Monthly Archives: September 2021

Moshe Phillips

By Moshe Phillips

The news media had a field day recently with the man-bites-dog story of the self-proclaimed atheist who was recently named chief chaplain at Harvard University.

After nearly 400 years of having chief chaplains who believe in God, Harvard has gone in a surprising new direction. Not only that, but the new head chaplain, Greg Epstein, is Jewish and a graduate of the rabbinical ordination program at something called the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism.

Undoubtedly, some parents of Jewish students at Harvard will be troubled at the prospect of their sons or daughters coming under the influence of a passionate advocate of atheism. Active rejection of the most basic concept in Judaism belief in God is pretty fringe stuff in the eyes of most American Jews.

The problem is not that Greg Epstein is an atheist; thats his business. The problem is that he presents himself as a rabbi, even though his core belief system is rejected by every Jewish religious denomination of note Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist.

The power of the rabbi title is that it confers Jewish legitimacy and respectability on whatever the rabbi, even a self-proclaimed one, says. Jewish students at Harvard who dont know better will hear that the rabbi said something, and assume that what he said represents Judaism, not just a tiny fringe element on the Jewish spectrum.

Whether Greg Epstein will influence Jewish students religious beliefs remains to be seen. It could be argued that these students are more likely to be influenced by their professors, whom they often perceive as experts and authority figures.

But where Epsteins influence may well be felt even more strongly, I fear, is on Jewish students perceptions of Israel, the Holocaust and antisemitism.

Because he is Jewish, and because of the power of his new position, Epstein will have significant new platforms from which to share his views on Jewish issues at campus events, in the news media and well beyond. And Epsteins views on Jewish issues are disturbingly extreme.

A Tweet from Epstein on April 28 employed the ugly term Jewish supremacists to demean Jewish nationalists who were marching in Jerusalem. That slur was coined by neo-Nazis and then more recently adopted by the radical left.

One indication of Epsteins shallow understanding of the Holocaust was his 2019 tweet calling American detention facilities for illegal migrants concentration camps.

If you think I am exaggerating and that Epstein could not possibly have meant literally that those facilities are similar to concentration camps, note that he wrote they can LITERALLY [caps his], in a historically accurate way, be called concentration camps.

No, they cannot, which is why the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and other scholarly Holocaust institutions strongly denounced those comparisons.

As for Israel when Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, Epstein was part of a group of left-wing rabbis who rushed to urge President George W. Bush to refrain from rejecting the terrorist victors: We urge you to maintain a cautious approach toward Hamas, in order to advance the goal of a Palestinian state, they wrote.

I guess since Epstein is a member of the J Street Rabbinic and Cantorial Cabinet, thats pretty much what we should expect. J Street, the controversial Jewish pressure group that was created to lobby for a Palestinian state, consistently supports Palestinian demands against Israel. The leaders of J Street always seem to blame Israel for what goes wrong, no matter how extreme or violent the Palestinians act.

Is this the kind of person whom Jewish parents want influencing their college-age children? It doesnt seem like a very attractive return on their $51,925 in annual tuition payments. l

Moshe Phillips is a commentator on Jewish affairs whose writings appear regularly in the American and Israeli press.

Continued here:

The Real Danger of That Atheist Harvard Chaplain - Jewish Exponent

Last month, Harvard Universitys chaplains voted unanimously to elect Greg Epstein, a self-described atheist, as their new president. Their choice tells us less about Epstein than it does about the electors.

Epstein has been the chaplain for Harvards humanists since 2005. Epstein is reframing atheism from the angry, belligerent language of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens into what his colleague Steven Pinker describes as, a wise and warm explanation of the humanist worldview.

He tries to focus not so much on the intellectual rejection of a Supreme Being as on the positive aspects of humanism. Epsteins efforts have earned him the praise of many. Not only has he inspired students to build community, but he has grown the nations first ever university center for the non-religious from an annual budget of $28,000 to gifts exceeding $1.7 million in just 16 years.

Humanism is, according to Epstein, The goal of maximizing human flourishing life, health, happiness, freedom, knowledge, love, richness of experience. The key, however, is a rejection of the supernatural: We dont look to a god for answers, Epstein says, We are each others answers.

While he strives to unite all humanity in his quest for a good life, Epstein clearly believes that this can only happen when those who are religious join him in, if not rejecting their gods, putting them so far from the conversation that no spiritual messiness will interrupt the good work of the humanists. God is not the answer. We are the answer.

