converted, and continued working as a broadcaster.

In England, Backer found a much different reception to her adopted religious identity. Despite continued Islamophobia across Europe, the United Kingdom had a more established group of Muslims working across the country. This was largely due to the fact that a number of Muslims in England had often come to the country for educational and intellectual pursuits, whereas those entering Germany historically came as guest workers, she said.

But life as a Muslim here isnt entirely easy, especially as a convert. There is a sense of community among Muslims in general, Backer said, which makes the climate for converts in particular quite lonely.

We are a minority within the minority. Where do we pray? Which mosque do we go to, the Pakistani, the Persian or the Turkish mosque?

Instead of feeling included in one of those ethnic groups, converts sometimes find themselves pushed aside for not being Muslim enough, or regarded as trophies that other Muslims flaunt around at parties and events, with little regard for the person themselves, she said.

For Backer, the lack of acceptance from her family, as well as the sense of rejection from within the Muslim community, is one of the reasons she is determined to maintain her role as a prominent Muslim TV presenter in England a career path that she thinks will help change perceptions of Islam in the West.

Do your job whatever you do really well so people admire you, is the advice she gives Muslims struggling to assimilate in Western society today. Remember [that] whatever you do, you are not only a servant of God, but also an ambassador of Islam, she said.

But Backer knows that Muslims doing good in their own communities can only go so far, so as a member of the media, she constantly advocates for stronger and more accurate representations of Muslims in pop culture.

Courtesy of Kristiane Backer

Nowadays, she said in light of the disproportional and often Islamophobic coverage of terrorist acts, Muslims need to compensate for the news coverage in other sections of the media, to make documentaries on Muslim culture and have Muslims characters featured on soap operas.

This need for a more accurate representation of Islam and Muslims is why she published a book about her journey to the faith. WithFrom MTV to Mecca: How Islam Inspired My Life, Backeraspires to show Europeans that outside of the terror and suppression they see on the news, the majority of Muslims are in fact normal, wholesome and productive members of their society.

And she has already seen results. In her newfound role as a spokesperson for Islam in Europe, shes noticed some attitudes in Germany toward her greatly improving.

Yet the future of Islam rests on the youth in the community, not her, Backer said. Young Muslims, she stressed, must teach the world that Islam is a modern religion and show people that its not something backward or incompatible with the West.

Islam here in Europe is a little fossilized, and it is up to the young people to take this forward and to really look into the sources of Islam, study the religion thoroughly through contemporary and classical scholars. And then educate not only the mainstream society, but even their own parents, because I tell you, Im always so shocked when I hear young Muslims here are losing their faith.

Ultimately, Backer said, its about making others understand the faith and closing the empathy gap, like Imran Khan did with her all those years ago in Pakistan.

Its befriending other people; its reaching out, she said. That is how I became a Muslim. Because I was touched by the generosity and friendship and the wonderful manners of the Muslims who I met.

Her parting advice to Western Muslims, convert and otherwise?:Never retreat just in your own Muslim bubble Mix with mainstream society.

If professional Muslims in the Westsuddenly roll up their prayer mat in their offices and step away to pray or fast on Ramadan, colleagues will be exposed to Islam, she said. And [this is how they] will understand it better.

After all, Backer said: The beautiful values of Islam and the teaching[s] of our noble Prophet [Muhammad] are [some] of the best-kept secrets in the West. ... [Its] time we lift that veil.

Courtesy of Kristiane Backer

This Ramadan has been an especially trying month for Muslims. Long summer days without food or water have been made all the more challenging given such tragedies as the attack on a mosque in London, the heartbreaking story of young Nabra in Virginia, who was on her way to the mosque to start her fast when she was bashed to death with a baseball bat, and the numerous attacks on innocent civilians in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and other countries in the Muslim world. The only antidote to the despair brought on by such suffering and violence is the message of Ramadan a message of compassion, of unity and of spiritual connection to our fellow human beings and to God.

I hope that the stories in this series of Western Muslim converts reveal how every individual is constantly seeking spiritual fulfillment. In our case, these individuals have found their spiritual home and solace. I pray that the readers of this series, in their own way, through their own traditions, also find the spiritual solace they are seeking.

Although the month of fasting has come to an end, we need more than ever to keep the message of Ramadan alive. Muslims across the world are marking the end of this holy month this weekend with the festival of Eid al-Fitr and a message of Eid Mubarak. So to all of you, Muslim and non-Muslim, I wish to extend these greetings of compassion and unity to you as we end our series. Eid Mubarak!

