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For the BJP/RSS, Tamil Nadu and Kerala were more ideological battlegrounds than West Bengal, as Bengal politics was operating very much within the Dwija control.

Stalin was a Russian ruler who did not believe in god. He shaped the post World War II world. He died on March 5, 1953. Karunanidhi, the famous Dravidian leader, while mourning his death in a meeting declared that his just born son (born on March 1, 1953) would be named Stalin. In 1953, Karunanidhi was with the DMK . He was an atheist like his mentors Anna and Periyar.

That son of Karunanidhi's told the nation recently that Tamil Nadu is a Dravidian land that would not allow the BJP/RSS to take it back to the varna-caste system which has been hugely weakened by the Dravidian party's victory in the 2021 state Assembly elections. He defeated the AIADMK and BJP combine, and became the Chief Minister of the state at 68. Stalins ancestors were barber-musicians around temples, and his father became a famous writer, politician and five-time CM of Tamil Nadu.

In the south, the RSS is known as an Aryan organisation with a vision of putting the varna order into the proper Vedic form again in the country. If there is any movement that disturbed that order by giving marching orders to Aryan Brahmanism, it was the DK movement. The DMK is its political successor. Annadurai, Karunanidhi and now Stalin are its flag bearers. MGR and Jayalalithaa were actually trojan horses, and perhaps Jayalalithaa would be the last Brahmin to rule the state.

The BJP/RSS entered that state through the backdoor by using Jayalalithaas silent support to Hindutva expansion. Jayalalithaa played a double edged role in the state Dravidian in form, but Brahmin in content.

The BJP/RSS could not threaten Stalin as much as they did Mamata Benerjee in West Bengal, who also started running around temples and claiming that she was Bengali Brahmin beti. Granted, the atheist Stalin too had to pick up the Vel in his hand to counter accusations of being anti-Hindu. But the two are not comparablebecauseone inherits a Dravidian cultural history and the other inherits the Brahminic history.

The BJP/RSS, by using Shudra-Namashudra (Dalit) mobilisation, made the Bengali Bhadralok (Brahmin, Kayastha and Baidhyas) give up their secular-communist claims. The CPI(M) closed ranks in Bengal as it refused to see the existence of casteism among the Bhadralok. The BJP/RSS used the Shudra/OBC and Dalit aspiration to come to power in a state of Bhadralok unending hegemony and control after 1947. No Shudra or Namashudra or Muslim (Muslims constitute 27% of the states population) could become the Chief Minister of that state. The Kerala communist movement however went in the opposite direction and hence, it survived. The productive Shudra (they call avarna) and Dalits captured the communist movement after EMS Namboodripads era ended.

The BJP/RSS could not play their tricks in Kerala, the land of Narayana Guru and Ayyankali. Pinarayi Vijayan, who came from Gurus Ezhava community and became the commander of communist party, showed the door to Modi and Shah. He became the first communist leader to come to power for a second consecutive time.

Both Tamil Nadu and Kerala have made south India proud by telling the BJP/RSS that the south has a strong Dravidian-Shudra heritage. West Bengal on the other hand operated in the domain of Aryan Hindu casteist cultural heritage, without allowing the Shudra-Namasudra identities to come to the fore. In fact, the Bengali renaissance of Raja Rammohun Roy and Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, operated on the same Aryan Brahmin controlpad. Whereas the southern renaissance initiated by Mahatma Phule (1827-1890), Iyothidasa (1845-1912), Narayana Guru (1856-1928) and carried forward by Periyar, brought about an anti-caste cultural revolution. Abolition of caste or weakening caste never were agendas of Maharastrian and Bengali Brahmanism. Whereas the Dravidian social justice ideology influenced the anti-caste and human equality movements across the country

Stalin and Pinarayi Vijayan represent that ethos. If the Kerala communists do not realise that, they too will go the way Bengal communists went, in future. It was the anti-caste movements that saved the communist ideology in Kerala.

Tamil Nadu has shown a post-colonial path for Shudra/OBC reservation as Ambedkars Mahar movement has shown a path for Dalit reservation in colonial times. Stalin has to carry that struggle forward.

Kerala has shown socialist democratic welfarism with an anti-caste implementation of those welfare policies. Such egalitarian welfarism proved to be a better model than Modis Gujarat model in every respect. Its Muslim and Christian minorities felt safe in Pinarayis hands than in Congresss hands.

The Congresss stand on Sabarimala womens equality proved to be disastrous. Shashi Tharoors unending claim that he is a better Hindu than Mohan Bhagwat and Modi by writing book after book on why he is a Hindu proved to be untrustworthy. He was trying to hide his Shudra (Nair) background and behaving like a Namboodiri himself. Such Congressism was disliked by all OBCs/Dalits and women of Kerala. After a massive anti-womens equality mobilisation of the Congress and BJP in Kerala, Vijayans winning is a game changer.

