Category Archives: Rationalism

Cairo The visit of Pope Francis I to the Grand Azhar in Egypt over the weekend came at a time of raging extremism. The meeting between the pontiff and Sheikh al-Azhar Dr. Ahmed al-Tayyeb can be seen as a humanitarian confrontation against extremism.

The image of the two religious leaders meeting reminded observers of the times of ideologically motivated wars that were launched in the Middle Ages between the East and West and between Muslims and Christians.

The Popes visit to Egypt is reminiscent of that of Francis of Assisi, the founder of the Order of Friars Minor, who visited the country in 1219. He came to the land to preach peace and reject the Crusades that had pitted Christian against Muslim. He met with Sultan al-Kamil al-Ayyoubi in what was seen as one of the earliest meetings between the two religions.

Will Pope Franciss modern day visit hold similar significance to the one 800 years ago?

We should recall French novelist Andre Marlaux, who once said: The 21st century will be religious or it will not be at all. There are some facts that we have to address to understand the major role clerics play in modern times.

There has been a marked difference in paths taken by religion in the East and West in the post-WWII era. In the West, religion took the back foot to modern technology, economy, capitalism and science. In the East, and for various reasons, a backwards way of thinking took over. This way of thought was bolstered by globalization and the fear of meeting the other.

Amid the emergence of the far right and the far left, the real purpose of religion appears to have been lost. It has instead been replaced with the banners of war and theories of confrontation.

Religion in its essence however allows man to grant his life meaning and a purpose from the time he is born to the time he dies. This concept of religion has started to gain ground. Will its true meaning be able to stand firmly against dark fundamentalism?

German thinker Heinz-Joachim Fischer said that religion can create a conviction born out of dialectic debates. Convictions, whether they are theoretical or practical, can be born of a persons internal religious leanings. These convictions can give way to the will to live. This will was honed during the age of enlightenment and later during the scientific advances of the past two-and-a-half centuries.

Religions therefore begin to reemerge as strengths and convictions that birth and nurture personalities away from fundamentalism.

Pope Francis viewed his recent trip to Egypt as that of friendship and appreciation to the people of Egypt and the region. Friendship is the way to pure hearts that seek coexistence away from isolation and eliminating the other that extremists feed on, he added ahead of his visit.

We can say that the purpose of the pontiffs visit differs from that of his predecessor 800 years ago. This should perhaps be a lesson to all of us Muslims in the East because the self-criticism that the Catholic Church had carried out in the past led it to produce advanced theses and visions that have been marked by all-encompassing humanitarianism.

The Islamic world is now pressed to follow in the footsteps of the enlightened Christians of the past.

The enlightenment of the Christians was no doubt met by some extremist voices of dissent from within, but the voices of modernity and moderation were able to overcome them in order to reach the real purpose of dialogue with the self and with the other.

Pope Francis visit came to defy the aims of those who bombed the churches in Tanta and Alexandria weeks earlier. He sought to defy the forces of hatred and the cancellation of the trip would have been a victory for the forces of evil.

The visit should serve as an opportunity to clear the dust off ties between East and West, especially between Islam and Christianity, and allow them to confront fundamentalism that is threatening to fatally cripple these ties and any prospect of reconciliation in the future.

The meetings between the worlds religious leaders are not required to produce jurisprudential and theological understandings, but they should agree that the future of the world hinges on different cultures and religious dialogue between them.

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From the Vatican to al-Azhar: Dialogue and Rationalism in Face of Terror and Extremism - Asharq Al-awsat English

Brexit is not the cause of Britain's renewed interest in its weird folk heritage, in the joys of cults and pagan sex. But the sudden veering into that world's darker side, where violence and groupthink and human sacrifice rule, seems guided by its anguish and sickly glee. Here's Michael Newton on the new flowering of folk horror.

Folk horror, which is the subject of a new season at the Barbican, presents the dark dreams Britain has of itself. The films pick up on folks association with the tribal and the rooted. And our tribe turns out to be a savage one: the countryside harbours forgotten cruelties, with the old ways untouched by modernity and marked by half-remembered rituals. ...

They may lurch into the ludicrous, but with surprising earnestness these films nonetheless play out a three-way philosophical debate: between enlightened rationalism, orthodox Christianity and renewed paganism. Sex is at the heart of this debate: just as these films both adore and recoil from natural beauty, so human loveliness entrances and repels them.

The anxiety comes from an unsettled telepathic quality of exurban British life, where eccentricity is adored so long as privacy is abdicated, and the heightened empathy of the village lurches to the crowd's destruction of individuals. Newton notes that a key theme of British folk horror is that the supernatural is never so vulgar as to show itself: the darkness is in people. And by the time you get to see it, you are thrillingly both participant and victim: "The pagan rite we are witnessing is the film itself."