Christian humanism, in contrast, insists that individual conscience, human freedom, and rational inquiry are compatible with and even fundamental to the practice of the Christian faith. In fact, humanism would not exist apart from the revelation that Jesus Christ is the savior not of humanity, but of each and every human person. Christianity opened up the possibility for human flourishing precisely because it opened up an eternal horizon by which every human action is judged. Every individual, by his own free will and to the best of his intellectual capacity, can and must choose to accept or reject Christ. Yes or no.

Epstein has to date chosen, by his own self-description, to say no. There is no problem with a man exercising his own freedom to reject the Prime Mover or First Cause.

The issue with an atheist chaplain is not the man, but that it empties the very idea of a chaplain of its meaning. A chaplain, in common speech, is one who provides spiritual care to his or her co-religionists in their chapel. He or she provides leadership and help for a community seeking the face of God. As Bishop Robert Barron stated in his response video, If you dont believe in God, youre not a chaplain.

For a pluralistic community, such as Harvards chaplain organization, the one thread binding them is the spiritual. Therefore, the leader tasked with unifying their efforts and acting as their representative ought to himself be religious. The election of Epstein flies in the face of common sense: The chaplains of Harvard as a group are themselves dubious of the value of any religion at all. They have abandoned their own identity.

A chaplain who rejects or brackets any spiritual reality is simply a false prophet and should be called instead a counselor or, if qualified, a therapist.

As Harvard University leadership continues to castrate words, the role of tradition, and any reference to objective truth, the case of Epsteins election is simply another confirmation that students headed to Harvard should not expect a meaningful education. They may earn a degree with an impressive name on it, but their faculty, peers, and even chaplains are as a group not striving for wisdom.

At this point in human history, it is hardly a surprise that Harvard University leads the way in godless chaplaincies. The interest in this particular story is not in its shock value (which it utterly lacks), nor in the fact that Jewish, Catholic and Protestant chaplains all voted for Epsteins election.

The interesting part of this story hasnt happened yet. The drama in Harvards collapse into mainstream cultures incoherence and wokeism (which I wrote about here) will not play out in click-bait headlines.

The surprising twists in this story will play out in the private lives of faculty, students and staff as they are confronted with the claim that we can be good without God.

What influence will the various chaplains who voted for Epstein still muster among students and faculty still trying to be faithful to their faith and praxis?

What will an orthodox Jewish student say when Epstein, raised as an indifferent Jew in Queens, insists that whether or how a person observes the law makes no difference in his/her/their righteousness?

How will the FOCUS missionaries at the Harvard Catholic Center handle ecumenical events or counsel confused young students?

What will students and faculty who still maintain that we are not good without God do?

Will they create a break-away community of Religious Leaders at Harvard Who Practice Religion, or do they, too, choose to bracket the question of God in order to maximize human flourishing, thus acting for all intents and purposes as atheistic humanists themselves?

The answers to these questions will manifest over time, in small ways: in conversations late at night, at poorly-attended panel discussions, in classrooms and on social media. The small tragedies and triumphs playing out in individual lives will not be clickbait material, but there is no doubt that for many souls salvation is at stake. Faithful students of any religion (however few they are) at Harvard should not be directed by a man of the counterfeit faith of atheistic humanism, whose fruits have already proved rotten in the bloodbath of the 20th century. We are demonstrably not good without God.

Its time to either walk away from Harvard, or walk away from the sham chaplains and build something new.

Read more here:

Harvard, Not Heaven: The Not-So-Shocking Election of an Atheist Chaplain - National Catholic Register

Whether you are a Christian, a Buddhist, a Muslim, a Hindu or a follower of any other religion determining your religiosity is easy. All you need to do is look deep inside yourself to gauge how committed you are to following the tenets of your faith, then look around and see if other disciples of your religion are just as dedicated as you are.

I figured this out for myself before I was 25. I grew up Lutheran, converted to Seventh Day Adventism at 21, and quickly understood that to be the top dog in my faith I needed to become an ordained minister. Bear in mind that I didnt go all-in to earn the most bejeweled crown in heaven. I loved my faith and couldnt get enough of it. I merely determined that being a minister would be the best way to devote more time to learning and expressing my beliefs.

I suppose this is true for disciples who follow any religion. Theres an observable spectrum of commitment one can easily understand and see. One can know how personally committed they are to their faith simply by looking within themselves, then ascertaining how much their faith has become a part of their thinking and how they express it in their daily lives. They can also judge just how committed other disciples are by observing their actions.

