Paul Bonner is a retired educator who consistently posts wise comments here. I wholeheartedly endorse his view here.
Fundamentalism is a disease not limited to a particular faith. I highly recommend “The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam” by Karen Armstrong. It is a political strategy imposed by a minority to handcuff any meaningful progress in nation states and beyond. Israel is now teetering on a precipice as a failed democracy due to the efforts of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim radicals. ISIS and AL Qaida are actually reincarnations of the Jewish Maccabean’s prior to the common era. Nazi Germany used such tactics as did Mussolini in his fascist one man as superior ruler dictum. Putin uses the Russian Orthodox Church for the same purposes. In the U.S, we experience this through the organization that runs the annual prayer breakfast and the rampant grift we call televangelism. What these have in common is the desire of a minority to have control and wealth. I wish we could divorce the conversation from the Christian moniker, but the goal of such corruption is to misrepresent a savior as the answer. This is the ongoing archetype of the “anti-christ” against salvation. In spite of our technological and intellectual advances we seem unable to escape this threat to mankind.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
ANY type of fanaticism is dangerous.
Excellent. The injection of religious doctrine–whatever its source–is anathema to the very concept of democratic-republican governance at all times. If the American Experiment means anything, it is for the idea that pluralism, the addition of many ideas and influences kept together by commonly understood societal and individual ethics, are needed to make governing and living together possible and thriving. That means there are no absolutes. But there are limits.
Constant negotiation in the public sphere can give shape to those limits. Fundamentalist religion of any kind is either/or, good/bad, black/white. In a democratic-republic, they should be allowed to practices their beliefs unhindered as long as they don’t impose on others. But they should never be allowed to put those ideas in a place where they impact those to whose reasonable ethics are threatened or hindered.
In a democratic-republic, they should be allowed to practices their beliefs unhindered as long as they don’t impose on others. ”
I’d say that in the case of fundamentalists, those two are in contradiction.
Religious fundamentalism is ALL about imposing one’s beliefs and will on others.
Hindrance
If hindrance is the goal
Then hindrance must be toll
If Fundies hinder me
Then hinder them should we
Belief corrupts and absolute belief corrupts absolutely
Balancing Hindrance
A hindrance to the hindrance
Is what we must require
Cuz hindrance is a hindrance
To what we do desire
Democratic Hindrance
A hindrance to the hindrance
Is what we must require
If democratic governance
Is what we do desire
Aye, laddie, there’s the rub! Damn if I know the answer. We don’t want to lock them up like they do with us (and wish they could do worse).
THE big lie is “faith belief”! It’s the original/first progenitor of all other lies.
So true.
Religions may be the ‘worst of the worse’. However, this goes for any ‘doctrine’, including Nationalism, Tribalism, Racism, etc.
Good morning Diane and everyone,
We can all fall prey to a fundamentalist attitude if we are not conscious of what is guiding us. Fundamentalism is, at its core, a deep need to erase any ambiguity, paradox and relation to the opposite. It arises from an anxiety and fear of any gray area in life and human relationship. It rigidifies and fixes an idea or ideology into a “truth” that cannot be questioned. There’s a quote by Jung (who often discussed this question of fundamentalism having lived through 2 world wars) that I think of often, and it reads,
“We think we can congratulate ourselves on having already reached such a pinnacle of clarity, imagining that we have left all these phantasmal gods far behind. But what we have left behind are only verbal spectres, not the psychic facts that were responsible for the birth of the gods. We are still as much possessed by autonomous psychic contents as if they were Olympians. Today they are called phobias, obsessions, and so forth…”
We can add fundamentalism to this list as well. Basically what he is saying is that we think we are so advanced because we have left behind “belief” in the old Gods, but the energies of which the Gods are just an image or a metaphor are STILL in our psyche. For example, we don’t believe in the actual goddess Aphrodite but the energies which she represents or points to are still active in us. The energy doesn’t disappear, it radiates through a new image. It is interesting that Mr. Bonner says, “In spite of our technological and intellectual advances we seem unable to escape this threat to mankind.” “Technological and intellectual advances” do not address the energies of the psyche that are still guiding us. We erroneously think that technology and intellectual prowess will provide the answers to all questions, that the Goddess Reason will save the day and give clarity (I’m personifying reason here! And we could perhaps even see technology and intellectualism as “saviors” to our problems.). And since Mr. Bonner speaks of archetypes, I can’t resist! 🙂 The archetype of the anti-Christ will be with us as long as there is an archetype of the Christ. You can’t have one without the other. You can’t have the yin without the yang, the positive without the negative, the light without the dark. Mr. Bonner also says that, “such corruption is to misrepresent a savior as the answer.” We might say that the archetype of the savior is the image in which people have put their “faith” as a resolution to a problem, and consciously or unconsciously, a means by which they reduce anxiety and fear. That “savior energy” we might say can take any image. For some, it’s the image of Trump. For others, it’s some other image. Thanks for an interesting post! I’m sorry if you’re not psychologically oriented, but it seemed right up my alley! Thanks for considering my thoughts.
Technology actually is z god go many.
The belief that technology will be the answer to all our problems is really no different than the belief that God will.
The world is a fundamentally uncertain and largely subjective place and the thing that belief in both God and technology have in common is that they both provide a false sense of certainty.
One might think that technology is very scientific because it was produced with science, but ine case of uncertainty, just the opposite is the case.
Science is all about uncertainty and doubt.
Technology is all about certainty and lack of doubt.
Hello Poet,
Yes, exactly. Jung also said that all fundamentalism is repressed doubt. Why? Because fundamentalism is an extreme. In a fundamentalist attitude, one thinks he knows something to be the absolute truth and its unquestionable . But that one-sidedness automatically produces, engenders, its opposite – doubt. You can’t have one pole without the other – kind of like a magnet. Jung used the word “enantiodromia” for this -the changing of one thing to its opposite.
Einstein once said that you can’t solve a problem with the same thinking that created it.
This applies to technological as well as religious problems.
I don’t have much faith on either count.
People in general show no indication that they are willing to Austin their faith in religion or their faith in technology.