In Tamil Nadu the BJP/RSS played many tricks. They wanted a coalition of AIADMK and BJP to come to power and break the back of Dravidian political history. But Stalin has shown them the door. For the BJP/RSS, Tamil Nadu and Kerala were more ideological battlegrounds than West Bengal, as Bengal politics was operating very much within the Dwija control. Mohan Bhagwat did not hate Mamata as much as he hated Stalin and Pinarayi.

The next three years will be significant for India. With BJP/RSSs failure to stop the dance of death of corona with an army of superstition, that it built over 95 years by foregrounding myth and negating science, what will India do? There is an increased opposition to the BJP/RSS even in the northern states. If the south escapes with lesser deaths in the corona crisis, the whole north will also tilt towards science and medicine by moving away from myth. That depends on what kind of administration Stalin and Pinarayi provide in future.

(Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist. His latest book is 'The Shudras Vision For a New Path', co-edited with Karthik Raja Karuppusamy.)

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Why it's Stalin and Pinarayi's ideology and not Mamata's that India needs - The News Minute

BOSTON Before she entered the Daughters of St. Paul convent in 2010, Sister Theresa Aletheia Noble read a biography of the orders founder, an Italian priest who was born in the 1880s. He kept a ceramic skull on his desk, as a reminder of the inevitability of death. Sister Aletheia, a punk fan as a teenager, thought the morbid curio was super punk rock, she recalled recently. She thought vaguely about acquiring a skull for herself someday.

These days, Sister Aletheia has no shortage of skulls. People send her skull mugs and skull rosaries in the mail, and share photos of their skull tattoos. A ceramic skull from a Halloween store sits on her desk. Her Twitter name includes a skull and crossbones emoji.

That is because since 2017, she has made it her mission to revive the practice of memento mori, a Latin phrase meaning Remember your death. The concept is to intentionally think about your own death every day, as a means of appreciating the present and focusing on the future. It can seem radical in an era in which death until very recently has become easy to ignore.

My life is going to end, and I have a limited amount of time, Sister Aletheia said. We naturally tend to think of our lives as kind of continuing and continuing.

Sister Aletheias project has reached Catholics all over the country, via social media, a memento mori prayer journal even merchandise emblazoned with a signature skull. Her followers have found unexpected comfort in grappling with death during the coronavirus pandemic. Memento mori is: Where am I headed, where do I want to end up? said Becky Clements, who coordinates religious education at her Catholic parish in Lake Charles, La., and has incorporated the idea into a curriculum used by other parishes in her diocese. Memento mori works perfectly with what my students are facing, between the pandemic and the massive hurricanes. Ms. Clements keeps a large resin skull on her own desk, inspired by Sister Aletheia.

Sister Aletheia rejects any suggestion that the practice is morbid. Suffering and death are facts of life; focusing only on the bright and shiny is superficial and inauthentic. We try to suppress the thought of death, or escape it, or run away from it because we think thats where well find happiness, she said. But its actually in facing the darkest realities of life that we find light in them.

The practice of regular meditation on death is a venerable one. Saint Benedict instructed his monks in the sixth century to keep death daily before your eyes, for example. For Christians like Sister Aletheia, it is inextricable from the promise of a better life after death. But the practice is not uniquely Christian. Mindfulness of death is a tradition within Buddhism, and Socrates and Seneca were among the early thinkers who recommended practicing death as a way to cultivate meaning and focus. Skeletons, clocks and decaying food are recurring motifs in art history.

For almost all of humanity, people died at younger ages than we do now, more frequently died at home, and had less medical control over their final days. Death was far less predictable, and far more visible. To us, death is exotic, said Joanna Ebenstein, founder of Morbid Anatomy, a Brooklyn-based enterprise that offers events and books focused on death, art and culture. But thats a luxury particular to our time and place.

The pandemic, of course, has made death impossible to forget. Since last spring, Ms. Ebenstein has conducted a series of memento mori classes online, in which students explore the global history of representations of death, and then create their own. Final projects have included a miniature coffin, a series of letters to be delivered post-mortem, and a deck of tarot cards composed of photographs taken by a husband who recently died. For the first time in my lifetime, this is a topic not just interesting to a bunch of hipsters, Ms. Ebenstein said. Death is actually relevant.

The Daughters of St. Paul, Sister Aletheias order, was founded in the early 20th century to use the most modern and efficacious means of media to preach the Christian message. A century ago, that meant publishing books, which the group still does. But now, modern and efficacious means something more, and many of the women are active on social media, where they use variations on the hashtag #MediaNuns. In December, Sister Aletheia appeared in a TikTok video created by the order, which posed cheeky Catholic matchups like evening prayer vs. morning prayer, and St. Peter vs. St. Paul. The video, set to Run-DMCs Its Tricky, was viewed more than 4.4 million times.