Excerpt from:

This Former MTV Icon Found Inner Peace Through Islam - HuffPost

In order to understand the origin and doctrine of the so-called Gnostic gospels, written between the 2nd and 4th centuries and found in Nag Hammadi (Egypt), we first need to be introduced briefly to the movement that was behind them, and thus understand why Christians rejected these texts and how they have no connection with the historical Jesus.

Gnosticism (gnosis = knowledge [in Greek]) is a pre-Christian spiritual movement born of a syncretistic combination of elements of Iranian religion with other Mesopotamian traditions, ideas from Greek philosophical schools such as Platonism and Pythagoreanism, and the Jewish apocalyptic tradition. It bursts onto the public stage in the mid-2nd century as a powerful trend, coming to be represented by many teachers and various schools, and enjoying ample growth (Palestine, Syria, Arabia, Egypt, Italy and Gaul) (Garca Bazn).

It is characterized by seeking salvation through knowledge reserved for a chosen few, and by a distinct cosmological and anthropological dualism. The knowledge they were seeking was not intellectual, but spiritual and intuitivenamely, the discovery of divine nature itself: eternal, hidden, and imprisoned in the body and the psyche. This knowledge was reserved for an elite group of spiritual men.

When it came into contact with Christianity, Gnosticism gave rise to a long list of sects that mixed Gnostic and Christian elements, confusing the early Christian communities. Ancient Gnosticism, while not homogeneous in all its teachings, generally had significant contempt for the material world and for the body.

Gnostics believed that the material world in which we live is a cosmic catastrophe, and that, in some way or another, sparks of divinity have fallen into and been trapped in matter, from whence they need to escape and return to their source. They escape from matter when they gain full consciousness of their situation and their divine origin. This knowledge is called gnosis.

Therefore, the only way to achieve salvation is not by Gods action, but by acquiring personal awareness of having that divine spark in oneself. Many of these doctrines take the form of self-salvation, self-divinization, or reincarnation, with a touch of pantheism, and they see Jesus and Christ as two separate realities. These ideas appear again in New Age movements such as Conny Mendezs Christian Metaphysics, the Ishayas, and modern Gnostic and esoteric sects.

It is important to emphasize that Gnostic beliefs are strongly anti-Christian and deny the central beliefs of Christianity: the Incarnation of the Word, and the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Their vision of the world is, furthermore, pessimistic.

Thanks to the testimony of many Christian writings against Gnostics, we know a great deal about their beliefs. The dogmas proclaimed by early Christianity were established in order to save the original faith from contamination by the Gnostic ideas that began to proliferate in the Hellenistic world and within the Roman Empire from the 2nd to the 5th centuries.

It is not true that Gnosticism was a marginal form of Christianity, as various writers of the esoteric world often affirm; rather, the two were separate and mutually deprecating. Not only did Christians reject the Gnostics for distorting the message and life of Jesus with oriental doctrines and strange philosophies; the Gnostics also rejected and attacked orthodox Christians, because the Gnostics viewed them as spiritually inferior beings.

The attacks were mutual, but Gnosticism, due to its syncretistic nature that mixed together elements of any religion, assimilated aspects of Christianity into its teachings, and gave the impression of being a tolerant religion. This is easy to see by reading the mutual doctrinal attacks from that period.

Historian Paul Johnson writes the following in this regard: Gnostic groups adopted fragments of Christianity, but they tended to separate these elements from their historical origins. They were Hellenizing them, in the same way that they Hellenized other oriental cults (often amalgamating the results). Paul fought with all his strength against Gnosticism, since he realized that it could devour Christianity and destroy it. In Corinth, he met educated Christians who had reduced Jesus to a myth. Among the Colossians, he discovered Christians who adored intermediate spirits and angels. It was difficult to combat Gnosticism because, like the hydra, it had many heads, and was always changing. Of course, all the sects had their own codes, and they generally hated each other. Some conflated Platos cosmogony with the story of Adam and Eve, and they interpreted it in different ways; thus, the Ophites venerated serpents and cursed Jesus in their liturgy

Some authors have written that Christian dogmas changed the doctrine of early Christianity, but that is not true. Christian dogmas do not introduce any doctrinal novelty; rather, they formulate the faith clearly and explicitly in a precise theological language, so as to free it from ambiguous expressions and arbitrary interpretations that could distance it from the faith of the apostles.