Question
Not austin
We bumble along
Inviting the End
Deny that we’re wrong
That doubt is our friend
Hello again Poet,
You say that you don’t see people questioning their faith in technology or religion. Actually, in the education discussion, I think we can see 2 kind of opposing camps on the technology issue. There are those that think that testing and data will surely give us all the answers in discerning what students know or have learned. Then there’s the other camp that thinks that this testing and data doesn’t help in showing what students know or have learned. They tend to see the relationship of teacher and student as a factor in learning. They also tend to see other factors (economic, social, cultural, language, etc.) as having a large role in the learning process. So, in fact, I do see a push back on the technology question in the arena of education. In the area of religion, I think we can also see the same as organized, institutional region has become dead for many people and they are moving away from it. But again, the “religious attitude” (the meaning-making, relationship to the One, Divine, God, Other, Universe – whatever word you want to use – does NOT go away. It only take another form. For our society, it may be materialism, scientism, consumerism, etc.
In my university program we had no tests or exams, only papers. This was a bane to those who had learned to do tests and exams, but to me papers showed a deeper understanding of what the students were gaining from the education process. It also demanded that a student had to apply communication skills in order to process their learning and make it sustainable. They were forced tlo learn to communicate, and most everyone did.
A lot of of people on the religious right where I live also have a close connection to a strong belief that capitalism will solve our problems, but unfettered capitalism creates winners and losers and widens income inequality. Capitalism requires some level of regulation in order to keep it from becoming oppressive to working families and undermining democracy. We seem to be be hitting this wall after more than forty years of neoliberal economic policies.
Teachers questioning technology are definitely a minority in the population at large.
Mist people don’t question anything about the impacts of technology on society.
And as far as people questioning religion, you might be right , but I don’t see a lot of evidence for it.
Technology can be used without understanding. I have no idea why hitting keys makes words appear on a screen.
This is why human society is always behind the 8 ball. Technological advances are used before we understand their effects on us. We will never catch up.
This blog is one of the very few places where I have seen any questions about technology at all.
A good example is all the recent gushing about the Chatbots, Arthur’s, self driving cars and all the rest.
Most people don’t even have a clue about the negative ramifications (quite literally ram ifications with self driving cars)
Mamie, @ 1/7 11:55, another good one [looks like I should brush up on Jung]. As I say below, I enjoyed sparring with fundamentalists as a young adult. Later I met atheists and found them to be invariably people who were raised with some sort of religious fundamentalism [Baptists, Mormons, Irish Catholics]. Our discussions were virtually identical. Enantiodromia.
rawgod [@ 1/7 2:04]– “Technological advances are used before we understand their effects on us.” Absolutely, & then we have to figure out how to deal with the social fallout. As some wise soul advised me long ago [probably my engineer husband], law takes a long time catching up with technology. The former is a tortoise, the latter a hare. Almost a century between peak of Ind Rev & New Deal [not just fetters on banking/ speculation, but on child labor laws]. Probably 2 centuries between start of US coal mining & the consolidation of mine workers’ unions. The digital revolution didn’t start until 1980…
SDP– “belief in both God and technology have in common is that they both provide a false sense of certainty.”
I disagree re: the former. [“Belief” in technology just sounds silly, so I don’t address it]. Those whose belief in God provides a sense of certainty are just kidding themselves, and creating a faux belief like a security blanket. Belief in God in my book provides something like peace with the uncertainty of life.
Belief in technology might sound silly to you, but the fact us many technologists believe that technology will cure many or all the problems humanity faces.
Bill Gates is a perfect t example!e of a “true believer” in technology.
And as Einstein might have said problems
created by technology can’t be solved by the same thinking that created them.
The one characteristic that technologists like Gates have in common is the certainty that their technological approach to problems is the best approach.
Ironically, It’s actually a very UNscientific approach to problem solving because it focuses on technological s”solutions” to the exclusion of all others and despite being called data Driven, is actually ideologically driven.
Data Driven
When data are driven —
Along for the ride —
They never are given
A chance to decide
Soon Musk is another true believer in technology solutions.
When the soccer team in Thailand were trapped in the cave whose passageways had filled with water, Musk and his team of “brilliant” rocket engineers came up with a minisub “solution” without knowing the first thing about the actual problem they were facing.
The British cave diving expert who actually got the boys and their coach out said the rigid five and one half foot sub would never have been able to navigate the tortuous, narrow passageways — at which point Musk called the diver a “pedo guy”, insinuating without any evidence at all that he was a pedophile (Musk has a habit of doing this, having also done it after he had a falling out with a former Twitter exec who quit)
Musk can’t see outside his very narrow techno-blinders, which is precisely why he is making such a mess of Twitter, whose problems do not lend themselves to easy technicians.
Easy technical fixes
Tge God of Tech
Faith is religion
No matter the “god”
Tech superstition
Is not to applaud
SDP– I didn’t mean you were making a silly point 😀 ! & agree. You name here some giant believers in technology, & there are plenty of regular folks who have that same certainty and lack of doubt. I just can’t relate to that feeling. To me it’s not like science. It’s a tool. Like statistics.
So insightful, SomeDam (as usual). I enjoy being able to comment (once again) after my hiatus.
Every time I see the acronym ‘STEM’, it drives me nuts.
Wow, Mamie, what a thought-provoking post. Jung (and we here) are describing harmful psychic patterns, such as the binary rigidity of fundamentalism, and the maladaption of a “savior” concept. But you note benign vibrations as well, like the adoration of beauty [Aphrodite]. You say it well: “The energy doesn’t disappear, it radiates through a new image.” Like light shining through different facets of a crystal. That suggests a very basic process.
That helps me frame my own beliefs better [always hard to articulate]. I have always had a pluralistic spirituality, e.g. as a kid I prayed to God and Jesus, but also to a huge old tree in the center of a field I walked past on the dirt road to grade school—which was lined with cottonwoods, and when they were in seed I felt their spirits ascending. It went on like that: Christianity was ever broadened to include Chinese, Indian, & Zen Buddhist concepts, Judaism, the intentions and parallel universes of certain New-Agey stuff, evolution, theoretical physics, fractals…
In my family we were exposed to both Prot & Cath services, & somehow I knew to listen only to what vibrated with truth. And enjoyed as a young adult learning from and sparring with those from fundamentalist traditions. So where do these different ways spring from? Psychology tells us, I think: some of it’s genetic for sure, but most comes about through environment, especially childhood, i.e. nature of parents & the child-parent relationship.
Hello Bethree5,
Thank you. Yours is a lovely post as well. I especially enjoyed your description of the experience you had of the cottonwoods on your way to school. It sounds like a wonderful experience of opening to the Mystery which surrounds us and is inside us at every moment. I await those experiences in my own life and welcome them and appreciate them when they happen. You might enjoy reading books by the Jungian Analyst James Hollis.
Hi Bethree5,
I responded to your post here but it’s in moderation.
No longer in moderation.