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Most YouTube videos have at least a few views: the uploader making sure it works and applying basic edits. But zero views? Thats a special class of film: automated, forgotten, mistaken, baffling, beautiful. Astronaut will show them to you. [via MeFi] Today, you are an Astronaut. You are floating in inner space 100 miles above []

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British folk horror flowering again / Boing Boing - Boing Boing

One of the presenters of this years Sofia Science Festival is the British science communication and public engagement specialist Malcolm Love. He hosts his own radio show entitled Love and Science. Healso advises CEOs, politicians, academics and campaigners, travels the world and works as a freelance producer for the BBC. During his early career, Love worked as a pastor in London (Battersea). Today he describes himself as a devout sceptic. Some two weeks before his event in Sofia, entitled Religion and Science Mapping the Conflict Zone, we interviewed Malcolm Love.

The Sofia Globe (TSG): You will be giving a speech on one of the most interesting topics of the Science Festival: Science and religion. Obviously the Dawkins approach is not yours. So, how can religion, which works entirely without proof, coexist with science?

Malcolm Love: Wow to answer that Id have to give you my entire talk! But I can say a few things about it. Firstly, I am simply going to try and clarify the state of play and try to define key positions in the current debate between religious and scientific world-views. Despite appearances religion and science have co-existed quite happily for most of their history (including recent history). We are familiar with a few high profile spats Galileo being forced by the inquisition to recant his view that the earth orbits the Sun in the 1600s; The Huxley and Wilberforce debate in 1860 (around Darwins theory of evolution) and the Scopes Monkey trial (where a teacher was prosecuted in Tennessee in 1925, for teaching Dawinian evolution, as contrary to the Bible). These events would make you think that their relationship was pure conflict, but actually, science and religion have rarely been at war. As we speak Pope Francis has just declared his view that Big Bang theory and Evolution theory are true theories and that God should not be regarded as a magician with a magic wand. The story does get more complicated however because it depends on what you think passes for religion and what you take to be solid scientific rationalism. For the rest youll have to come to the talk!

TSG:You advise scientists on communication. How accurate is that clich about the tight-lipped scientist, who hides in a lab in some university basement while doing research and has no clue how to bring his message across? And how do you help him or her?

Malcolm Love: Well, a few scientists would rather self-select to talk to computers rather than people. Thats true. But its because those particular people are very gifted at focusing down on mathematical and technical detail. We really need people like that, and sometimes the trade off for them is with sociability. But the vast majority of scientists though are just regular people struggling with the fact that science requires a special language mathematics and technical terminology and this makes it hard to translate. So essentially I try to inspire them by showing them some of the brilliant role model examples of science communicators you can find all over the place now (including at the Sofia Science Festival). I point out that science communication primarily attempts to enthuse its audience with bite-sized information and inspires with the stories of science rather than engages in a programme of science education. Science communication is also diverse so it has a place for writers, designers, event producers, TV and radio presenters, scientists who can give talks or put on shows of various kinds and so on. In my work I often run workshops and seminars to help people develop public communication skills for working with or talking to live audiences or interacting with mass media etc. Its important to give scientists both self confidence to communicate as well as the know how.

TSG: What are the topics you cover in your popular show Love and Science? What kind of feedback to you get? Is it possible to make science more interesting for everyone? How? What should happen in schools, in this regard?

Malcolm Love: Yes, Love and Science might sound like a dubious show about sexual relationships! But actually we look at science in the news and behind the news. Its a show based in Bristol (West coast of UK) on a station called BCfm. Which is a fabulous station full of diverse programmes and amazingly committed radio and community enthusiasts. (Its also broadcast on the internet and can be streamed at bcfmradio.com). Ipresent it with my friend andcolleague Andrew Glester. Andrew is also our resident astronomer. In our show we cover as many of the current science stories as we can. We do sometimes end up majoring on one thing such as what Trump means for American science. But thats not usual. The idea is that the listener is sitting having a tea or a coffee (or driving in their car) in the company of a small group of friends who are having accessible and interesting chats around science stuff. Its very conversational. We have guests in the studio and on the phone and wherever possible (because its a locally based station) we try first to get local comment. So if a new dinosaur fossil is found for example we would try first to get a paleontologist from Bristol University to tell us about it. But weve had some high profile TV presenters on the show and have even spoken to people on NASAs Curiosity team after it landed on Mars and started roaming about. (I remember their work shifts were following Martian days not earth days).

To answer you other question science IS interesting. It just needs liberating from real and perceived barriers. Science education invites people to a vocation. It is a long hard route that requires commitment and demanding work. We need plenty of people to go that route. But science communication tries to reach everyone. It tries to fill people with enthusiasm and the pleasure of understanding a little science. It tries to show people that although they are not experts they can discuss science and have views on science in the same way that non artists can appreciate art and have art in their home and talk about art with others. As for schools I say the same applies. Science has to be taught well and imaginatively to potential scientists. But most kids wont become scientists. However, they can still know that having some science in their lives could be an enriching and rewarding experience. I am aware this necessitates some kind of teaching revolution but, hey, why not?