As a teenager in Tulsa, Okla., Sister Aletheia, who is now 40, listened to the Dead Kennedys and attended local punk shows with her friends. Her parents were committed Catholics; her father has a Ph.D. in theology and worked for a local Catholic diocese for a while. But she was a skeptical child and declared herself an atheist as a teenager, rather than go through the formal process of joining the church.

At Bryn Mawr College, she was the leader of an animal rights club. But she blanched at the animal rights movements arguments against speciesism. It seemed to her that there was a real, if difficult to define, difference between humans and other animals. But as a materialist atheist, I really couldnt find a reason for that, she recalled. I had this intuitive sense that the soul existed.

While working on an organic farm in Costa Rica after a stint with Teach for America, she had a sudden and dramatic conversion experience: God was real and she had to figure out his plan for her life. When her longtime boyfriend picked her up from the airport after the trip, she broke up with him and canceled her plans to go to law school. Within four years, she was wearing a habit at the convent, an unassuming blond-brick building that includes a publishing house, gardens and a small free-standing burial chapel where the nuns are entombed after they die.

Sister Aletheia began her memento mori project on Twitter, where she shared daily meditations for more than 500 days in a row. In October 2018, on her 455th day with the skull on her desk, she wrote, Everyone dies, their bodies rot, and every face becomes a skull (unless you are incorrupt).

At first, she had no particular goal beyond keeping herself committed to her own daily practice. But the tweets were a hit, and the project expanded. Now the order sells vinyl decals ($4.95, great Christmas gifts!) and hooded sweatshirts emblazoned with a skull icon designed by Sister Danielle Victoria Lussier, another Daughter of St. Paul. Sister Aletheia continues to promote the practice on social media, and she has published a memento mori prayer journal and a devotional that opens with the sentence, You are going to die.

The books have become some of the orders best-sellers in recent years, a boost to the nuns, whose income as a nonprofit publisher has declined sharply in recent decades. Sister Aletheia is currently working on a new prayer book for the Advent season, leading up to Christmas.

She has such a gift for talking about really difficult things with joy, said Christy Wilkens, a Catholic writer and mother of six outside Austin, Texas. Shes so young and vibrant and joyful and is also reminding us all were going to die. Ms. Wilkens credits memento mori with giving her the spiritual tools to grapple with her 9-year-old sons serious health issues. It has allowed me, not exactly to cope, but to surrender everything to God, she said.

For Sister Aletheia, having spent the previous few years meditating on mortality helped prepare her for the fear and isolation of the past year. The pandemic has been traumatic, she said. But there have also been small moments of grace, like people from the community knocking on the door to donate food to the nuns in isolation. As she wrote in her devotional, Remembering death keeps us awake, focused, and ready for whatever might happen both the excruciatingly difficult and the breathtakingly beautiful.

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Meet the Nun Who Wants You to Remember You Will Die - The New York Times

From Passover Seders to Jewish foods and life-cycle milestones such as bar and bat mitzvahs, some aspects of Jewish religious life and culture are widespread among American Jews. But other religious expressions such as regular attendance at synagogue services and belief in God as described in the Bible are much less common, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

In fact, based on these more traditional measures of religious observance, Jews in the United States are far less religious than U.S. Christians and Americans overall.

Pew Research Center conducted this study to explore the breadth and diversity of Jewish Americans religious experiences. This survey represents the Centers most comprehensive, in-depth study of the subject, drawing on 4,718 U.S. adults who identify as Jewish, including 3,836 Jews by religion and 882 Jews of no religion. The survey was administered online and by mail by Westat, from Nov. 19, 2019, to June 3, 2020. Respondents were drawn from a national, stratified random sampling of residential mailing addresses, which included addresses from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. No lists of common Jewish names, membership rolls of Jewish organizations or other indicators of Jewishness were used to draw the sample.

The sample is nationally representative and was weighted to align with demographic benchmarks for the U.S. adult population from the Census Bureau as well as a set of modeled estimates for the religious and demographic composition of eligible adults within the larger U.S. adult population. Here are the questions used for the report, along with responses, and its methodology.

For example, 12% of U.S. Jewish adults say they attend religious services weekly or more often, compared with 27% of the general public and 38% of U.S. Christians. And 21% of Jewish adults say religion is very important in their lives, compared with 41% of U.S. adults overall and 57% of Christians.

There are even bigger gaps when it comes to belief in God. About a quarter of Jews (26%) say they believe in God as described in the Bible, compared with more than half of U.S. adults overall (56%) and eight-in-ten Christians. Jews are more likely than U.S. adults overall (50% vs. 33%) to say they believe in some other spiritual force or higher power, but not in God as described in the Bible. Jewish adults also are twice as likely as the general public to say they do not believe in any kind of higher power or spiritual force in the universe (22% vs. 10%).