Dogmas came to the aid of the faithful so that they could avoid being confused by new doctrines that were foreign to the Gospel. In a way, those Gnostic currents of thought are promulgated anew today in teachings such as those spread by the New Age movement, the Urantia Book, Sixto Paz with his books like cosmic soap operas, J.J. Bentez with his The Trojan Horse series, the followers of The DaVinci Code, and other supposed new revelations by extraterrestrials regarding Jesus. They present their fantasies as the hidden, secret, apocryphal version of history.

In times of cultural crisis, new forms of Gnosticism awaken from the depths of history with their illusions, their multicolored games, and their contortions, and they lavish their ideas on a vast public hungry for spiritual secrets and exotic mysticism. Its important to clarify that todays Gnostic movements and Gnostic churches have no historical continuity with ancient Gnosticism; rather, they are modern-day re-packagings or reinventions using elements similar to ancient forms of Gnosticism, but with ever-changing new traits in accordance with each new socio-cultural and religious context.

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Who were the authors of the so-called Gnostic gospels, and what did they believe? - Aleteia EN

We Two Together pulls at me, drawing me in deeper and deeper, a visual manifestation of recent thoughts and feelings.

We Two Together is a sculpture by Michael Alfano, currently on exhibit overlooking a lush garden pond outside the Mill Brook Gallery and Sculpture Garden in Concord. The sculpture depicts two lovers, joined as one, surrounded, in turn, by the greater whole of natures embrace.

We Two Together resonates with me in the same frequency as an ecstasy poem I recently read by the Sufi poet, Rumi:

Your Love lifts my Soul from the body to the Sky

And you lift me up out of the two worlds.

I want your Sun to reach my raindrops,

So your heat can raise my Soul upward like a cloud.

It also brought to mind a provoking piece by Paul Kingsnorth in the current issue of Orion Magazine, suggesting we deal with climate change by awakening our sense of the sacred and practicing a new animism. His thoughts correspond with my own thinking.

I was converted to the notion that our Earth is a living, breathing organism since the 1960s, after first viewing that iconic photograph from space of our heavenly blue spaceship Earth, and later read James Lovelocks Gaia Hypothesis, which outlines how all of us as living beings interact with our inorganic surroundings to create a self-regulating system a giant living organism maintaining and perpetuating ideal conditions for life.

That notion still fills me with awe; it blows my socks off.

To my way of thinking, indigenous folks around the world have been right all along: The Earth is a living being; she is our Mother.

I am struck by that same soaring sense of awe when I view We Two Together. Not surprisingly, I have diametrically opposed feelings toward both our government officials and mainstream consumer society, which laugh at the idea of a living earth and sadly, as a secondary result, pooh-pooh the threat of climate change.

Who can deny, in our technological society, we take the Earth for granted, treating her like an inert object either a storehouse of commodities to be used and discarded or as a scenic background prop to our lives, as if we were staging a movie.

Increasingly, however, in this age of man-made climate change, we pollute at our own peril. While more of us perceive the danger, most offer as solutions only new government regulations or technical fixes. But, like the domestic abusers we are, I fear we will continue to defile the Earth until we recognize her sacred nature.

We have no choice but to change. The question is, will it be in time? Our survival along with that of most life forms on the planet depends on us stepping up in time to reclaim our primal forbearers reverence for our home.

Kingsnorth, in his essay, is not sure if we need a new religion, but he makes a powerful case for a renewal of the sacred to re-awaken in us a sense of awe and wonder for something bigger than us.

What could that something greater be? There is no need to theorize about it. What is greater than us is the Earth itself life and we are folded into it, a small part of it, and we have work to do. We need a new animism, a new pantheism, a new way of telling the oldest of stories. We could do worse than to return to the notion of the planet as the mother that birthed us. Those old stories have plenty to say about the fate of people who dont respect their mothers.

In the spirit of Rumi, poetic teller of the oldest of stories, we must reclaim our Earth for who she really is: a living, breathing body, our beloved other. She is our Mother, supporting and cradling us, the source of all life.

(Jean Stimmell is a semi-retired psychotherapist living with the two women in his life, Russet the artist and Coco the Plott hound, in Northwood. He blogs at jeanstimmell.blogspot.com.)