In keeping with what you are saying, the ancient Greeks had this concept of possession, of a motivating spirit within, that they called the Ate. A person would be possessed by this and out of his or her head, motivated by the external force that possessed him or her. The great scholar of classical Greek philosophy W.C.K. Guthrie put it this way: The word Theos, in Greek, has a predicative force. They don’t posit a deity and then list his or her attributes. Instead, they point to a phenomenon and say, This is a God. The shaking of the mountain is a god. Friendship is a god. Love is a god. Sickness, death are gods. Darkness is a god.
But not in the silly way of the retellings of myths. Rather, in the same way as with a great many Amerindian tribes: The world is inhabited by these elemental forces that are gods.
And then, in ancient Greek tales, one of these forces inhabits you, entrances you, puts you into a state of zombielike subservience, and so becomes your Ate, this motivating force. Go back and look at the Iliad. Almost no one in the book ever acts on his or her own. A god seizes him or her and uses him or her as a tool or a mouthpiece–acts through him or her. People’s actions are not their own. They are what a god motivated them to do.
Hello Bob,
I might suggest Jung’s essay called “The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairy Tales” in Volume 9i (The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious) of his Collected Works (and more specifically the Conclusion in that essay) which deals directly with the idea you raise, its implications in human life and society, and why reason and science cannot ultimately deliver us from our problems.
Alas, Jung was too heavily influenced by Christian and other Abrahamic religion that saw the spirit world as existing separate from, over and against, the physical or natural world. What this essay you mention misses is that many indigenous peoples did not draw this distinction. They didn’t think of a separate spiritual world that intersected this world from time to time. (Go, Michael or Hermes and tell that person x.) Instead, to indigenous peoples, and to the earliest Greeks, the spirit world was NATURE SEEN IN A STATE OF VISION–the same nature, just seen differently. The Christian view of a separate spiritual world leads to all kinds of misinterpretation of early religion AS THOUGH IT WERE LIKE THE CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW. But the ancient way of thinking was not
There is a god. That god represents or is responsible for or embodies the spirit of love.
Rather, it was
There is love. This powerful force is a god.
Well written Bob. As a Christian I certainly have been brought up in the separate spirit nature that you describe. However, my study and focus as one who follows the Christian “myth” is the message of love and the radical nature of what that means. In my reading that is what Jesus is trying to tell us. Love one another. I don’t subscribe to the foundational prescription that God came out of the Eastern Mediterranean while the rest of the world remained pagan. I once did some work on a Sioux reservation where I had a conversation with one of the leaders there. He stated that when Europeans came to America, indigenous peoples saw no conflict in their interpretation of the interrelationship of spirit and nature with the scriptural concept of love. Now, I am not saying that Europeans came to America with love in their hearts, but where open engagement took place, and yes it was rare, there was common ground. I must confess that I am not familiar enough with Jung to comment on his perspective of spirituality, but I do find it curious that Einstein, an intellectual around that time, also spoke of science in context with God. My comments on fundamentalism were meant to separate the all too human desire for control and its consequences and the exploitation of incurious belief. There are many who seek an understanding of existential meaning in a variety of ways. Who am I to question their perspective.
Look an Australian Aboriginal Art, for example. It depicts persons, mountains, animals, and so on, but AS SEEN IN A STATE OF VISION, that is, AS THEIR SPIRITUAL SELVES.
The Abrahamic religions posit two worlds, the physical/material/natural versus the supernatural. Most really ancient religion does not make this distinction. Rather, the spiritual is the natural WHEN IT IS SEEN IN A STATE OF VISION.
Failure to understand this leads to a lot of misinterpretation in the retelling of indigenous religious materials.
In other words, the ancient, indigenous view was not that the world was imbued with spirit or that spirit entered into the world but, rather, that the world and the spirit were ONE THING, and you enter into a state of vision so that you can see the thing in the world in its spiritual aspect.
So, for example, a young person would go on a vision quest and put himself or herself into a state in which he or she could encounter the world in its spiritual aspect. Jung is not only just interested in Christianity, but he often runs in the ruts provided by it, for example, in taking as given that nature and the spirit are separate, even as he flirts with the idea that they aren’t.
Thanks, Bob. I agree that much of Jung’s interest revolved around Christianity and we could get into a whole discussion of why this was the case. However, Christianity was not his only interest. I agree with what you say as the god representing or embodying the spirit or energy as you say, and Jung saw that as well. I wish I could say more right now but I have a whole slate of classes today!! It would be interesting to have a discussion about this. 🙂
Not sure what you mean by this
I agree with what you say as the god representing or embodying the spirit or energy as you say,
That’s not what I said. I said that in indigenous religion, the world is populated by gods (see, for example, the forces that Charles Eastment talks about or the kami of the Shintoists). And what are these gods? Well, they are the wind and that tree and that brook and love and friendship and lust and anger, and you can enter into a state of vision, for example, by austerities or taking an entheogen, and SEE THEM IN THEIR SPIRITUAL FORM. So, the wind has the form that the ordinarily see it in, and it has the spirit form that we experience it in when WE are in a state of vision. There are not these separate beings out there, the gods. Rather, the things in nature are gods IF WE CAN SEE THEM AS THEY REALLY ARE. It’s frustrating t me to read things like The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairy Tales because it circles round and round discovering this distinction between modern and ancient ways of thinking but never quite settles on it. It’s like Cortez, who thought that the Cherokee had no religion because they had no temples or priests. But to the Cherokee, every person was a priest, and all of nature was a temple. And this is widespread. Almost every retelling of truly ancient Greek myth gets this wrong because the phenomenon is seen through modern lenses, with modern assumptions that haven’t been unlearned by the interpreter.
I find it interesting when Historians cite the Phoenicians as the progenitors of monotheism as if it is some kind of modern breakthrough that makes polytheism the old way of thinking and wrong. Another example of how the the Western world tends to think the Earth would be so uncivilized without them.
Haaaaa! beautifully said, Paul.
The first monotheism might well have been the brief flirtation with the monotheistic worship of Aten by the Egyptian Akhenaten. A lot of polytheistic cultures flirted with the idea of one Supreme God. The early Hebrews did this, too. But they were the ones who eventually settled upon Monotheism as THE Hebrew religion, and this was their gift to, or curse upon, the world.
Many in the Christian tradition try to connect Akhenaten to the story of Joseph at the end of Genesis, I guess the prequel to Exodus. The archeological record, what little there is concerning the formation of Israel, tends to be in conflict with this. I find the Bronze Age collapse to be an interesting motivator for imperial devastation providing the vehicle for the rise of new empires along with the beginnings of new religious perspectives. I guess it is safe to say that it was all a big mess.