Im always skeptical of people who claim they became atheists within a few months following years of being active and committed to a religion. Becoming an atheist is a process. One just doesnt have an aha! moment and switch off a belief in God like turning off a lightbulb. Yes, there comes that time in ones life when he or she recognizes a clear delineation from the moment they held onto a belief in a god, to the moment they knew they no longer believed.

Im also skeptical of people who claimed to be atheists, then suddenly claim to be converted to Christianity (or other religions). Again, theres a process involved with becoming and unbecoming an atheist, and this process is dependent on how much the tenets of a religion have entangled themselves within a persons thought processes. For those who grew up in a church, who spent decades thinking and living as a faithful disciple, it usually takes years to unlearn and purge oneself from religious beliefs, myths, superstitions, ideas and concepts, behavior patterns, and overall worldview. My own aha! moment took 14 years. It just took that long to clear my head.

If you claim to be an atheist, can you safely conclude that you have purged your mind of all religious ideas and thought patterns? For example, what are your current views regarding abortion?

We tend to think of abortion as a religious issue, a pro-life cause that is championed by religion and backed up by the Bible and other religious concepts regarding the sanctity of life. Yet, there are many secular arguments advocating for both the pros and cons of abortion that lie completely outside systemized religious thinking.

The same holds true for issues like suicide, euthanasia, climate change, the death penaltyand so forth. There are religious ways to think about these issues. There are completely rational and scientific ways to view these issues. But there are also right and wrong ways of looking at these issues that bridge both religious and secular viewpoints.

To complicate matters, American culture is saturated with Christian ideals and norms. As I am reminded of often, America is a Christian nation. Virtually every aspect of our culture is dominated by Christian ideologies and theology. In a similar manner, a country like Afghanistan can be considered a nation of Islam, whereas a country like Japan is a culture influenced by a variety of ideologies such as Shinto, Buddhism and Confucianism.

As Christopher Hitchens said:

Religion poisons everything.

Poison might be too strong of a word to be used here. My point is that the influence of religion in any culture makes it more difficult for atheists to determine whether the thoughts and ideas they express are religiously or philosophically based, whether their ideas are driven by rationales based in science and rational thought, or whether their ideas are a hybrid of sorts; grounded by both science and supported by religion.

Do Religious Beliefs Stifle Creativity?

The Follies of King Solomon and His Attitude Towards the Poor

See original here:

Challenging All Atheists: Have You Totally Freed Yourself from Religion? - Patheos

Lets get something straight right away. I am your emcee today, not your rabbi. I would indeed make a most unconventional, highly unlikely excuse for a rabbi. I am an atheist. My parents and some of my grandparents were atheists, too. I never even had a bar mitzvah.

Yet I am Jewish. Proudly so.

One may say, I used to be Catholic or I am a lapsed Episcopalian or When I was a child I was a Voudonisan. Not so with Jews. Once a Jew, always a Jew, theology notwithstanding. It is in the blood, in the phrasing of language, in the habit of mind. A lapse is impossible.

I have something of an understanding of this and shall do my best to explain it, with particular reference to Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) and also Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), the two High Holy Days that were observed earlier this month.

Judaism is dialectical. Its theology is argumentative. It often ends with a moral, however obscure.

Take the story of Abraham and Isaac. God, in an apparent fit of insecurity, asks Abraham to demonstrate his piety by sacrificing his only son, Isaac. Abraham is understandably reluctant to commit this terrible act so God compromises and accepts the slaughter of a lamb instead.

The episode is a dramatic conversation: God demands; Abraham answers in the negative; God gives ground much to the satisfaction of both Abraham and Himself/Herself, thus resolving the matter with civility.

Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Judaism promotes an argumentative habit of mind; a dialog.

One may see similar illustrations in the works of such famous Jewish atheists as Marx, Freud and Einstein: Capital and labor resolved in socialism; id and superego resolved in ego; light as ray versus light as photons resolved in an inexplicable alternation between the two.

So it is in Jewish theology. God commands; the human person presents a counteroffer. In the end something gets worked out. This is the habit of thought of the Middle East merchant. How much do you want for that? Ten dollars. Ill give you seven-fifty. Eight and a quarter and its yours. It is also the habit of the courtroom. What is your plea? Innocent. Guilty: Thirty days. Extenuating circumstances! All right. Ten days.

Rosh Hashanah is a holiday of score-keeping, of determining culpability, of assigning the terms of repayment. All this leads, with hope, to redemption, a reprieve from damnation. The drama occurs in a back-and-forth in which the conflict between Gods law and the failings of the human person is debated while at the same time taking inventory, measuring where we stand.