Orthodox Jews who make up 9% of all U.S. Jews are a notable exception. They are among the most highly religious groups in U.S. society by these measures. For example, 86% of Orthodox Jews say religion is very important in their lives, as do 78% of Black Protestants and 76% of White evangelical Protestants, two of the most highly religious Christian subgroups. Orthodox Jews (93%) also are about as likely as White evangelicals (94%) and Black Protestants (88%) to say they believe in God as described in the Bible.

Conservative and Reform Jews, who together make up 54% of U.S. Jews, are much less religious than Orthodox Jews by these measures. A third of Conservative Jews and 14% of Reform Jews say religion is very important in their lives. Moreover, 37% of Conservative Jews and 18% of Reform Jews believe in God as described in the Bible.

In analyzing the survey results, Pew Research Center also distinguished between two sets of respondents: those who say their religion is Jewish (referred to as Jews by religion) and those who describe themselves religiously as atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular, but who have a Jewish parent or were raised Jewish and still identify as Jewish in ways other than religion, such as culturally, ethnically or because of their family background (referred to as Jews of no religion). By these definitions, 73% of U.S. Jews are Jews by religion, while 27% are Jews of no religion.

Not surprisingly, Jews of no religion are much less religious than Jews by religion, at least by some standard measures. Fewer than 1% of Jews of no religion say they attend religious services at least weekly, compared with 16% of Jews by religion. And while 6% of Jews of no religion say religion is very important to them, the share is much higher (33%) among Jews by religion.

The fact that U.S. Jews as a whole are less likely than Americans overall to say religion is very important to them does not necessarily mean their Jewish identity is not meaningful to them. In fact, twice as many Jews say being Jewish is very important to them as say their religion is very important to them (42% vs. 21%). More than half of Jews by religion (55%) say being Jewish is very important to them, compared with just 7% of Jews of no religion.

Both Jews by religion and Jews of no religion are more likely to engage with Judaism in other ways. Roughly six-in-ten Jewish Americans overall say they held or attended a Passover Seder in the year prior to the survey, including 74% of Jews by religion and 30% of Jews of no religion. Similar shares in both groups say they observed a life milestone such as a bar or bat mitzvah during that period. And about eight-in-ten Jews by religion (78%) say they often or sometimes cook or eat traditional Jewish foods, while roughly half of Jews of no religion (54%) say this.

Eating traditional Jewish foods is not to be mistaken with keeping kosher: Just 17% of U.S. Jews say they keep kosher in their homes, including 22% of Jews by religion and 3% of Jews of no religion. The vast majority of Orthodox Jews (95%) keep kosher at home, compared with 24% of Conservative Jews and 5% of Reform Jews.

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Jews in U.S. are far less religious than Christians and Americans overall, at least by traditional measures - Pew Research Center

Everything Wrong With Exodus 4 in the Bible | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | PatheosEverything Wrong With Exodus 4 in the BibleMay 16, 2021Hemant Mehta

The video below, from my YouTube channel (please subscribe!), discusses all the problems with Exodus 4.

Gods about to try a whole bunch of OTHER magic tricks to convince Moses to go along with the plan.

If you like what youre seeing, please consider supporting my work on Patreon.

(Original image via Shutterstock)

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Everything Wrong With Exodus 4 in the Bible | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos - Friendly Atheist - Patheos

The following column is adapted from The Michael Savage Show podcast, available for download on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever podcasts are heard.

Today, were talking about Bidens bombs. Now, what do I mean by Bidens bombs? Is he bombing anyone? Well, hes bombing America with his left-wing fanaticism.

What Donald Trump built in four years, Biden will destroy in four months. Ive never seen anything like this.

One mistake after the other. Immigration policies that were somewhat controlled, caravans that were coming from Central America, now flooding America and being sent all over the country with first-class travel by Catholic charities and other gangster groups.

Biden is now welcoming asylum seekers like theyre the promised citizens that America never had before. All of them Einsteins, waiting to be discovered.

Where are they coming from? And why are they being brought into America and sent into towns that dont want them? Why has he melted down our border?

For the votes, no other reason.

Bidens bomb number two: He canceled the Keystone pipeline, killing thousands of high paying union jobs. Thats even though the Keystone XL pipeline was known by the Obama administration to have almost no environmental impact.

Biden has stopped new drilling leases on federal lands, which will kill income for New Mexico, which voted for Biden. This attack on energy has eventually caused a rise in gasoline prices, which is going to get even worse, by the way, hurting lower income Americans the most.

More of Bidens bombs. Siding with teacher unions over the needs of families who were trying to earn a living as teachers. He refused to order teachers back to work, indifferent to the real science. What is science anymore?

After years of the liar, Fauci. Science said schools can open safely. Unions said No, we want our teachers to collect money for not working. Why is he doing that?

What about the Middle East bomb? Whereas Trump brought the Arabs and the Jews together, Biden has put the Abraham Accords on ice, freezing arms sales to the UAE which were included in that deal.