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My Turn: Respecting Mother - Concord Monitor

It is probably the most famous horror story in the world with a new exhibition to explore how Bram Stokers trips to the far north east of Scotland helped to inspire his Dracula masterpiece.

Here, Mike Shepherd, who helped research the show, looks at how this corner of Scotland proved to be the perfect fodder for Stokers Gothic creation.

At the end of July, London society either took off to the grouse moors of Scotland or to spa retreats on the continent. Bram Stoker, the business manager of the Lyceum theatre and better known today as the author of Dracula, did neither. Instead, he took a 13 hour train journey to Cruden Bay in Aberdeenshire where he spent most of August writing books.

A new exhibition to be held in the village on Saturday explains how the Irish author came across Cruden Bay on a walking tour in 1893 and in his own words, fell in love with the place. He returned year after year until 1910, two years before his death.

READ MORE: Six seafaring myths and superstitions of Scotland

Much of Dracula was written in Cruden Bay. The plot and main characters had been in planning for three years before 1893 and the authors first visit. Yet, Bram Stoker would not start writing the novel until 1895 when the first three chapters were written in the village.

What took him so long? Its a good question as most of his other books were written in a fury of inspiration. The project had stalled for some reason and it looks as if something about Cruden Bay got him going again.

I suspect one explanation is that he discovered something rather curious when he talked to the locals in the village. Although they were devoutly Christian, many of their superstitions and traditions had survived from pagan times, albeit detached from any original spiritual beliefs.

READ MORE: Who are Scotlands most successful living authors?

A local minister, Reverend John Pratt wrote just over thirty years before the publication of Dracula in 1897 that pagan fire festivals were still being lit in Aberdeenshire and that they, present a singular and animated spectacle - from sixty to eighty being frequently seen from one point.

The unlikely coexistence of Christian and pagan beliefs was compared at the time to flowers and weeds springing up together in an unkempt garden

Bram Stoker believed that God and the universe were equivalent, a pantheism he shared with his spiritual guide, the American poet Walt Whitman. He would have been impressed by the survival of both Christian and pagan beliefs side by side in the Aberdeenshire community, because he accepted all religions from all times and throughout the world as valid and part of the greater whole. This led him to a curious thought. What if an ancient god, devil or spirit turned up in the modern age and employed the old magic to wield mayhem in the modern era? This was possible in the spiritual universe that framed Bram Stokers gothic novels; and would bring forth a 15th Century vampire from Transylvania in Dracula and the spirit of an ancient Egyptian mummy in The Jewel of Seven Stars. The latter novel has been the inspiration for all the Hollywood mummy films.

Aspects of Cruden Bay crept into Dracula. For instance, Bram Stoker was greatly impressed by the dramatic cliff top setting of nearby Slains Castle. He would use it as a setting for at least five novels, three of them in disguised form but still recognisable from the description. The floor plan of Slains Castle is used for Draculas castle in the novel.

Jonathan Harker visits the Transylvanian castle and is led by the count into a small octagonal room lit by a single lamp, and seemingly without a window of any sort. A small octagonal room is a prominent feature in the centre of Slains Castle and the main corridors of the castle lead from it. It still survives after the castle fell into ruin in 1925.

While writing Dracula, Bram Stoker would walk up and down the coastline thinking out the story in detail. Perhaps this was when he noticed something unusual. Cruden Bay resembled a mouth he would write. The beach was the soft palate while the rocky headlands at both ends resemble teeth, some even looking like fangs.

Two of his novels, The Watters Mou and The Mystery of the Sea, were set in the village with much of the dialogue in the local Buchan (Doric) dialect. This is surprising as its largely impenetrable to anyone from outside the area. Whats even more surprising is that Bram Stoker also accidentally included a Doric phrase while writing the dialogue for a Whitby fisherman in Dracula, I wouldnt fash masel the fisherman says, - I wouldnt trouble myself. This is possibly the only instance of an internationally famous novel containing dialogue in Doric!

Ive spent the last six months researching Bram Stokers life and times in Aberdeenshire for both the exhibition and a forthcoming book on the topic. Although Bram Stoker last visited Cruden Bay in 1910, amazingly some residual memories of the author still survive in the village. One woman told me that her parents looked after Bram Stokers dog on one holiday because the local hotel would not allow pets in the rooms. When the author returned to London, he sent them an enormous box of chocolates with blue lace lilies on the front.