Endlessly fascinating stuff, huh, Paul?
The stories in the Bible keep Christians busy, busy, busy trying to provide evidence of them. But often that’s entirely lacking. The story of the Jewish captivity in Egypt? No evidence of this, even though the Egyptians erected a stele and told the story every time a pharaoh sneezed lol.
Yeah, I spend a lot of time, probably too much, trying to read between the lines…
Bob,
At least the Hebrew religion does not proselytize or evangelize. For some, it’s an exclusive birth right club, with membership passed on through the mother. Today, there are many varieties of Jews. I, for sure, am secular.
Years ago, Diane, I was a young editor working on an exercise for a grammar and composition textbook. In preparation for this, I made a list of 15 or 20 fields of human endeavor, and next to each field, I listed the name of the person whom I believed most revolutionized that field in the 20th century. Then I noticed that every name on my list but one was Jewish. Jews make up like 1/2 of 1 percent of the world population but have made this kind of difference in the world. It’s pretty amazing.
And you gotta love a religion in which adherents DO NOT knock on your door and ask to pray with you.
Have a great day of teaching!
So, people who are products of the the Christian and Western Scientific traditions bifurcate the world, split it down the middle, into the natural/physical and the supernatural/spiritual. And then they misinterpret indigenous religion by thinking of it in those terms. Oh, in this myth, there is a wind god. The wind god intervenes and punishes the thief. NO. The indigenous way is, rather, the wind, which is a god, punished this thief. The shaman saw this in a vision. There is no Separate Spiritual World. There is this world, which is spirits everywhere. You don’t ordinarily see this, but you can, in prayer, in vision, in dreams and hallucinations. What you see, in those states, is the same world BUT IN ITS SPIRITUAL ASPECT OR VISIAGE.
Thanks, Bob,
I feel like there is so much here that I’d like to respond to but doing so in this blog doesn’t do it service! You are correct, however, in pointing out the circularity in Jung’s thought, and your discussion of visionary states piques my interest very much. Jung did say in one of his letters, “I’m a very irritating person.” Alas, irritating, difficult, paradoxical, hard to pin down…..you name it!
Olheyesa writes in The Soul of the Indian (1909):
The worship of the “Great Mystery” was silent, solitary, free from all self-seeking. It was silent, because all speech is of necessity feeble and imperfect; therefore the souls of my ancestors ascended to God (in a state of vision or prayer) in wordless adoration. It was solitary because they believed that He is nearer to us in solitude, and there were not priests authorized to come between a man and his Maker. None might exhort or confess or in any way meddle with the religious experience of another. Among us all men were created sons of God and stood erect, as conscious of their divinity.
There were no temples or shrines among us save those of nature. Being a natural man, the Indian was intensely poetical. He would deem it sacrilege to build a house for Him who may be met face to face in the mysterious, shadowy aisles of the primeval forest, or on the sunlit bosom of virgin prairies, upon dizzy spires and pinnacles of naked rock, and yonder in the jeweled vault of the night sky!
Thank you Bob. I come from a tradition of historic and scholarly investigation in regard to my beliefs, although I am far from scholarly. I find what you have shared here to be similar with much of the Hebrew tradition prior to the Persian Diaspora. In that telling, once you died, you died. It was through one’s dependents that the significance of human existence carried on. The Patriarchs of Genesis were seen as a manifestation of creation with little priestly interference. As with all tribal faiths, priests and kings started to muddy the waters once Hebrews began to identify themselves as a distinct entity. One of the fun stories in the Old Testament is when God tells Israel that a king may not be such a good idea as they clamored for one. “Be careful, you might get what you ask for.”
A good friend of mine, who is Jewish, tells me that this view about the finality of death, combined with a history of persecution, are what gives Jews this pervasive tragic sense of life that one sees, for example, in a lot of Jewish musical theatre, novels, etc.
More:
The elements and majestic forces in nature, Lightning, Wind, Water, Fire, and Frost were regarded with awe as spiritual powers, . . . We believed that the spirit pervades all creation and that every creature possesses a soul in some degree, though not necessarily a soul conscious of itself. The tree, the waterfall, the grizzly bear, each is an embodied force, and as such an object of reverence. . . .
The Indian . . . saw miracles on every hand–the miracle of life in seed and egg, the miracle of death in lightning flash and in the swelling deep! Nothing of the marvelous could astonish him; as that a beast should speak or the sun stand still. The virgin birth would appear scarcely more miraculous than is the birth of every child that comes into the world, or the miracle of the loaves and fishes excite more wonder than the harvest that springs from a single ear of corn.
My comment: this is NOT animism as it is typically understood in the West. People in the West misunderstand this kind of ancient religion. It is not that there are these separate spirits that control or find their way into and possess objects. Rather, the objects ARE spiritual entities–the wind, the rock. And in a state of vision or openness (what the Christians call Grace), you can see that.
In rereading your posts, Bob, I believe we are working with several different lines of thought that would be too complicated to discuss here! It truly would be very interesting to have this conversation! Also, if I recall correctly, you have an interest in William Blake? I just finished an interesting book by Roderick Tweedy called The God of the Left Hemisphere: Blake, Bolte-Taylor and the Myth of Creation. It studies Blake’s work in relation to Iain McGilchrist’s work and is quite interesting – possibly something that might would interest you.
Thanks for the suggestion, Mamie!
HI again, Bob,
Just a few comments now that my day is over! First, in your post about Ate. This reminds me very much of the ancient idea of the Daimon. Jung often spoke of his Daimon (not Demon). Creative people often speak of this Power or force that comes through them in the act of creation. But it exists in everyone. Second, Jung did see nature and spirit as separate but ALSO as one – they were kind of two aspects of the same coin. He spoke of this often especially in terms of synchronicity and with the physicist Wolfgang Pauli. So it’s a paradox. Third, I’m not sure we can really comprehend the consciousness of the ancients. Many have tried. See R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz’ many books, Jeremy Naydler’s Temple of the Cosmos, and Jean Gebser’s The Ever-Present Origin, and Gary Lachman’s The Lost Knowledge of the Imagination, just to name a few. There’s a lot in your posts about the visionary state that we could discuss – what this is, how it can be accessed, what it all means, etc. Perhaps Goethe had it right when he said, “Alles vergagnliche ist nur ein Gleichnis.” And if so, metaphors of WHAT?? That’s the Mystery we can never know!