Biden is not speaking with Israels Benjamin Netanyahu. Why are they trying to stir up hatred and war in the Middle East? Because war is the middle name of the Democrat party.

Mark my words, ladies and gentlemen of the Savage Nation. I said this to you when Biden won, that within six months there would be a war somewhere in the world to unify the American people.

Bidens demolition crew is also stirring up a war with Russia. Both for the added billions in military contracts and to galvanize the people behind him.

Remember, war always brings people together.

This is the Democrat playbook.

Lets talk about the economy.

They jammed through an absurd, almost $2 trillion aid package with no votes from the Republican party, destroying Bidens campaign promise to work across the aisle, to be a unifier.

Biden pushed an almost $2 trillion new aid package but businesses cant find employees with everyone staying at home rather than going to work because the governments taking care of them.

And there still remains a trillion dollars that are unspent from prior packages!

Now lets talk about God. Biden omitted the word Godfrom his National Prayer Day declaration. The president boasted about Americas remarkable religious vitality and diversity.He had to throw the word diversity in there.

He quoted the late Congressman and civil rights leader, John Lewis, but he made no mention or reference to God or any other deity.

Donald Trumps National Day of Prayer proclamation last year mentioned God eight times. Even Obama mentioned God twice in his last National Day of Prayer declaration in 2016. Bush mentioned God four times in his 2008 proclamation, but Biden did not mention God once.

Why? Because he is godless.

His administration is atheistic, communistic. We all know that theres no one else to pray to except God, yet President Biden omitted the word God.

Think about that very carefully. Even if youre an atheist, what is he saying? That HE is God.

And now lets talk about what hes doing in promoting the left-wing racial radicals. According to a great article by Michael Goodwin of the New York post, this man is shameful beyond belief.

For just one example, the hate crimes against Asian-Americans is an epidemic but has Biden once mentioned the demographic committing these heinous crimes against Asians? Its African-American street thugs largely, not white nationalists.

Its not white people who are beating up Asians by and large. Biden should say Stop it. Were going to throw the book at you. If you do it one more time, youre going to get a go away for life.

Todays podcast goes into detail on Bidens bombs and his wrecking ballon America. Pay close attention because thats going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

A National Radio Hall of Fame recipient, Savage has hosted his radio show for more than 25 years and launched The Savage Nation Podcast in January of 2019 with one of the most successful podcast debuts. A prolific New York Times best-selling author, Dr. Savages latest book is Our Fight for America: The War Continues. To read more of his reports Click Here Now.

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Biden's Demolition Crew in the White House | News Talk WBAP-AM - WBAP News/Talk

When members of your church or other religious affiliation dispute the existence of mental illness and advise you not to take psychiatric medication prescribed by a doctor, they're advising you to make a huge mistake. The person advising that will not suffer the consequences themselves, you will. You can be a good Christian, Hindu, Muslim, or any of the above and can still listen to the reality-based warnings and advice from a psychiatrist. A psychiatrist is a medical doctor who specializes in certain brain disorders treatable with psychiatric drugs.

On the other hand, a psychiatrist should never be advising you not to have a religious practice, albeit in my experience I have never seen that happen. Religion and science do not conflict. They are two different things that address completely different areas of human lives.

Some of the greatest scientists and scholars have been highly religious. Gregor Johann Mendel was a meteorologist, mathematician, biologist, Augustinian friar, and abbot. After his death he gained recognition for discoveries that led to the modern science of genetics. He studied how characteristics in plants were transmitted. In high school, I got the impression that my biology teacher was big into church. I was told by a fellow student that he volunteered at the church doing cleanup.

You do not have to be atheist to understand and believe science. Our President is highly religious and at the same time touts "listen to the scientists," in his powerful speeches about beating coronavirus.

I am not religious, but it doesn't mean I lack belief in a higher power. Something takes care of me and got me through dozens of situations that by all rights I should not have survived. The higher power must have work in store for me or would not be taking care of me in this way. When people are in rough times, in which we don't know how we are to get through a situation, even the non-religious like me will be tempted to ask for help from something greater.

Those who pervert science into something it is not might reject the spiritual, and this leads to cruelty. I am not saying you need to believe in god to be a good person--you do not. My point is that atheistic people who disbelieve in human personhood and believe people are machines that arose by chance, might also reject the validity of human suffering. This could lead to cruel experimentation on people.

I've heard a psychiatrist say, "consciousness could be an illusion." How crackpot of an idea is that? To assert consciousness is an illusion is in total contradiction to the most basic truth known by a conscious entity: "I think therefore I exist." If consciousness were an illusion, we would be unaware that we are here. Who is reading these words? How is it that you are aware of them? Consciousness is not an illusion; it is a subjective absolute truth.

Atheism is not the same thing as agnosticism. No one can prove or disprove a theory that explains how the universe came to be. We can prove and disprove many things about the universe and about the people in it. And it has been shown that science is applicable to mental illness. If you are a good Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Sikh, other, it doesn't make you more or less likely to become mentally ill, and none of these religions will cure it.