But what seems to me distinctively Jewish about the Rosh Hashanah staging is that the deity and the human being appear on a remarkably equal level. The human being, man or woman, speaks freely with God, who receives pleas as well as angry accusations. Of note is that Rosh Hashanah occurs in the time of harvest, when we size up the granary. Let us assess what we have. Is there enough to last the winter or will we suffer?

The product reaped is ethical behavior. Have I been a good person or have I omitted something or forgotten someone or left somewhere an unpaid debt of insult, dishonesty or cruelty?

The stage of this Rosh Hashanah theater, the ritual meal, is where we examine our hidden soul to find, before Gods eye spots it, where we are lacking, where debts remain to be paid.

For each debt, for each transgression, repentance is dramatized by tossing a straw into a body of water accompanied by a prayer of repentance. The feast ends with the sounding of the horn, the shofar, that announces the coming of God to render heavenly justice.

God renders such judgment 10 days later at Yom Kippur. The appellant meanwhile attempts to make amends to everyone he or she has wronged or to whom debts remain outstanding, and endeavors to expiate all sins and pay what is due. God is told of such efforts as part of the negotiation.

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the Ten Days of Repentance, are thus a drama of resolution familiar to anyone who has had to deal with the Internal Revenue Service. But here the currency is not cash so much as decency. The question to be asked is: Have I been a good person?

It is said that Jews are Gods chosen people. Does that mean that He (or She) favors them over all others? That is perhaps an early reading. But more likely is the view that God demands more of Jews than of anyone. He/She has anointed Jews to be His/Her emissaries to bring the light of ethical behavior to everyone in the world.

Yahweh, the Jewish god, was once a mere village deity, small and parochial. The contribution of Judaism was to envision a universal force, a God for all of humanity, indeed for all of life.

It is because of this ethically oriented theology that we today see so many Jewish do-gooders, people committed to justice, to civil rights, to equality, to democracy and indeed to democratic socialism. Such preoccupations have made Jews more unpopular than ever with the bigots and tyrants of our time, even those with whom Judaism is nominally shared. It is probably also why we see so many Jewish accountants, lawyers and fiction writers.

Robert Belenky, of Hanover is a retired psychologist and the author of several books, including Collective Memories of a Lost Paradise: Jewish Agricultural Settlements in Ukraine During the 1920s and 1930s.

See more here:

Column: A time to assess culpability, harvest redemption - Valley News

(Graphic Illustration by Christine Moore-Bonbright | The Collegian)

EditorsNote:All opinion section content reflects the views of the individual author only and does not represent a stance taken by The Collegian or its editorial board. Letters to the Editor reflect the view of a member of the campus community and are submitted to the publication for approval.

I was alarmed to learn that some of my classmates are demanding the censorship of religious fanatics on Colorado State Universitys Lory Student Center Plaza. Before you dismiss me as some right-wing culture warrior, I should clarify that I am a leftist, an atheist and am gay.

Twitter account @CallOutCSU calls the rhetoric of The Plaza preachers unregulated hate speech and oppression and abuse. This group demands that they be censored in order to protect students. Someone at a Rams for Progress meeting celebrated that the LGBTQ community is working to censor the odious individuals yelling on The Plaza. I dont recall voting on such a measure.

Weve been dealing with this crap for millennia; I think well survive a few lunatics on the sidewalk.

We are adults. We dont need protection from words, thank you very much. Those demanding the censorship of far-right Plaza preachers fail to understand that one, allowing these people to continue spouting their nonsense will only serve to embarrass them and diminish their cause; two, by giving these people attention, we are only emboldening them and incentivizing them to return; and three, censoring speech on the grounds that it is hateful or dangerous can and will be used against us in the future.

What happens when a reactionary authoritarian rises to power and declares that criticism of the government is dangerous? That atheistic speech is hateful? That womens rights advocacy has no place in the public square? On principle, I am fundamentally opposed to censorship unless the speech is blatantly illegal or doxing, at which point a judge and jury should get involved.

To my fellow students, I understand that your heart is in the right place, and I appreciate that. But please, dont infantilize gay people and college students in pursuit of censorship. Weve been dealing with this crap for millennia; I think well survive a few lunatics on the sidewalk.

Jack Hermanson

Senior, applied computing technology

Letters may be sent toletters@collegian.com. When submitting letters, please abide by theguidelines listed at collegian.com.

Follow this link:

LTTE: Censoring Plaza preachers is not the right thing to do The Rocky Mountain Collegian - Rocky Mountain Collegian

Fifty years ago, John Lennon released one of the most beautiful, inspirational and catchy pop anthems of the 20th century: Imagine.