TSG: You were a freelance correspondent in Central America, including El Salvador and Nicaragua. This must have been about the revolution by the Sandinistas, who later failed, when they were in power. What do you remember about the Somoza tines and the revolution?

Malcolm Love: The Sandinistas did an astonishing thing with unbelievable intelligence and courage when they overthrew the Somoza regime. The Somozas were an incredibly cruel and oppressive family of dictators. A favourite trick was to dropdissisdentslive into an active volcano by helicopter. The Sandinista revolution was before my time. WhenI eventually got there, Ronald Reagan had already formed and funded the Contra. This was a band of ex Somoza National Guard and various bandit mercenaries who harassed the Nicaraguan borders. They were extremely unpleasant people and although I had a few near misses, managed to avoid them. The Contra effectively formed a blockade and nothing worked. Most of the vehicles were un-roadworthy. If you went to a food shop or a bar or a restaurant the question was not what do you want to eat? you just asked que hay? what do you have to eat? Somehow there was always chicken! And I remember that butter and cheese were incredibly rare which seemed to me a great privation. People were just tired and weary. The main intention (certainly for young people) was to get out. If you were a gringo (possibly American or Brit) you became amazingly attractive! I remember being struck by the fact that Americans (in the US) insisted on talking about the Sandinistas and their leader, Daniel Ortega, as communist atheists. They refused to talk to them. The fact was that Ortegas administration was full of priests like the artist and poet, Fr Ernesto Cardenal minister for culture. These worker priests believed that radical politics were the only way to be Christian in that terrible time, in that terrible place. These people in my mind are heroes. But I dont blame Nicaraguans for eventually turning away from the Sandinistas they had been the revolutionary solution to an awful problem. But Reagan then punished the country for their revolution and just simply wore them out. So a new government had to come along. Such is the way of things, but at least Somoza and his appalling thugs were gone.

El Salvador was a different ball game. There the government and army was intent on crushing any sign of opposition. It was still a time when people were shot on the spot for not having correct ID papers on them. Salvador was a neo-feudal society where it was said just fourteen families (La Catorce) owned absolutely everything. It was at that time one of most dangerous places on earth and I still find it difficult to talk about some of things I saw there.

TSG: You seem to be travelling like crazy. Within three weeks, you have been to Portugal, Brazil and Uganda. In Uganda, tensions, corruption, poverty, rigged elections and other problems have affected the population for decades. What is your take on the situation there?

Malcolm Love: Ha! You missed out Azerbaijan! Well this time of the year I travel a lot for Famelab a science communication competition that encourages early career scientists to be better communicators. Their challenge is to wow a non-specialist audience with a talk about science in just 3 minutes. The wonderful British Council has promoted the event worldwide so we are now in up to thirty-three countries on all continents except Antarctica (and I note they happen to have a research station!!). Part of Famelab is to run a 2 day communication skills training event for the country finalists. Thats where I come in.

As for Uganda I really am no expert. It is still a very poor country with a weak infrastructure. So without that its hard for them to get things done. I know Museveni is regarded by many as a dictator, but by most measures people seem better off than they were. Thats certainly not me endorsing authoritarianism Im just saying things are generally getting better not worse, at least as far as I can tell. This is the guy who helped get rid of Idi Amin, for goodness sake, who was an out of control, homicidal, delusional psychopath. Like most places I was met in Uganda with nothing but kindness, goodwill and generosity.

TSG:Do you have a connection to Bulgaria? Have you worked here?

Malcolm Love: Yes, I have indeed worked in Bulgaria. And the main connection is my friend, the amazing Lyubov Kostova. Lyubov is now the country director of the British Council in Bulgaria. She is a force of nature and the person who had a big vision for Famelab that made it international in scope. Now thousands of people all over the world can be grateful to her because they have been part of Famelab the competition that tends to change peoples lives. She is also behind the Sofia Science Festival. Lyubov is definitely on the short list of the most inspiring people I have ever met.

TSG: Thank you, Mr. Love.

There is, of course, much more on the crowded programme of the 2017 Sofia Science Festival, including the numerous presentations in Bulgarian. For further details of the programme, and on how to buy tickets or reserve free seats, please visit theFestivals website.

The Sofia GlobeandBulgaria Noware media partners of the2017 Sofia Science Festival.

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Sofia Science Festival 2017: "Religion and Science" with Malcolm Love - The Sofia Globe

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Make no mistake, these marches today are no more about global warming than last weekends were about defending science. Theyre just an anti-Trump protest by the same people who in January this year were marching around dressed as vaginas, and who in Berkeley the last few weekends have been beating people up wearing facemasks.

Its no coincidence that many of the organizations on the Peoples Climate March steering committee are in receipt of millions from Democrat donor, arch-globalist, and Agent of Evil George Soros.