I once believed meditative attainment could cure my mental illness; it can't. I've gained meditative attainment in my past, and then when I believed it had cured my condition, I relapsed from not taking medication. Afterward I was aware that the attainment I'd created was erased. And it can take years to regain this--if it is even possible. The damage to function that occurs in a relapse of psychosis will make any type of mental development harder to regain. I am not speaking of Buddhism specifically but of mindfulness, which can be practiced generically in the absence of any religious beliefs.

Many doctors and many psychiatrists seem to reject the notion that human suffering exists. This is a sign of being disconnected. If science is to help the human species, it must be used to remediate aspects of the human condition. It must not be used solely for profits of innovators. Human beings employ massive amounts of time and energy devising methods of getting more. This is also apparently not in conflict with many religious practices.

Doctors in the U.S. and in NAZI Germany have experimented on human beings. This was perceived as conscionable because people believed they were forwarding science. This is an atrocity like any other. A religious person could do this to people as could a non-religious person. Religion is a separate issue from people's acts of kindness and unkindness. That's an opinion. Many religions teach compassion. Yet the lesson does not always take. Some religions teach members that anyone outside of their religion goes to hell. Some religious people are lacking enough in basic perception that they would not be suitable to practice science. Yet many atheistic people are unsuitable as well, because ruling out the possibility that something conscious could have created the universe shows lack of thought. No one knows how the universe came about. Science can describe the universe but that is all it can do. Religion is not sufficient to explain things either, since our religions create a concept of god from human imagination, not from known fact.

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ON MENTAL ILLNESS: There is No Conflict Between Religion and Science. Category: Columns from The Berkeley Daily Planet - Berkeley Daily Planet

Todaymarks the 40th anniversary of the death of the Reggae king, who succumbed to cancer in Miami on May 11, 1981, aged just 36.

He played a gig at the Glasgow Apollo less than a year earlier, in July 1980, as part of the Tuff Gong Uprising tour of Europe.

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Those at the show recalled a night like no other as the Wailers took to the stage along with the joyous accompaniment of the I-Threes backing singers.

One man in the 3,000-strong audience recently told a fans forum: The atmosphere was electric, a vibe Ive never experienced before or since. Im an atheist, but it was like being in the presence of a god.

Journalist Frank Morgan, a reporter at the Evening Express in Aberdeen at the time, was among the crowd.

He told a newspaper last year: I'll never forget the palpable air of excitement before we got into the Apollo. There was a buzz even on Renfield Street as I arrived from Aberdeen with my then-girlfriend and an old mate from school.

The band came on and began a chug-along reggae beat. The I-Three backing singers came on and began to chant "Mar-ley woaaaahhh" over and over and soon the entire audience was singing along."

With the crowd wound up to fever pitch, Marley then appeared, skanking onto the stage from the left, the reporter recalled.

"The noise was deafening as the Apollo went crazy, Mr Morgan recalled.

The reporter said Marley cut a small figure on the stage with his body dwarfed by his huge mass of dreadlocks.

He added: But I doubt I've ever seen such a hard-working performance from an established star. The energy was so strong you felt you could have reached out and touched it.

The performance peaked with Marley playing Redemption Song on acoustic, with Glasgow written on his guitar.

The crowd were mesmerised and it is said Marley cried during the song.

Bob Marleys night in Glasgow was a one-off, but he did have an affinity with the city given his regard for Celtic Football Club.

In his autobiography, Celtic legend Dixie Deans recounted a chance meeting with Marley in Australia, where the musician spoke of his wish to go to Celtic Park and kick a few balls there.

The football and fitness fanatic kept videos of the teams matches at home in Jamaica and had great respect for the Lisbon Lions squads who won the European Cup in 1967 against all the odds.

While touring Europe in 1980, he taped Old Firm games and took the recordings home for his son Rohan to watch.

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Bob Marley: Reggae king's only Scottish gig remembered on 40th anniversary of his death - The Scotsman

Photo: Stephen Meyer, via Discovery Institute.

The New Atheism is dead, or so maverick writer Freddie deBoer argues in his recent provocative Substack essay. But that doesnt mean the New Atheists lost. On the contrary, he thinks they won by losing.

DeBoer explains:

Every day religion recedes a little bit more into the background as ordinary people, religious or not, abstract religious meaning in their lives to the point where its hard to know how you would begin to define why the distinction between believer and nonbeliever actually matters.

DeBoer argues that this receding has, ironically, been hastened by the replacement of New Atheists with voices who are more friendly towards traditional theists, like social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. Unlike Dawkins or Hitchens, Haidt isnt out to take away anyones deeply held religious faith. In fact, hes happy to work together with Jews and Christians, because as he argues in books like The Righteous Mind, in his view religion is a beneficial evolutionary accretion grounded in literal falsehood, of course, but to a pragmatic end.