Gentle and yet increasingly stirring as the song progresses, Imagineis unabashedly utopian and deeply moral, calling on people to live, as one humanity, in peace. It is also purposely and powerfully irreligious. From its opening lyric, Imagine theres no heaven, to the refrain, And no religion too, Lennon sets out what is, to many, a clear atheistic message.

While most pop songs are secular by default in that they are about the things of this world, making no mention of the divine or spiritual Imagineis explicitly secularist. In Lennons telling, religion is an impediment to human flourishing something to be overcome, transcended.

As a scholar of secularism and a devout fan of the Beatles, I have always been fascinated by how Imagine, perhaps the first and only atheist anthem to be so enormously successful, has come to be so widely embraced in America. After all, the U.S. is a country that has at least until recently had a much more religious population than other Western industrialized democracies.

Since being released as a single on Oct. 11 1971, Imaginehas sold millions, going No. 1 in the U.S. and U.K. charts. And its popularity has endured. Rolling Stone magazine named Imagineas the third greatest song of all time in 2003, and it regularly tops national polls in Canada, Australia and the U.K.

Countless recording artists have covered it, and it remains one of the most performed songs throughout the world the opening ceremony of this years Olympics Games in Tokyo featured it being sung by a host of international artists, a testament to its global appeal.

But not everyone is enamored of its message. Robert Barron, the auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles, responded to the recent Tokyo rendition by lambasting Imagineas a totalitarian anthem and an invitation to moral and political chaos. His issue: the atheistic lyrics.

Numerous attempts have been made since Imaginewas released to reconcile Lennons anthem with religion. Scholars, those of faith and fellow musicians have argued that the lyrics arent really atheistic, just anti-organized religion. Others have taken the sledgehammer approach and just changed the lyrics outright CeeLo Green sang And all religions true in a televised rendition on New Years Eve 2011.

In interviews, Lennon was at times ambiguous about his beliefs on religion and spirituality, but such ambiguity is at odds with the clear message of Imagine. The songs irreligious ethos is frank. The first verse speaks of there being no heaven, no hell Above us, only sky. In such clear, distilled words, Lennon captures the very marrow of the secular orientation. To me, Lennon is saying that we live in a purely physical universe that operates along strictly natural laws there is nothing supernatural out there, even beyond the stars.

He also expresses a distinct here-and-nowness at odds with many religions. In asking listeners to Imagine all the people, livin for today, Lennon is, to quote the labor activist and atheist Joe Hill, suggesting there will be no pie in the sky when you die, nor will a fiery eternal torture await you.

Lennons lyrics also give way to an implied existentialism. With no gods and no afterlife, only humankind within ourselves and among each other can decide how to live and choose what matters. We can choose to live without violence, greed or hunger and to quote Imagine exist as a brotherhood of man sharing all the world.

It is here that Lennons humanism the belief that humans, without reliance upon anything supernatural, have the capacity to create a better, more humane world comes to the fore. Nihilism is not the path, nor is despondency, debauchery or destruction. Rather, Lennons Imagineentails a humanistic desire to see an end to suffering.

The spirit of empathy and compassion throughout the song is in line with what scholarship has found to be strong traits commonly observable among secular men and women. Despite attempts to tie Lennon and Imagine to blood-lusting atheists like Stalin and Pol Pot, the overwhelming majority of godless people seek to live ethical lives.

For example, studies have shown that when it comes to things like wanting to help refugees, seeking to establish affordable health care, fighting climate change and being sensitive to racism and homophobia, the godless stand out as particularly moral.

Indeed, secular people in general exhibit an orientation that is markedly tolerant, democratic and universalistic values Lennon holds up as ideals in Imagine.

Other studies reveal that the democratic countries that are the least religious the ones that have gone furthest down the road of imagining no religion are the most safe, humane, green and ethical.

Imaginewas not the first time Lennon sang his secular humanism. A year before, in 1970, he released I Found Out, declaring his lack of belief in either Jesus or Krishna. Also in 1970, he put out the haunting, scorching God. Beginning with a classic psychological explanation of theism that humans construct the concept of God as a way to cope with and measure their pain God goes on to list all the things that Lennon most decidedly does not believe in: the Bible, Jesus, Gita, Buddha, I-Ching, magic and so on. In the end, all that he believes in is his own verifiable personal reality. Arriving at such a place was, for the bespectacled walrus from Liverpool, to be truly reborn.

But neither I Found Out nor God achieved anywhere near the massive success that Imaginedid. No other atheist pop song has.

View original post here:

Imagine at 50: Why John Lennons ode to humanism still resonates - News24