Another woman I talked to is the great-grand niece of Bram Stokers landlady when he stayed in the village of Whinnyfold near Cruden Bay in the later years. She remembers her Aunty Isy from the 1940s.

Although Cruden Bay in Bram Stokers time, then called Port Erroll, was a small village with a population of 500, life never got dull all the time he was here.

The author of Dracula found much in Cruden Bay to excite his interest.

Bram Stokers Cruden Bay Port Erroll Village Hall, Cruden Bay, Aberdeenshire. Saturday 17th June, 10-4, free entry.

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How Scotland inspired Bram Stoker's Dracula - The Scotsman

I held my son Enochs little hand as he died, and went through a suffering that no words could express. A perpetually wounded heart that would not mend, a broken body for which there is no antidote, or a destroyed home that can never be the sameall left me asking many questions: Will I ever see my son again? Is there a theodicy that would qualify? Or is evil a sociological phenomenon? What are the philosophical suppositions that we have subliminally swallowed to even raise this question? How would the bloody cross of Jesus of Nazareth address this universal dilemma?

There are more books and articles on this topic than any other in theology. But because it is so personal, we need to be reminded of the simple truths about it. Let me share seven things that I have considered when thinking about this topic.

One of my friends told me that if this happened to his son, he would become an atheist. But how can that be? Evil is a deviation from the way things ought to be, right? But there can't be a deviation from the way things ought to be unless there is a way things ought to be. There can't be a way things ought to be unless there is a design plan that says, 'Here is how things ought to be.' And there can't be a design plan that says, 'Here is how things ought to be' unless there is a Designer who put forth that design plan in the first place.

So even in raising the objection of evil, my friend is presupposing some absolute standard and thus a designer who makes that standard. So he cannot even raise the problem of evil without first assuming an absolute standard that makes events evil. My friend is smuggling in God to deny God. It would be best if he clings to Him, for only in Him is comfort and ultimately something more than an answer.

I fought with God and, what a surprise, I lost. But in losing I really won.

Epicurus, Hume, and Dawkins claim that evil is not our fault but Gods. The Logical Problem of Evil is:

Augustine, Aquinas, Swinburne, and Planting argued that the Freewill Defense solves the logical problem of evil correctly. It is logically impossible to create free people who must choose good as much as it is impossible to create square circles or married bachelors. Evil is a necessary byproduct of the ability to love and choose.

God desires our love more than anything else from us, so He thus allows evil. See Joshua 24:14-15. God knew this the whole time. This was not Plan B. It was his plan all along. But choice itself did not help me with the death of Enoch. Because it was not a choice of man that he died. He died because he was sick. I rest on the sovereign plan of God and trust even when I cannot see His plan.

When Joes daughter Lulu complains that he brought darkness into her room, he did no such thing; he just took away the light. Evil is a lack of goodness as darkness is a lack of light. There can be an absolute good, but there cannot be an absolute evil.

Absolute Evil. Objective evil cannot exist if atheism is true. Pantheism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, in general, claim evil is an illusion. However, rape, murder, war, child abuse, greed, human brutality, kidnapping, and slavery are objectively evilnot illusions. Consider, cosmologically, that the farther we move from the sun, the colder and darker it gets, thus theologically, the farther we move from God, the source of all goodness and truth, the colder and darker it gets spiritually as well.

So Lulu waits for the light and when the sun arrives in the morning, all darkness will flee, for in Him, the Son, is no darkness at all.

When Enoch died, it was very dark and cold. But in coming close to the source, the Son himself, I found the warmth of His peace, even though I did not know why, I trusted his hands, his pierced hands.

See 1 John 3:4 and James 4:7. Sin is the act of volitionally violating God's will by breaking His holy transcendent commandments. Crossing that divine boundary is sin. There are sins too numerous to mention, but two basic kinds: sin of omission (not doing what you should be doing) and sin of commission (doing what you ought not to be doing). But an evil event, like an earthquake, cancer, or a doctor accidently cutting a brainstem is evil, but not necessarily sinful. R.C. Sproul said it well: Evil is not good, but it is good that there is evil.

And God uses all kinds of evils to bring about good. What good can come from the death of my son? Two of them. Daniel and Ana. They are two precious children we adopted from the Republic of Moldovia, one of the poorest countries in Europe. Out of the ashes of Enochs pain came the joy of their laughter.