DeBoer himself is no Christian, or a religious believer of any kind. Far from it: Hes an avowed atheist Marxist! But that of course offends him on the Christians behalf, because he perceives it as a more grievous insult to sincere Christians than Christopher Hitchens could ever come up with. At least Hitchens respected Christians enough to challenge them to a fight, rather than letting them go with a pat on the head.

Stephen Meyer couldnt agree more with Freddie deBoer. In conversation with him, I raised this very sociological question, pointing out that some might argue he is beating an already dead horse by using writers like Dawkins as a foil in Return of the God Hypothesis. Meyer conceded that sociologically, Dawkins may indeed be pass. But the stakes are still just as high. The questions have never gone away, and churlish as he was, like his fellow New Atheists, Dawkins had a knack for asking them well. These guys have the requisite zeal to challenge those beliefs head-on, and therefore, they force the really important discussion about what does the evidence actually say pro or con for theism versus materialism? Meyer is one of those Christians deBoer is irritated for, whod rather go at it hammer and tongs with a Hitchens than engage with materialists who merely condescend to theistic belief, who pat you on the head and say, Well, thats nice for you.

Another name that came up in our conversation was Bret Weinstein, a biology professor who became famous for standing up to a woke mob at Evergreen State College and subsequently becoming a professor in exile. Meyer and I share an admiration for Weinstein, but we find his attempt to save religion lacking in the the same way deBoer finds Jon Haidts attempt lacking. Weinsteins personal coinage is that religion is literally false, but metaphorically true. For example, if an island tribe believes an ancient spirit is stirring the waters to cause a tsunami, they will escape to high ground and survive, which is the really important thing, whether or not the whole ancient spirit business was so much superstitious nonsense.

But was their belief true, though? Well. What is truth?

This is really just Stephen Jay Gould all over again. Gould famously proposed the idea of non-overlapping magisteria, or NOMA, where you can neatly partition your beliefs into the scientific on one side and the religious on the other, and never the twain shall meet. But our friend Freddie is unconvinced that its so easy as all that:

[T]he meaning and rules for life which people so often praise in religion in the abstract stem from the very supernatural elements which people are now so eager to do away with. Yes, religion provides psychic comfort in an unfriendly world, but it does so because it imposes sense on senselessness through the existence of one (or many) who literally determine what sense is. Yes, religion helps guide moral decisions, but it does so because it posits an entity from whom unerring moral precepts flow. Yes, religion helps rescue people from feelings of meaninglessness, but it does so because it tells people that they have a specific moral purpose that is defined by a creature of infinitely greater wisdom than ours. Yes, religion soothes the sick and elderly, but it does so because it tells them that they will soon be joined with a maker who will grant them some sort of eternal reward. You take away the supernatural element, as so many now seem eager to do, and youre kicking two legs out from under a three-legged stool.

Thank you! Just so! Indeed, its all very well to acknowledge, like Haidt does, the Pascalian God-shaped hole in our hearts. Its all very well to say that religion is part of human nature. But as deBoer puts it poignantly in a previous essay, you cant worship a God-shaped hole. If you go to Mass or synagogue looking for nothing more than a vague religious fix, while quietly congratulating yourself that youre not like those silly fundamentalists who dont know how Science works, that fix will only last so long. The journey will be an aimless and likely short one.

It doesnt look like deBoer has plans to climb aboard the God hypothesis train himself any time soon. But at the very least, he recognizes why people should care where that train is going, and why it matters that its not just making an aimless circle. We can certainly shake hands with deBoer on that point, even as we cordially invite him to reconsider the destination for his own journey.

See more here:

Where Steve Meyer Agrees with an Atheist Marxist - Discovery Institute

We heard that the annual National Day of Prayer has also spurred atheists to actionand theyre using the occasion to do good works in their community.

The Atheist Community of Polk County, Florida, for instance,11 is organizing a number of community service events and an awareness campaign to suggest that fellowship doesnt require faith.

Its all part of an annual effort to celebrate a national Secular Week of Action instead of observing the National Day of Prayer, which was set aside in U.S. federal law for people of faith to pray for the nation on the first Thursday in May.

In place of observing a day of thoughts and prayers, secular groups nationwide organize service projects. This years emphasis is on a compassionate response to hunger and homelessness, which were exacerbated due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The nonprofit which covers the metro areas of Lakeland and Winter Haven, runs several ongoing programs to address social issues. They even partnered with a church in a unique food pantry coalition as a direct response to the COVID-19.

Joining the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Lakeland, the project, called It Takes a Village, uses volunteers to deliver food pantry supplies directly to the homes of recipients who may be quarantined or unable to visit the pantry.

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These local atheists also run a chapter of Street Warriors to provide hot meals to people experiencing homelessness, and a Backpack Program that supplies weekend groceries for elementary students.