Well, that’s my thesi9s, Mamie–that Westerners misunderstood indigenous religion because they imposed a foreign notion (separate spiritual and natural worlds) upon it. And so, all those retellings of ancient myths, from the Greeks for example, get it wrong. No, there is no Goddess whose responsibility is fertility. There is this force, fertility, and she is a god.
While we are recommending books, I recommend to you The Mind in the Cave and Inside the Neolithic Mind, by David Lewis-Williams and David Pearce. They document that the entrances to ancient sacred spaces were decorated with drawings of ectopic phenomenon (zig-zags, checkerboard and star patterns, etc) of the kind that people see at the beginnings of hallucinogenic experiences, followed by a tunnel, ending in a space with visionary artwork. Recreating the visionary experience, assisted by entheogens. Found throughout the world. These guys are a couple academic anthropologists and archaeologists from South Africa.
Jung picked this language and concept up from Plato’s Phaedrus, in which Socrates speaks of his Daimon. It’s a brief glimpse into Socrates’s religious ideas, which he usually keeps to himself. And yes, this is akin to the concept of Ate–possession by an external force. So, for example, in the Iliad, Achilles is angry and refusing to fight, which is terrible for the Hellenes, because Agamemnon has taken a captive woman named Briseis from him. Agamemnon argues that Achilles shouldn’t blame him because he was overcome by this Ate, which drove him to abduct the girl. Not my fault, he’s saying. I couldn’t help myself.
For some reasons, posts in this thread are going into moderation, alas. Very difficult to hold a conversation given that. Perhaps my response will rear its head soon.
The technology gods are certainly tricksters, Bob! Or perhaps it’s because I mentioned Wolfgang Pauli who was notorious for the “Pauli effect” – his uncanny ability to disrupt machines and devices wherever he went!!!
Sorry about one of your comments going into moderation. WordPress is ridiculous.
I’m sorry that the darned program puts you to so much work, Diane!!! I dearly wish this weren’t so.
Further complicating this is that ancient religions went through development from the one world animism that I have described above through polytheism to, eventually, in some cases, monotheism. See G8ilbert Murray’s Five Stages of Greek Religion. What I am describing is the very ancient stage common to a great many indigenous religions in which the anthropomorphizing on natural/supernatural entities hadn’t yet taken place. The wind is a god. The grass is a god. The stream is a good. The tree is a god. Forces in the world. Each particular one an example of a general Power. This gives a whole new cast to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Plato was attempting to hang onto a very ancient way of thinking, to rationalize it and drag it into his modern age.
Poor Diane… she’s probably wondering how she got involved in this conversation!!! Sorry, Diane!!!
Again, to be as clear as possible about this:
Judeo-Christian thought posits a god. Then it enumerates his attributes. God is love. God is omnipotent. God is omniscient. And so on.
Indigenous religion observes an elemental force–love, friendship, the wind, and says, “This is a god.”
Utterly different conceptualizations. And failure to understand this causes Westerners to misunderstand, profoundly, ancient religions, including early Greek religion, early Hindu religion, Amerindian religion, etc.
Bob— there is a place at the table for you and Duane and those like you who reject all sort of religion and spiritualism, we live then we die and nothing after! You all are an important piece of policy-making: you focus on what can be done in the here and now, and provide needed force and stimulus.
There is a place for the spiritualist types as well, for they have faith in a longer view: without them, we wouldn’t have what it takes to keep picking ourselves up off the floor to keep trying [while you all are forecasting imminent Armageddon]. But there is no place at the table for those who claim spiritualist faith yet are actually all about imposing their particular, supposedly God-given micromanaging rulebook on the nation via legislation according to their specs. Doesn’t, can’t work in a pluralistic society.
…I wrote this before reading your many more posts in this thread, which shows me you keep thinking, & researching& reconsidering [as I should have realized, knowing you]… It makes me realize I am lucky, & probably rare, in simply have been born with a spiritual bent that provides me with a grounding that there are things beyond what I can see and count, which led me to find various faiths that reflect that. And none of those organized religions reflect completely what I sense as truth. I guess I am my own church. If I feel the need to go and practice with others, it is to a Catholic church. And that’s not about ‘what the Church says.’ It’s just the only one I know where the rite is very ancient—closer to what I believe in—and the rite allows minimal time—just minutes, for a homily—where some guy can tell me how to live my life.
You might be surprised, Ginny: I utterly reject belief in superstitions inherited from the infancy of our species. I think that people really should be above that nonsense by now. However, . . .
https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2014/03/27/the-vast-unseen-and-the-vast-unseeable-2/
This is SOOOO beautiful, Ginny:
I guess I am my own church. If I feel the need to go and practice with others, it is to a Catholic church. And that’s not about ‘what the Church says.’ It’s just the only one I know where the rite is very ancient—closer to what I believe in—and the rite allows minimal time—just minutes, for a homily—where some guy can tell me how to live my life.
I used to belong to a local Humanist group, Ginny, but I found them to be as devoted to unsupportable ideas as any religious kook is–a deterministic, Laplacean universe, a universe without meaning. Ridiculous. Meaning is (in one important sense of the term) significance to an entity. It is conferred by us., Does it exist? Of course, it does. Some things are significant to people. Others aren’t.
Here’s the thing: Ancient religious ideas often demand taking on an entirely different worldview, of seeing things in a way that is unfamiliar and weird. In that sense, because they require an entirely different manner of conceptualization, they are a lot stranger than people think they are. People often blithely misconstrue them. Consider, for example, word magic. People in the past often believed that words had a magic power to bring a thing into existence. You could say the wrong words and conjure a demon. It was DANGEROUS to say the name of G-d. That kind of thing. to grok these ancients, one has to unlearn and put aside current ways of thinking, current modes of understanding and conceptualization and adopt one that is FOREIGN. This cannot be done facilely. It takes real work. Or consider this, Plato used the same word, psyche, for the Mind and the Spirit. They were one thing. So, for example, a perfect circle or line, which doesn’t exist in the world, exists in the separate PSYCHIC world. Christianity grew up in the era of Neoplatonism, so it adopted this splitting the world down the middle into natural/physical/bodily versus the supernatural/spiritual. Ancient Hindu thinking of the time of the Chandogya Upanishad goes further and sees these as nested. The body is nested within the mind which is nested within the spirit or Atman which is nested with the One, the Paramatman. So, where the Platonist would say that you have a body and a mind/soul, the Christian would say that you have a body and a soul, and the Chandogya author would say that you are chuck off the One, a body, a mind, a soul, and an oversoul (that part of the One that you are).