The Apostle Paul, Lincoln, Caesar, Gandhi, Churchill, and Luther suffered and overcame almost impossible odds. It is in the crucible of suffering that our character is formed. It is His instrument to mold His saints. No athlete hones or disciplines his or her body without pain. Consider this:

I walked a mile with Pleasure She chatted all the way, But left me none the wiser For all she had to say.

I walked a mile with Sorrow And neer a word said she; But oh, the things I learned from her When Sorrow walked with me

Robert Browning Hamilton

I learned more about my own soul and about God in this period of time than any other time in my life.

If the man who died on that cross 2,000 years ago was not God, then the cross is not enough.

Professor Peter Kreeft said it well:

If that is not God there on the cross but only a good man, then God is not on the hook, on the cross, in our suffering. And if God is not on the hook, then God is not off the hook. How could he sit there in heaven and ignore our tears? There is, as we saw, one good reason for not believing in God: evil. And God himself has answered this objection not in words but in deeds and in tears. Jesus is the tears of God. (Making Sense out of Suffering, IVP, 1986)

People tell me they understand my pain, but even Jesus cannot unless He also experienced the pain of every human being, and only the divine can do that. He vicariously suffered in our place the wrath and justice of God. And rose from the dead to tell us one thing: I love you this much, and since I have overcome death, one day you will too!

Yes, the Church has its shares of sins and evils; these are not to be ignored or minimized and we need to own up to these. But the Church has done more to address evil and suffering in the world than any other organization in history.

So, then, is there at least one or two people in your life who need you to be Gods hands and feet and voice to them today?

I close with the beautiful words of the atheist, Ivan, from The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky:

I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood that they've shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.

And in all that, I trust the One with divine pierced hands that one day I will walk on marble streets with Enoch and my other children, walking with our God, who in His one hand will wipe all tears from our eyes, and there will be no more death, suffering, crying, or pain. These things of the past are gone forever.

Then the one sitting on the throne said: I am making everything new. Write down what I have said. My words are true and can be trusted. Everything is finished! I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will freely give water from the life-giving fountain to everyone who is thirsty. (Revelation 21:5-6)

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Seven Things Evil Is Not: What the Death of My Son Taught Me - ChristianityToday.com

The Beatles' landmark 1967 album,Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, was released 50 years ago. A few weeks later, longtime Newsweek critic Jack Kroll wrote this historic review that has never been available online before now. Here's the original piece.

The problem of choosing Britain's new Poet Laureate is easy. The obvious choice is the Beatles. They would be the first laureates to be really popular since Tennysontheir extraordinary new LP, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, has been out for two weeks and has already sold 1.5 million copies in the U.S. alone. And the Beatles' recent LPs, Rubber Soul, Revolver, and now Sgt. Pepper, are really volumes of aural poetry in the McLuhan age.

Indeed, Sgt. Pepper is such an organic work (it took four months to make) that it is like a pop Faade,the suite of poems by Edith Sitwell musicalized by William Walton. Like Faade,Sgt. Pepper is a rollicking, probing language-and-sound vaudeville, which grafts skin from all three browshigh, middle and lowinto a pulsating collage about mid-century manners and madness.

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The vaudeville starts immediately on the first track, in which the Beatles, adding several horn players, create the "persona" of the albumSgt. Pepper's band, oompahing madly away with elephant-footed rhythms, evoking the good old days when music spoke straight to the people with tongues of brass, while dubbed-in crowds cheer and applaud as the Beatles make raucous fun of their own colossal popularity.

After this euphoric, ironic, nostalgic fanfare, the Beatles leave Sgt. Pepper polishing his cornet in the wings and go on with the show, creating little lyrics, dramas and satires on homely virtues, homely disasters, homely people, and all the ambiguities of home. "She's leaving home," sing John and Paul, as a harp flutters, a string group makes genteel aspidistra sounds and a lugubrious cello wraps the soggy English weather around the listener's ears. The song is a flabby family fiasco in miniature, spiking the horrors of the British hearth like a stripped-down Osborne play. "Me used to be angry young man," sings Paul in "Getting Better," and adds "it's getting better all the time," as the group sarcastically repeats "get-ting bet-ter, get-ting bet-ter" in those Liverpudlian accents.

The Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" was officially released on June 1, 1967, in Britain and a day later in America. Capitol/Parlophone

Getting better? Well, there's John's vision of a vinyl Arcadia, with its Sitwellian images:"Cellophane flowers of yellow and green...plasticine porters with looking-glass ties," which turns Wordsworth's idealized Lucy into a mod goddess, "Lucy in the sky with diamonds." And there's Paul announcing "I'm painting my room in the colorful way/And when my mind is wandering/There I will go/And it doesn't really matter if I'm wrong I'm right/Where I belong I'm right." But even this manifesto of psychedelic individualism is undercut as George's sitar boings one note relentlessly, like a giant mocking frog.

"Within You Without You" is George Harrison's beautiful new cuddle-up with Mother India. Backed by three cellos, eight violins, three tambouras, a dilruba, a tabla and a table-harp, George plays the sitar as he chants Vedantic verities such as "The time will come when you see we're all one, and life flows on within you and without you." These Himalayan homilies are given powerful effect by the wailing, undulating cascade of sound which turns the curved, infinite universe of Indian music into a perfect tonal setting for the new pantheism of the young. But even here, the Beatles, like Chaplin, deflate their own seriousness as the song endsto be followed by the sound of a crowd laughing.

Related: Was 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' really the first concept album? Let's investigate

Some critics have already berated the Beatles for the supersophisticated electronic technology on this record. But it is useless to lament the simple old days of the Mersey sound. The Beatles have lost their innocence, certainly, but loss of innocence is, increasingly, their theme and the theme of more "serious" new art, from the stories of Donald Barthelme to the plays of Harold Pinter. As the Beatles' more pugnacious colleagues, the Rolling Stones, put it: "Who wants yesterday's papers/Who wants yesterday's girl/Yesterday's papers are such bad news/The same thing applies to me and you."

The new Beatles are justified by the marvelous last number alone, "A Day in the Life," which was foolishly banned by the BBC because of its refrain "I'd love to turn you on." But this line means many things, coming as it does after a series of beautifully sorrowful stanzas in which John confronts the world's incessant bad news, sighing "Oh boy" with a perfect blend of innocence and spiritual exhaustion. Evoking the catatonic metropolitan crown (like Eliot's living dead flowing across London Bridge), John's wish to "turn you on" is a desire to start the bogged-down juices of life itself. This point is underscored by an overwhelming musical effect, using a 41-piece orchestraagrowling, bone-grinding crescendo that drones up like a giant crippled turbine struggling to spin new power into a foundered civilization. This number is the Beatles' "Waste Land," a superb achievement of their brilliant and startlingly effective popular art.

This review originally appeared in the June 26, 1967, issue of Newsweek, under the headline "It's Getting Better..."

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'Sgt. Pepper's' Turns 50: The Newsweek Review of The Beatles' Masterpiece - Newsweek

Courtroom exterior [iStockPhoto]

On March 22, 2017, two former Kellogg employees made their appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit after a lower court found insufficient evidence that the two Adventist plaintiffs were treated unfairly when they were fired for failing to work on Sabbath. A decision from the court of appeals, located in Denver, Colorado, is expected in approximately three months.

The United States District Court for the District of Utah granted Kelloggs motion for summary judgment on the claims for disparate treatment, reasonable accommodation, and retaliation on July 7, 2016. At that time, the court also accordingly denied Richard Tabura and Guadalupe Diazs motion for summary judgment.

Tabura and Diaz were both fired in 2012 from their manufacturing jobs at a Kellogg USA, Inc. plant in Utah for missing work on Saturdays as they honored their religious belief to observe Sabbath. In 2011, Kellogg increased production and implemented a new work scheduling program known as continuous crewing. This program created four separate, rotating shifts, in which employees were to work approximately two Saturdays a month26 Saturdays a year. While both plaintiffs made attempts to use paid days off and work swaps with other employees they eventually were assessed too many absence points within a 12-month period and, after what Kellogg describes as progressive-discipline measures were exhausted, were terminated.

The plaintiffs lost at the trial court level, said Todd McFarland, associate general counsel for the General Conference (GC or world headquarters) of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The court said that Kellogg offering the use of their vacation time and swaps was enough. They didn't have to actually eliminate the conflict; they just had to give them the opportunity to do it, and that the fact that there wasn't enough vacation time or enough people to swap with wasn't Kellogg's problem.

The Office of General Counsel was part of the Tenth Circuit appeal. The appeal argues that the district court erred in holding that an accommodation can be legally sufficient even if it does not eliminate the conflict between a work requirement and a religious practice. It also contends that treating the forfeiture of vacation and sick time as a legitimate accommodation is not appropriate.