In addition to providing much-needed food to folks throughout the County, the Secular Week of Action includes a litter clean-up of the groups adopted roadway in Haines City on Sunday May 2 at 8:45am.

Their Street Warriors service project will also be meeting on Sunday (4:00 PM to 6:00 PM) in Winter Haven to pack up food, then hit the streets, to feed people experiencing homelessness.

RELATED: Theyve Collected 20 Million Pounds of Food From People Who are MovingAnd Delivered it to Food Banks

Under the slogans Good without God, Community without Church, and Fellowship without Faith, Polk County Atheists Co-founder Sarah Ray says that one of the most important thing her group provides is a sense of community.

We want to let other nonbelievers know that there is a secular community here they can turn to. And we want to challenge the misconceptions and stereotypes about atheists. We are good people, were your neighbors, co-workers, and friends.

They will also be providing a secular invocation at the Polk County Board of County Commissioners Meeting two days before the National Day of Prayer. Providing secular invocations gives us an opportunity to remind elected officials at all levels that nonbelievers exist in their constituency.

Join their weekly ongoing charitable events, with details found on Meetup.comor find an event this week in your area of the U.S. here.

SAY AMEN! And Share the Secular Good News on Social Media

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Atheists Respond to National Day of Prayer This Week With Action to Feed the Hungry and Clean Up Litter - Good News Network

Within days of each other, the Salk Institute in California announced it had successfully implanted human stem cells into a monkey embryo, and Richard Dawkins, the renowned evolutionary biologist and professional atheist, characterized the Catholic belief in the Real Presence as ridiculous. He went as far as couching his dim opinion of the Real Presence in Shakespearean terms: That way madness lies.

The experiment on monkey embryos and human cells which seems more at home in a black and white B-grade science fiction movie of the 1950s and the pronouncement against the fulcrum of Catholic teaching are different forms of the same attack. I realize attack is a strong word, but if one does not understand he is under attack, he is not prepared to defend himself.

Defense of the Real Presence does not need my assistance. The graces I have received from my most recent consumption of it, though, tells me to resist the temptation to go at Richard Dawkins with similar dismissing and cutting words. But thinking I could argue or cajole Dawkins into a belief in it is beyond my pay grade.

I can still try to understand Dawkins by placing him within the context of Scripture (something I think he would also reject outright).

The Real Presence was codified at the Last Supper, but the teaching began earlier in the Gospels and the early returns from the polls were not promising. As usual, Jesus pulls no punches in the sixth chapter of John. His body is real food and his blood real drink. People began to talk.

Soon the murmurs turned into recordable speech. This is a hard saying, who can listen to it? (John 6:60). And then the people started to vote with their feet. They seemed just as sure of the impossibility of what Jesus taught as any degree-wielding modern scientist.

If you have ever seen a YouTube video of Dawkins as he debates people of faith or viewed some of his lectures where he indulges his atheist leanings, you know he does not suffer fools and his contempt for those who rely on bizarre rituals or tribal beliefs of the supernatural are all categorized in his personal fool phylum.

It would not take extrasensory abilities to predict what Dawkins makes of St. Peter and the other apostles who, although they did not fully understand the Real Presence when they first heard it, believed in Jesus enough to know to stay put.

Dawkins faith lies elsewhere, in places like the Salt Institute. It would be logical to assume Dawkins sees these men and women as the embodiment of scientific endeavor, traveling wherever science takes them, even if it is a place they should not go.

Richard Dawkins (Wikipedia)

But without God at the center of things, the Salk Institutes breakthrough of inserting human tissue into nonhuman tissue is a natural progression.

The end goal of the Salk Institute experiment is to create a source of human organs for transplant. It sounds as altruistic as it does cannibalistic. Ironically, this circles back to Dawkins and his opinion of the Real Presence. To Dawkins, the Real Presence represents a logical black hole; he insinuates smugly that a Church that forbids cannibalism but celebrates the Real Presence is schizophrenic at the very least.

The difference that Dawkins will not or cannot accept, and that I am not the man to convince him of, is that cannibalism requires dead flesh, and the Real Presence is the living God who avails himself to us in the most intimate and real way.

A successful Salk Institute experiment, on the other hand, is contemporary cannibalism, and the flesh it will be creating under pristine and antiseptic conditions will eventually fail, as all flesh is prone to do.

The Salk scientists call these hybrid creations chimeras. One of the meanings of chimera is a thing that is hoped for or wished for but in fact is illusory or impossible to achieve.

Is the Real Presence easy to understand? I think we all have a lot more in common with both first-century doubters and modern-day evolutionary biologists than we may be willing to admit. And I have been taking it for granted, so thank you, Dawkins, for the challenge to make me look in the mirror (and open my Bible).

If Jesus meant what he said and said what he meant, then we know the Real Presence is no chimera, but rather supernatural evidence that with God, nothing is impossible.

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Chimeras, Richard Dawkins, and the madness of Catholicism - Angelus News