Mr. Soros, who heads the Open Society Foundations, contributed over $36 million between 2000 and 2014 to 18 of the 55 organizations on the marchs steering committee, according to an analysis released Friday by the conservative Media Research Center.

Six of the groups received during that time more than $1 million each: the Center for Community Change, the NAACP, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Peoples Action, Public Citizen and the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Even if you didnt know this, the clues are in the signs, spotted by Collegians For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) an organization which tries to bring rationalism, facts and sanity to the climate debate and Steve Milloy.

Yes. Administration Change. That will totally stop non-existent global warming from happening.

See also: Tooth Fairy; Santa Claus; yes, of course, Ill still love you in the morning

Communism. Yup: just whatthe world needs to sort out its environmental problems.Thats why Beijing is so famously unpolluted; why there are so many fish in the Aral Sea; why Chernobyl is today such a thriving nature reserve

And this has to do with global warming what, exactly?

Aka Watermelons green on the outside, red on the inside.

Aw! How sweet! They want to behead the President. Arent environmentalists just the cutest, most sensitive and CARING people?

Meanwhile in Vienna, theyre not even pretending its about anything other than Marxism.

How is this even possible? Do these Greenies really know as little about science as I fear?

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DELINGPOLE: The People's Climate March - AKA Watermelons ... - Breitbart News

Bleakly absurd acts of violence Kill List. Photograph: Allstar/Optimum

Folk horror sounds like a contradiction in terms, like a blend of Aran knitwear and paranoia, morris-dancing and carnage. Mark Gatiss popularised the phrase, which is apt, since The League of Gentlemen helped seed the genres recent revival. The League found the funny in The Wicker Man, though it wasnt hard to locate: it was always difficult to take seriously a movie where a strutting, bewigged Christopher Lee sonorously orders Edward Woodward, disguised as a dour jester in a Punch costume, to: Cut some capers, man! Use your bladder!

According to Gatiss, folk horrors central trinity consists of three films from the late 1960s and early 70s: Michael Reevess Witchfinder General, a brooding tale of sadism and revenge in East Anglia during the civil war; Piers Haggards Blood on Satans Claw, in which a cult of adolescents hundreds of years ago commit a series of murders in order to incarnate Satan in the countryside; and Robin Hardys The Wicker Man, about a policeman lured into being a human sacrifice for island-dwelling pagans.

However, a new wave has appeared in the last decade. It includes: Ben Wheatleys Kill List, which begins like Get Carter, with hitmen out on a job, and ends with a terrifying twist; David Keatings eerie, gory Wake Wood, about a couple who move to a village after the death of their daughter; and, in print, Andrew Michael Hurleys recent sombre masterpiece The Loney, in which a family go on a pilgrimage to a shrine, seeking a cure for the elder brother.

Folk horror, which is the subject of a new season at the Barbican, presents the dark dreams Britain has of itself. The films pick up on folks association with the tribal and the rooted. And our tribe turns out to be a savage one: the countryside harbours forgotten cruelties, with the old ways untouched by modernity and marked by half-remembered rituals.

It is a place that is both enticing and threatening. The films are symptoms of the disease they purport to diagnose: manifestations of our troubled, citified response to anything natural, beautiful and not mechanical. Sometimes, these works seek to unnerve us through fear while still reaching for an enchanted vision of landscape and rural peace. But the ecstatic quietness of Samuel Palmers paintings of Shoreham, or Wordsworths universal Cumbria, do not sit well with gothic shudders. The anxiety undoes the idyll and, rather than imagining a visionary Britain, folk horror evokes a land haunted by the past, by old nightmares, by sex.

They may lurch into the ludicrous, but with surprising earnestness these films nonetheless play out a three-way philosophical debate: between enlightened rationalism, orthodox Christianity and renewed paganism. Sex is at the heart of this debate: just as these films both adore and recoil from natural beauty, so human loveliness entrances and repels them.

Hence the repeated moment when a young, beautiful blond woman (Linda Hayden in Blood on Satans Claw, Britt Ekland in The Wicker Man) tempts some ascetic outsider, like a pale imitation of Salome trying to seduce John the Baptist. So we have tight-lipped Woodward sweating in his neatly ironed pyjamas while a nude Ekland cavorts and croons in the neighbouring bedroom.

In the best of such films, in Kill List for example, the conspiring coven are merely jokers busy manipulating the lonely dupe, and duping the audience in the process. The agnostics and Christians are perplexed and doubtful, while the pagans and satanists are smugly knowing. Theyre in on the gag.

The films feature a recurring archetype: the arrival of a stranger, the discovery of a secret cult, then a vicious murder, perhaps a sacrifice, designed to propitiate pagan gods. The metropolitan visitor, the outsider from the mainland, comes into a situation strange to them and to us. Here the enlightened laws of the nation do not pertain. In these forgotten spaces, there are other laws: rules and rituals that are both familiar remnants of some tribal memory yet utterly strange. The locals understand, while we do not. Their rootedness in place becomes uncanny. Once, almost everyone was so rooted. But now in the discontinuous world of modernity, where relationships are casual and work comes and goes such belonging feels strange and even sinister.