These are not simply differing ideas. They are differing ways of seen, being, understanding. They are different worlds.
People who speak different languages live in different worlds, not in the same world with different labels attached. –Edward Sapir, linguist
So, Ginny, the fact that I flat-out reject these ancient religions does not mean that I reject everything that everyone who holds some religious of spiritual belief might think and all ideas adjacent to religion or spirituality. I am not, for example, an atheist because atheism involves pretending to know what one does not know, that there is not creator entity. Alan Guth, the great cosmologist, has explained in his book The Inflationary Universe how an entity might create a universe like ours. Nick Bostrom’s Simulation Hypothesis is at least possible. But if something smells like ancient superstition (e.g., propitiation of the angry god with a human sacrifice), best to mop up or at least give it wide berth.
So, read that essay, Ginny. It’s about precisely what you speak of: there are things beyond what we can see and count. It is highly improbable that the little bit of the universe that our senses and cognitive capabilities give us access to is a large part of the universe as it is.
https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2014/03/27/the-vast-unseen-and-the-vast-unseeable-2/
Bob, your contributions to this thread are right on. Personally, from very young on, I never felt a division between the natural and the spiritual world, which is probably why I went on cobbling other maor [and pagan] religions onto my Christian-based belief system. I can call myself a Christian without sensing it in any way as a limiting belief.
One of my most interesting encounters was a dinner shared at the LI suburban home of an Indian colleague of ours [back when hubby & I worked at the same engrg co]. His wife had worked for many hours that day to produce a delectable slow-cooked meal [goat-based??]– & I was surprised that she hadn’t even set herself a place, and spent the entire time hovering over us like a servant. Seemed medieval. But after dinner they ushered us into their most prized space, upstairs. It was their shrine—and it was multiple. Every major world religion was represented there, each with its own altar, and lit candles or bits of food or scrolled testaments as appropriate. It gave me a new light on her adoption of a certain ritual for our dinner. I realized she had a much larger context than I’d given her credit for.
Bob. @ 1/10 2:20pm– I guess I am a practical person. ‘Word magic’ calls to mind the Hebrew prohibition of spelling out God’s name, and the Muslim prohibition of displaying an image of Mohammed. My interest is in what does that do for their sense of spirituality. Not in whether it’s logical, just how does it function within that belief-system.
Yes, I understand the Platonic division between conception of perfect concepts vs daily, messy real life, and that that became part of Christianity. What interests me is why do we imperfect humans have a brain that can conceive perfection? That’s part of why, though we die, we imagine life beyond this sphere.
The oversoul of the Chandogya BTW is part of my conception of the universe, & I will check them out.
Mine, too, Ginny. I have come more and more to accept the conclusion that consciousness, not matter, is the stuff of the universe, that matter is icons in the workspace produced by the operating system of this instantiation we are in. I came to this, eventually, via two roads–one the steady rejection by Western physics of the Laplacean billiard-ball universe, and the other by the recognition that consciousness is not like anything conceived of as material–that it is not simply different in quality but different in kind. I suspect that the material, aka stuff, is but the icon available to a limited consciousness with a particular operating system, an icon that is a placeholder for something entirely different but not immediately accessible to our minds, that lies behind it, as the folder on your desktop does not represent an actual folder in you computer but a particular arrangement of electrical “switches” interpereted in a particular way. At any rate, it makes sense to me that all of it–that everything–might be consciousness and that it is the material that is not illusory exactly but a perspectival function. That the Chandogya writer was onto something profound.
If you go back and reread Plato’s dialogues with this thought in mind–that for him, names were not arbitrary symbols but powers evoked, things in him that didn’t make sense before will. I think that his thought is a lot stranger, a lot more distant from modern perspectives, than people imagine it is. Again, this comes from insufficiently making the effort to drop our own conceptual lenses and adopt ones common in his era.
Years ago, I was making my way through some brush with my little brother. He pushed through some brush and a branch snapped back and struck him across the face. He turned around, hit it, and screamed at it. He lived in a world that was alive. Well, for Plato, words are alive. They have these powers. They are evocations. You have to be careful using them. Its messed up. Very primitive.
Years ago, I was making my way through some brush with my little brother. He pushed through some brush and a branch snapped back and struck him across the face. He turned around, hit it, and screamed at it. He lived in a world that was alive. Well, for Plato, words are alive. They have these powers. They are evocations. You have to be careful using them. Its messed up. Very primitive.
There are, of course, differences between warranted but admittedly fanciful speculation, on the one hand, and belief on the other. And one of those differences is that the former is honest.
“Even if they doo say Jehovah.”… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDe9msExUK8
lol
That the thing that gets in my craw, Ginny–it’s the dishonesty in the profession of belief or faith. It’s the claim to knowledge that one doesn’t have.
So you and I are in agreement there as well.
If you will pardon the atheistic point of view, all religions, fundamental or not, are hazardous to humans. Religions take away the ability to doubt, to think freely, to seek to understand. I don’t care if someone wants to believe in a God or gods or whatever (that is a personal choice), but the religion built around them demands adherence to ideas not necessarily real or true. Religions create followers, not leaders. As human beings we need to be able to think for ourselves, to navigate all the traps and roadblocks in our way. (And science is just as bad.)
No need for groveling to the religionistas–faith believers: “If you will pardon the atheistic point of view”. Their faith beliefs command no special recognition nor respect, especially considering that THE big lie is “faith belief”! It’s the original/first progenitor of all other lies.
Faith beliefs are mental, emotional and supposedly intellectual all-encompassing systems to capture human minds before a person enters the schooling process. That indoctrination is so strong that everyone, even non-believers are supposed to respect faith beliefs, i.e., many contradictory myths and not criticize/critique them. Faith beliefs are a scourge on society because those who have succumbed to them (and that is most of the population) before they even have a chance to develop an intellectual immunity to them cannot even fathom criticizing, questioning such absurd faith beliefs.
I was speaking directly to Diana with that comment. I have no idea where her “beliefs” or non–beliefs lie. This is her blog.
And no, science is not just as bad.
Scientific thinking has self correction for any and all statements built into the process, unlike faith beliefs which are set in stone, unmalleable, and that deny that type of questioning.
How was Copernicus treated? And Galileo? Darwin? And all the others who challeged “known” science. Most scientists are just as closed-minded about rebels as anyone else. I interact with a number of people online who believe science is the only way through which to interpret the world. But science cannot see beyond the three dimensions and time, which to me is just another dimension. I go where my imagination takes me. I don’t believe in fences, or boxes. There is always another way.
rawgod [@ 1/7 4:48]– I expect we have much in common, though I am a believer and you an atheist. I too go beyond the box to where my imagination takes me. “The box” is traditional organized religion, and it’s not difficult to transcend.