It's a cold comfort to an Adventist to say, You only have to break half the Sabbaths. If you don't have to eliminate the conflict, then that does no good, said McFarland. So this [case] is important to people of faith about what's required from employment to accommodate Sabbath.

For some, the irony is unavoidable. Kellogg, a food manufacturing company, was founded as the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company in 1906 by Will Keith Kellogg and John Harvey Kellogg. John Harvey, at the time, was a Seventh-day Adventist and director of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, owned and operated by the Adventist Church. The sanitariums operation was based on the churchs health principles, which include a healthful diet, regimen of exercise, proper rest, and abstinence from alcohol and tobacco.

According to the Kellogg website, the brothers changed breakfast forever when they accidentally flaked wheat berry. Will Keith kept experimenting until he was able to flake corn, creating the recipe for Kelloggs Corn Flakes. John Harvey eventually turned away from church beliefs, espousing what many believe was a form of pantheism.

The case was argued at the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals by Gene Schaerr of Schaerr Duncan. The case was handled at the district (trial) court by Alan Reinach of the Pacific Union Conferences Church-State Council along with Erik Strindberg and Matt Harrison of Strindberg & Scholonick.

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Adventists appeal court ruling on Kellogg Sabbath accommodation case - Adventist News Network

Pantheism is the belief that God and the universe are one and the same. There is no dividing line between the two. Pantheism is a type of religious belief rather than a specific religion, similar to terms like monotheism (belief in a single God, as embraced by religions such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, the Baha'i Faith, and Zoroastrianism) and polytheism (belief in multiple gods, as embraced by Hinduism and a wide variety of pagan cultures such as the ancient Greeks and Romans).

Pantheists view God as immanent and impersonal. The belief system grew out of the Scientific Revolution, and pantheists generally are strong supporters of scientific inquiry, as well as religious toleration.

In being immanent, God is present in all things. God didn't make the earth or define gravity, but, rather, God is the earth and gravity and everything else in the universe.

Because God is uncreated and infinite, the universe is likewise uncreated and infinite. God did not choose one day to make the universe. Rather, it exists precisely because God exists, since the two are the same thing.

This does not need to contradict scientific theories such as the Big Bang. The changing of the universe is all part of the nature of God as well. It simply states there was something before the Big Bang, an idea that is certainly debated in scientific circles.

The pantheistic God is impersonal.

God is not a being one converses with, nor is God conscious in the common sense of the term.

Pantheists are generally strong supporters of scientific inquiry. Since God and the universe are one, understanding the universe is how one comes to better understand God.

Because all things are God, all things are connected and ultimately are of one substance.

While various facets of God have defining characteristics (everything from different species to individual people), they are part of a greater whole. As a comparison, one might consider the parts of the human body. Hands are different from feet which are different from lungs, but all are part of the greater whole that is the human form.

Because all things are ultimately God, all approaches to God can conceivably lead to anunderstanding of God. Each person should be allowed to pursue such knowledge as they wish. This does not mean, however, that pantheists believe every approach is correct. They generally do not believe in an afterlife, for example, nor do they find merit in strict dogma and ritual.

Pantheism should not be confused with panentheism. Panentheism views God as both immanent and transcendent. This means that while the entire universe is a part of God, God also exists beyond the universe. As such, this God can be a personal God, a conscious being that manifested the universe with whom one can have a personal relationship.

Pantheism is also not deism. Deist beliefs are sometimes described as not having a personal God, but in that case, it is not meant to say the God has no consciousness.

The deist God actively created the universe. God is impersonal in the sense that God retreated from the universe after its creation, uninterested in listening to or interacting with believers.

Pantheism is not animism. Animism is the belief - animals, trees, rivers, mountains, etc. - that all things have a spirit. However, these spirits are unique rather than being part of a greater spiritual whole. These spirits are frequently approached with reverence and offerings to ensure continued goodwill between humanity and the spirits.

Baruch Spinoza introduced pantheistic beliefs to a wide audience in the 17th century. However, other, less known thinkers had already expressed pantheistic views such as Giordano Bruno, who was burnt at the stake in 1600 for his highly unorthodox beliefs.

Albert Einstein stated, "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings." He also stated that "science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind," underscoring that pantheism is neither anti-religious nor atheistic.

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Demystifying the Beliefs of Pantheism - thoughtco.com