As the stories progress, that solitary figure gets caught up in a myth and a rite. Alan Garners marvellous novel The Owl Service, which was adapted for TV, follows this pattern: its based on a Welsh myth about a woman created from flowers who betrays her husband and is turned into an owl. Here, as in other folk horror tales, being inside a myth is terrifying, a fall from the industrialised, supermarket world into one possessed by abysmal powers. In these dramas, The Golden Bough turns gothic.

For, if it were only a matter of sex versus asceticism, wed just have a load of re-enactments of Lady Chatterleys Lover. But in folk horror, the crowd destroys the individual. You are not up against some forlorn witch, but a cult. It is not the government thats out to get you, but your neighbours. You are going to be killed, but you cannot protest, for it is the will of the people. The majority prevails.

But this victory for decent people looks manic: the grins are forced, all doubt is suppressed. In their portrayal of the crowd, these films display a kind of power worship the mob over the individual. Later, we may side with another crowd, the revengers, but that identification will be just as dehumanising. As long as there is blood and suffering, we are supposed to be satisfied.

In two works on one edge of the genre David Rudkins BBC drama Pendas Fen and Peter Shaffers play Equus sexual confusion is also at work. But, although there is horror, there is no murderous crowd. To the jaded psychiatrist in Equus, the young man he is treating possesses an enviable ecstasy, even if the youths sexual feelings and instinct for worship are directed at a horse. Behind all Freudianism, the play taps the root of a connection to the wild.

Pendas Fen, meanwhile, somehow manages to bring together Edward Elgar, a coming out in 1970s rural England, religious doubt, cold war paranoia, and an encounter between a grammar-school boy and the last pagan king of England. It is a dream of renewal: the countryside stands against cold rationality, against industry. Like Equus, which was filmed in 1977 and recently revived with Daniel Radcliffe, this is folk horror at its most fruitful . The connection the religious experience belongs to a solitary figure. There is no crowing crowd. These are not stories of coercion, nor of human victims, but of selves dark, true, impure and dissonant as Rudkin has it. In both, a lonely boy tries to summon up a mystical intensity, as vision and reality blur.

Whats different, and striking, here is that it is almost a rule in folk horror that the supernatural is banned. In The Wicker Man or Kill List, no one expects some gloomy god to appear. The evil is entirely human. There is no divine appearance in Kill List, no conjuration, just bleakly absurd acts of extreme aggression, suicidal and murderous all at once.

In fact, in the folk horror revival, the mystery no longer draws on fecundity and rebirth. Now the secret is violence. Wheatley is undoubtedly the master here. Both Kill List and A Field in England, his psychedelic fable set during the English civil war, transform cinema into a nightmare imbued with history and politics. Although he lives a drab suburban life, one built on and paid for by violence, Kill Lists returned soldier protagonist has become an essentially murderous man. He and his partner may think they are crusaders, King Arthurs knights executing horrible people, but we quickly realise they are just vicious killers themselves.

When they finally appear, the cultists are empty, faceless, uninterested in their own self-preservation, thanking the men who torture them, charging carelessly into a hail of bullets. Only mayhem, cruelty and violence engages them. As one, they politely applaud each extreme act of violence, their bland automatic approval part of the ritual.

Ultimately, this ghastly applause tells us that the cultists are the cinema audience. The pagan rite we are witnessing is the film itself. A sense of complicity was always part of folk horror. The gang-rape and murder in Blood on Satans Claw begins from the victims point of view, but then plays out through the watching mobs lascivious gaze. The killing crowd in these movies is us.

Into the Woods is at the Barbican, London, 3-25 May.

See more here:

Cults, human sacrifice and pagan sex: how folk horror is flowering again in Brexit Britain - The Guardian

What does it mean to truly experience Easter; what is the Easter spirit?. The question is essential, because for a Christian there is a risk of idealization and of forgetting that our faith is concrete. In the chapel at Santa Marta on Monday morning, 24 April, in the first Mass Pope Francis celebrated after the Easter celebrations, he outlined the path to be followed: to go along the paths of the Holy Spirit without compromises, witnessing to the truth with courage and frankness.

Understanding this life plan requires a passage of mentality, freeing oneself from the snares of realism and adhering to the freedom of the Spirit. This is what Jesus explained to Nicodemus in the well-known Gospel narrative of the nighttime visit (Jn 3:1-8), which the Pontiff analyzed in the days liturgy.

This Pharisee, the Pope said, was a good man. He was restless; he did not understand. His heart was in its darkest hour. However, this darkest hour was different from that of Judas, because this dark hour led him to draw near to Jesus, while that of Judas led him to distance himself. When Nicodemus went to Jesus to ask for explanations, he received a response that he did not understand. It almost seemed as if Jesus wanted to complicate things or embarrass him. Indeed, Jesus replied: truly, I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus asked: How can a man be born anew?. It seemed, Francis noted, rather ironic, but it is not so. It is instead the expression of great interior torment. Thus, Jesus explained that it entailed a passage from one mentality to another, and with much patience, with much love, He helped this man of good will in this passage.