I was lucky to have a close family friend who was our asst parish priest when I was a teen. He was a Jesuit from Bombay, a microbiologist then working on his PhD at our local U [upstate NY]. An erudite scholar who could guide you to synthesis of science and religion. A person of great empathy and humor. We maintained ties for decades, as he continued to spend a few months/yr in US, working at a parish in CA when off from his duties as director of a Catholic college in Bombay, & touching base with those in US who raised $ for his microbiology lab, & helped out his mentees when they needed a place to stay while making their way from India to US grad programs.
I treasured his input when we were looking to baptize our kids, & wanted to include my male sibs as godfathers [who practiced Catholicism as kids in our mixed family, but never got around to officially converting]. He asked a couple of questions about the background of the priests at our Brooklyn parish, & advised: “there’s no need to give them all that information. Don’t put them on the spot.”
I must apologize, because beyond your first paragraph I can find no essence in your story. Am I missing something?
I would draw a distinction between science and scientists.
Scientists have biases like everyone else.
And unfortunately, tribalism also infects scientists.
But science as a method overcomes at least some of the biases and tribalism, at least over the long term.
What science believes today might be discarded by future generations; we believe things today that were not believed 50 years ago. The better science gets at discovering new realities, the faster those realities change. What will science bel7ive in 2050, or 2100. We cannot know, cannot look ahead (the dimension of time forbids this — for now). Possibly none of us will be alive in 2100, I doubt I will see 2050. But what will ththose alive then believe, if there still is a world containing humans. Even that is questionable right now. Or there might be humans, but no more science. That too is a possibilty. How do we even define “the long term” under present circumstances?
Copernicus and Galileo were challenged — and persecuted — by the Catholic Church, not scientists.
And when new scientific ideas are challenged by other scientists, that’s part of the process. The reality is that most new ideas are strong and the way that they are shown to be wrong is through challenge and testing by other scientists.
That’s not to say that the process is always optimal, just that challenge is a necessary part of the process.
Sometimes it takes a while, but if the new ideas are a better approximation to reality, they are eventually accepted.
The Catholic Church was the science of the day, no matter how wrong their views were, so to me Copernicus and Galileo were denied by both religion and science. And when new advances confront modern scientists, they are as orthodox as religionists until they are forced to eat their words. But that is not easy.
Yes, ideas are eventually changed if proved right, and maybe that is easier today than 50 years ago — you can tell me — but I still don’t like either science or religion on their own, nor mixed together if that is even possible. I believe in a level of life that science cannot locate, because it science is caught in the 4 dimensional world (3D + time). It cannot be described as subjective or objective. Mostly I have deduced this “other level of life” through pure reason, though experiences as a young man led me in that direction. From there I have deveoped a partial cosmology, bounded only by the acts of birth and death, and containing no gods.
In the Book of Joy, the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu speak of our search for meaning from their very different perspectives while acknowledging the significance of both. I must confess that I was surprised by the Dalai Lama’s claim that the Buddhist belief system is in fact atheist. It is not god centered. I found that to be quite liberating in some ways. Of course, Desmond Tutu’s is very God centered, and I found it impressive that the two of them could influence one another in their search for meaning while respecting the value of differing perspectives. I think it is safe to say that none of us have the answer, but each can provide some clues.
Most new ideas are wrong
(Not strong)
Or merely not proven yet. Wrong is a very harsh word.
I had an eighth grade science teacher who, when teaching the scientific method, basically said that anyone who presents scientific theory as fact is not a scientist. Only if all shared such humility.
Currently accepted scientific theory is not fact.
It’s the best approximation we have that explains observations and experimental results.
And when I say a scientific theory is wrong, I mean it contradicts observations and/or experimental results — at least outside a certain domain of applicability.
In the latter regard, it is very likely that all scientific theories are wrong or at least incomplete.
YEP!
Sorry, rawgod [1/9 2:43am], I should probably have cut the comment right there—I see it does not translate well. I was trying to paint the picture of a scientist who was also a parish priest. His science did not circumscribe his religion; it was all one to him. He (like I do) saw the workings of our natural world as palette/ paints/ materials in some larger scheme that no doubt includes other works/ realities which are inter-related.
I am a believer who doubts a great deal. Your concerns about the rigidity of religion and science have to do with the human susceptibility toward orthodoxy for the sake of orthodoxy. Just imagine what we would have missed if we had stopped with Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, or even Einstein. The same can be said for Christians like myself had we stopped thinking based on Augustus, The Roman Catholic Church, Martin Luther or, for that matter, Martin Luther King. My belief is based upon the idea that there is much greater than me. The wonders of our planet, our creativity, the existence of music, all convince me that there is a greater good. Now the purpose of this perspective is not to convince you, but to help me navigate this insignificant life while being amazed by wondrous significance. Perhaps this philosophy seems “pollyannish”, I try hard to be a glass half full kind of guy, but I perceive it as a way to get through the hazards to which we all contribute.
This will sound conceited though it is far from that. Life as we know it today ia at its highest possible level right now, for right now.
This is what my atheism is based on, though this does not mean I believe humans are the highest possible lifeform, but it might be..
I was introduced to the concept of the Anthropocene by my middle daughter who was an Environmental Arts major. I will not pretend to understand the implications of this perspective on where we are in time and place, but I do tend to believe that we struggle with this concept of species superiority based on our level of consciousness while all living things are subject to our whims and the consequences. I think what we are experiencing through our environmental degradation is an Earth that is not defenseless in regard to putting us in our place through both living organisms and the “laws” of physics.
Let’s just say some are worse than others. And some are much much worse. Those would be the fundamentalists, who simply can’t tolerate anyone who believes anything different from what they believe.
Fundamentalist is actually a weird term for them because their beliefs are not fundamental in any objective sense, not like a fundamental particle is in physics, say.
Their beliefs are pretty much completely arbitrary, which is why there are so many different “flavors” of fundamentalists.
Buddhists don’t tell others how to live their lives.
Which is why I have no problem with Buddhists.o r with Buddhism.
Those xtian preachers have to make jack and apocalyptical threats sell.
I can’t believe anyone would think it is about money!