The Pontiff reflected on Jesus response, asking, what does it mean to be born of the Spirit? What is the meaning of you must be born anew. The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit?. The Pope then emphasized a perceptible air of freedom contained in this message.

It is a difficult discourse, however, and in order to better understand it, the Pope suggested, the first reading enlightens us. In the days reading from the Acts of the Apostles (4:23-31), there is indeed the finale of a narrative that the liturgy proposed throughout Holy Week. The story of the healing, by Peter and John, of the lame man who had been brought each day to the Temple Gate called Beautiful, to ask alms. The reading of this episode sheds light on the discussion with Nicodemus, Francis explained. He pointed out that all the people were there at Solomons gate; they had seen and were astonished. It was that very sentiment more than a sentiment: that state of mind which makes the Lord present in us. Astonishment. The encounter with the Lord leads to astonishment.

In response to this, the leaders, the high priests, the doctors of the law, were scandalized and, knowing that the miracle had been performed in public, asked themselves: What do we do?. The same thing happens, the Pontiff stated, when Jesus heals the man born blind. Then, those who were present asked: What can we do to cover this up? Because people have seen, people believe, we have proof.... How can this be hidden?. Indeed, they had seen that lame man who, according to the narrative, danced for joy in order to make them understand that Jesus had healed him. The doctors of the law agreed to call the two Apostles and to tell them to speak no more, to preach no more. Peter, who had denied Jesus three times, responded: No! We cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard. And thus, we shall continue.

This is the detail that clarifies everything. The two words that John later uses to begin the first letter: what we have seen and heard. It is, the Pope indicated, a matter of concreteness. The concreteness of a fact. The concreteness of faith. The concreteness of the incarnation of the Word.

In this context, the Pontiff continued, the leaders want to enter negotiations in order to reach compromises. But the Apostles, do not want compromises. They have courage. They have frankness, the frankness of the Spirit. It is a frankness that means speaking openly, with courage. Therefore, Francis explained, this is the point: the concreteness of faith. A conclusion which involves every Christian. Indeed, Francis recalled, at times we forget that our faith is concrete: the Word became flesh, he did not become an idea: he became flesh. For this reason, when we recite the Creed, everything we say is concrete: I believe in God the Father, creator of heaven and earth; I believe in Jesus Christ, who was born, who died.... They are all concrete things. The Creed does not say: I believe that I must do this, that I must do this, or that things are for these.... No! They are concrete things. And the concreteness of faith leads to frankness, to witnessing to the point of martyrdom, which is contrary to compromises or the idealization of faith. One might say that for those doctors of the law, the Word did not become flesh: it became law. For them it was only important to establish: one must do this up to this point and no more; one must do this.... And thus they were trapped in this rationalistic mentality. However, the Pope cautioned, this mentality does not end with them. In fact, many times in history, the Church that condemned rationalism, enlightenment, is also one that fell into a theology of can and cannot, up to this point, up to that point, and forgot the strength, the freedom of the Spirit, this being born anew of the Spirit which gives you the freedom, the frankness of preaching, the message that Jesus Christ is Lord.

According to this key understanding, the Pontiff emphasized, one can also understand the history of persecution. Indeed, the first reading states: The kings of the earth set themselves in array, and the rulers were gathered together, against the Lord his Anointed for truly in this city there were gathered together against thy holy servant Jesus, whom thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel.

Thus this lesson is still timely: Let us ask the Lord for this experience of the Spirit who comes and goes and leads us forward, of the Spirit who gives us the anointing of faith, the anointing of the concreteness of faith.

Thus, Jesus words to Nicodemus echo once again: Do not marvel that I said to you, You must be born anew. The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit. One who is born of the Spirit hears the voice, follows the wind, follows the voice of the Spirit not knowing where he will end up. Because he has chosen the option of the concreteness of faith and being born anew in the spirit.

Thus, Pope Francis concluded with a prayer: May the Lord give us all this Easter Spirit, to go along the paths of the Spirit without compromise, without rigidity, with the freedom to announce Jesus Christ as He has come: in the flesh.

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Faith is concrete - L'Osservatore Romano

Pope Francis celebrates his morning Mass April 24 in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae at the Vatican. (CNS photo/L'Osservatore Romano)

Christian faith is belief in the concrete work of God and leads to concrete witness and action by believers, Pope Francis said.

The Christian creed details concrete events because "the Word was made flesh, it was not made an idea," the pope said April 24 during his morning Mass in the chapel of Domus Sanctae Marthae.

"The creed does not say, 'I believe I must do this, that I must do that' or that 'things are made for this reason.' No! They are concrete things," such as belief in God who made heaven and earth or believe in Jesus who was born of Mary, was crucified, died and was buried, the pope noted.

The concreteness of faith "leads to frankness, to giving witness to the point of martyrdom; it is against compromises or the idealization of faith," he said.

Pope Francis reflected on the day's first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, which recalled Peter and John's release after they were imprisoned by the Sanhedrin following the miraculous healing of a cripple.

Noting their courage in the face of persecution, the pope said that their defiance of the Sanhedrin's order not to preach in the name of Jesus was an example of the concrete nature of faith, "which means speaking the truth openly without compromises."

The "rationalistic mentality" shown by the Sanhedrin, the pope added, did not end with them, and even the church at times has fallen into the same way of thinking.

"The church itself, which condemned rationalism, the Enlightenment, many times fell into a theology of 'you can do this and you can't do that,'" forgetting the freedom that comes from the Holy Spirit and gives believers the gift of frankness and of proclaiming that Jesus is Lord, the pope said.

"May the Lord give us all this Easter spirit of following the path of the Spirit without compromise, without rigidity, with the freedom to proclaim Jesus Christ as he came: in the flesh," Pope Francis said.

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Faith leads to freedom, not compromise, pope says at morning Mass - My catholic standard

On social media, youths are seizing the memes of production to prove that continental philosophy isn't just an academic abstraction.

During his final year of high school, Myles was voted "Comedian of the Year," an accolade he received for being an admin on his school's Facebook meme page. Under his careful curation, inside jokes and gossip ran rampant, earning him the title.

Now 18 and studying journalism, Myles is a part of the growing movement of teenagers worldwide creating and sharing their own esoteric, leftist political memes on Facebook, Reddit, and Tumblr. "I love the way memes can brilliantly explain a huge political issue in a simple way," says Myles.

Read More: Why We Need to Trust Teens to Teach Each Other Sex Ed

"I mean obviously memes aren't the be-all and end-all of political engagement, but they can often help explain and engage young people in a discourse that they get shut out of. I once saw this great meme from Sassy Socialist Memes that epitomized a really thoughtful criticism of economic rationalism.

"It was one of those 'funny because it's true' moments."

There is much dispute and criticism around the use of so-called dank memes in the political arena; some feel they are overbearingly layered with irony, or prone to re-appropriating theory out of context. On the flip side, as Myles points out, they make political theory digestible. Memes are also undeniably accessible and democratic: memers make content on their own terms, and in doing so seize "the means of production."

Images courtesy of Facebook/SassySocialistMemes

"A lot of people don't have time to write a whole article or make a whole stand-up special really getting into the grit of political conversations," agrees Susie, 18, an English Literature student and LGBTQ activist. "But most people have time to make a meme.

"Also, a lot of political meme culture I follow incorporates stuff that I already know about, or values I already have, so it's nice to have like an in-joke with a lot of peoplewhich is where a lot people find the fun in it."

"Like the political cartoon, which goes back two centuries to Punch magazine in the 1850s, political memes are a way for people to look at politics but to look at it askance, a little bit off centre, and that is pleasurable," writes Professor Marshall of Deakin University. "They offer a sense of personal connection and a way to instantly show your interest in an issue from a slightly removed point of view."

James*, 27, is an admin for Crunchy Continental Memes, a Leftist philosophy meme page. "If there's a takeaway for young people or activists looking at our page, it's that that continental philosophy isn't just academic abstraction," he says. "It can inform and reinforce leftist political practice in a really vital way."

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The whole thing does sometimes conflict with his worldview, though. "The problem with being an admin is that you end up seeing other people less as individual comrades, and more as potential engagements with your content, so the 'average' memer you see fades into an amorphous multitude whose only function is to reward your toil with precious likes."

Susie (not an admin) isn't worried about that. "Tagging a mate in a meme helps ease into a chat, you know?" she says over Facebook. "Memes are the opener now I guess lmao but that seems pretty good to me."

See more here:

How Meme Culture Is Getting Teens into Marxism | Broadly - Broadly

3 hours ago.

Just over a hundred years ago, 30 well-known non-Brahmin leaders gathered at the Victoria Public Hall in what was then Madras to form a political organisation that would radically shape Tamil Nadu politics in the years to come. Launched in November 1916, the Justice Party represented the interests of non-Brahmin castes both in politics and society, which were under the influence of the powerful upper caste. The party soon came under the leadership of philosopher EV Ramasamy, or Periyar, who withdrew it from electoral politics and turned it into a social reformist organisation, the Dravidar Kazhagam, based on the principles of rationalism, womens rights and eradication of caste.

Fighting for the self-respect of the downtrodden castes became the foundation of the Dravidian movement led by Periyar. These principles would later trickle down into the many political factions that would emerge only to end up as much-repeated empty rhetoric.

The Dravidar Kazhagam was the mother organisation of the states two most influential political parties the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, both of which make vociferous claims of following the ideals of Periyar and uplifting the Dravidian masses. So does a much weaker Dravidar Kazhagam, and its equally ineffectual splinter groups such as the Periyar Dravidar Kazhagam, Thanthai Periyar Dravidar Kazhagam and Dravidar Viduthalai Kazhagam.

But these claims appear hollow when one takes into account the lack of attention paid to research and scholarships on the Dravidian movement.

No party has built a sustained interest in caste issues, said V Geetha, a Dravidian movement historian. There has been no objective research centre or programme supported by the government that can take up such work. One would imagine that the government would support research on Periyar considering how much they swear by his name.

Earlier this month, The Times of India reported that a research centre dedicated to studying the Dravidian Movement, which was founded at the University of Madras in 2006, was now defunct. Citing an audit report, the article said that the research centre had barely used the Rs 3.9 crores in funds it had been allocated and plans for a separate building and library had made little progress.

V Sivaprakasm, one of two research associates appointed to the centre, worked there for less than two years. In 2010, the contracts of the researchers and the director of the centre were not renewed. Sivaprakasm blames the university administration for its lack of interest in encouraging research on Periyar and his legacy.

I tried speaking to the vice-chancellor about the plans I had for the centre but they were just not ready to listen, said the researcher. The centre should be revived, because Dravidian studies is a unifying force of the southern states that overpowers regionalism.

The centre was established by M Karunanidhi, who was then the chief minister of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam-led government. In an effort to create continued awakening and awareness in the future generations of Tamil Nadu, four chairs were set up at the centre the Periyar EVR Chair on Rationalism and Gender Justice, Arignar Anna Chair on Development of Tamil Language and Sociopolitical thoughts, Chair on Social, Economic and Equal Justice, and Chair on Federalism at the Centre and Autonomy for the States.

A change of government in 2011, when the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam led by the late J Jayalalithaa came to power, made it even more difficult for the centre to be revived, since the ruling party showed no interest in encouraging scholarly engagement on the Dravidian movement, according to Sivaprakasm. The AIADMK cadre comprises only fans of MG Ramachandran and Jayalalithaa, said Sivaprakasm. They do not have any academic interest. The DMK has a little more of an orientation towards the teachings of Periyar and Annadurai [Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam founder and former chief minister]. But neither the DMK nor the AIADMK matched up to the performance of the Justice Party which ruled Tamil Nadu.

The audit also revealed that a university proposal for financial assistance of Rs 1.1 crores in 2013 had received no response from the government, the Times of India reported.

While research on the Dravidian movement has received little support from the government, historian V Geetha pointed out that there has not been much critical and intellectual engagement by those affiliated with the movement too. Much of it is unrigorous and uncontextualised, she added.

According to Geetha, there has been active engagement by independent scholars in understanding the Dravidian movement, including the anti-caste Dalit movements that emerged before the Justice Party. There is a steady flow of original scholarly works that are being published in Tamil and English by independent bodies. But the Dravidar Kazhagam and other groups associated with the movement only republish old books and pamphlets and rarely come out with any original work.

From within the movement itself, there has been almost no reflection, said Geetha. It is only very romantic, celebratory and repetitive.

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Defunct research centre in Chennai speaks of the state of Dravidian ideals in the land of its birth - Scroll.in

ROME Christian faith is belief in the concrete work of God and leads freedom and to concrete witness and action by believers, Pope Francis said.

The Christian creed details concrete events because the Word was made flesh, it was not made an idea, the pope said April 24 during his morning Mass in the chapel of Domus Sanctae Marthae.

The creed does not say, I believe I must do this, that I must do that or that things are made for this reason. No! They are concrete things, such as belief in God who made heaven and earth or believe in Jesus who was born of Mary, was crucified, died and was buried, the pope noted.

The concreteness of faith leads to frankness, to giving witness to the point of martyrdom; it is against compromises or the idealization of faith, he said.

Pope Francis reflected on the days first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, which recalled Peter and Johns release after they were imprisoned by the Sanhedrin following the miraculous healing of a cripple.

Noting their courage in the face of persecution, the pope said that their defiance of the Sanhedrins order not to preach in the name of Jesus was an example of the concrete nature of faith, which means speaking the truth openly without compromises.

The rationalistic mentality shown by the Sanhedrin, the pope added, did not end with them, and even the church at times has fallen into the same way of thinking.

The church itself, which condemned rationalism, the Enlightenment, many times fell into a theology of you can do this and you cant do that,' forgetting the freedom that comes from the Holy Spirit and gives believers the gift of frankness and of proclaiming that Jesus is Lord, the pope said.

May the Lord give us all this Easter spirit of following the path of the Spirit without compromise, without rigidity, with the freedom to proclaim Jesus Christ as he came: in the flesh, Pope Francis said.

See more here:

Faith leads to freedom, not compromise, pope says - Crux: Covering all things Catholic