🤑
I couldn’t bear to watch beyond the first few sentences. Hey, the hills have always been alive with nutjob preachers. When I was a kid in the ’50s, we’d start hearing them on the car radio 10 mis south of the NY/PA border on the way to NYC. Ya just gotta change the station. Sad that we have to pay more attention to these idiots nowadays, as we try to figure out why they have more influence on voters than they did 70 yrs ago.
Thank you, Greg B, for warning us about the virtual Pokemon demons in our churches!!!
Now, what do we do? Pray them away? Perhaps if every reader of Diane’s blog would join me in a virtual Pokeman demon-expulsion prayer. . . .l
There are many in religious circles who have argued that fundamentalism is just a step away from atheism. If you accept that idea, fundamentalism is worse for religion than it is for society in general. I am not sure I accept the first premise.
It is no accident that modern fundamental Christians feel a kinship to Roman Catholics. The Roman Church accepts a dominant Pope, authoritarian in nature, as does the American Fundamentalist religion, which accepts certain interpretations of scripture to the rejection of others. For most of the faithful, certain public opinion leaders fill papal shoes, and they would tend to accept or reject ideas based mostly on who suggests them, not the actual idea. If certain figures (they have changed often over the last century, which is roughly the life of modern American Fundamentalism) advocate for a position, the faithful are right there. This explains the level of comfort with Catholics, who also listen for figures of authority to define their ethics.
This contrasts dramatically with Protestantism prior to 1920 and the rise of fundamentalism. Old Protestant churches tended less toward acceptance of some individuals at the top of the heap and more toward groups of people meeting and voting. This was so important to the Zeitgeist of the later 19th century that Robert Weibe built his famous thesis about progressivism on the idea that the Progressive was a person who trusted the institutions of committees and discourse.
So modern fundamentalism is a singular change in a direction of the single figure being of more importance than the group.
There are some atheists who are very “in your face” about their nonbelief.
But there are also atheists who don’t tell others what they should believe.
You don’t hear much from the latter so it appears that all atheists are of the former type.
Roy, it’s like you’re speaking a foreign language. My experience is that churchgoers take what they can from it—what speaks to them or consoles them, or makes them feel right—and talk little about it. You make it sound like they’re sheep who believe every word they’re told in church, and everything they’ve been told there since they were children. These are grownups, with minds of their own. They bring their children there to share the tradition, wherever that may lead them. “For most of the faithful… [blah, blah]”– how do you know what’s in “most of” their heads, or what it a means to them? “Catholics… listen for figures of authority to define their ethics”—give me a freaking break.
Maybe I’m experiencing culture shock; I’m remembering you live in TN, and probably see very different people than I. Up here in the Northeast, mainstream Prot church congregations are much as you describe “Old” [pre-1920] ones, and the suburban Catholic congregations not a lot different.
Roy-
Thanks for making your comment. Powerful political Conservative Catholics like Matt Schlapp benefit from the false perception that Catholics are liberal. The bias of reporting (some deliberate) from the northeast serves the purpose of reinforcing a notion detrimental to fighting theocracy. Margaret Brenneman at CBS is one of those journalists.
Religion is a menace. There are only degrees of fantasy and magical thinking between the fundamentalists and the moderates. Any religion requires its followers to believe silly things, and maintain exclusivity between the “faithful” and the “infidels”. It’s all hogwash.
True that
This is actually pretty astonishing, how just downright silly religious ideas are and how little the ridiculousness of them affects people’s belief. Adam and Eve ate a piece of fruit they shouldn’t have so everyone deserves to work hard and women must endure labor and people in general must endure snakebite and everyone must die but there was a god-human sacrifice to placate the angry sky daddy and to expiate all this sin.
If people had never heard of this stuff and someone said this to them as adults, they would think it profoundly idiotic.
Hi Bob,
When we take myths to be literal truths, we are lost. However, that doesn’t mean they don’t have meaning.
Fairytales have meaning. Myths/religious stories have meaning. Agreed. Some of them, like this angry sky god demanding a sacrifice in propitiating have really sickening, primitive, barbarous meaning.
Yikes
cx: demanding a sacrifice in propitiation
It’s a really CREEPY idea. The really ANGRY BAD DAD who will KILL YOU and must be coddled to keep him from doing so. But it’s the central archetype of the Christian religion in most of its forms.
Enough. This sick ancient fantasy needs to die a proper death, along with human sacrifice generally, treatment with leaches, rape and genocide as instruments of war, bear baiting, foot binding, and so on. ENOUGH with keeping this evil, stupid, primitive idea alive by inventing reinterpretations of it.
Long ago, some ancient peoples believed that when something went wrong–a drought occurred, for example–this meant that their sky daddy was angry and that they needed a human sacrifice to propitiate him.
This sick, demented, bizarre idea survived long enough to become THE CENTRAL IDEA of the Christian church.
It’s time to put this particular superstition to bed.
There is a God stop denying it.
Matt Schlapp just got accused of sexually assaulting / groping the genitals of a Hershel Walker male campaign aide.
Now you can not make this up . The head of the American Conservative Union / CPAC / the voice of Homophobic Christian Nationalists is / was in the Closet. Add him to the long list of Right wing deviant hypocrites. . At least this time the person assaulted appears to be an adult . Being a Homosexual does not make him deviant sexual assault does.
Plus the advocacy of homophobia. A Schlapp with no grace.
Amazing dis—grace wont save a Schlapper like he.
But tomorrow he will be saved anyway . All those Libs on CNN and MSNBC appearances led him into temptation.
Extreme homophobes are often closeted homosexuals, ofc.
J. Edgar Hoover
He still has a closet named after him: The
J Edgar Hoover (FBI) building in DC
It’s a pretty big closet, so little wonder that he was able to hide there for so long.
Extreme homophobes like Josh Hawley (who has written a book about the “crisis” of manhood, his crisis); Ted Cruz; Putin; Orban in Hungary?
Media reported that Mrs. Schlapp is Opus Dei. Children of the family of Russian spy, Robert Hansen, the spy who did the most damage in American history, were described as Opus Dei at the time of Hansen’s arrest. Reportedly, both Hansen’s priest and wife knew he had spied against the U.S. People working for the U.S. lost their lives as a result of Hansen’s reports to Russia.
The Breach is an excellent telling of the spy story and how Hansen’s religion factored in.
He got what was coming to him.
His wife got to keep the house and she got his half of the retirement pay for his “work” for the US Government which equates to more than the income of the average US citizen.
They should schlapp the cuffs on him
Concerned about the increasing irreligiosity in our culture? Wishing you were less alone in your recognition of the Ultimate and Most Fundamental Truth (whatever that is)? You have come to the right place. Whatever god you worship, simply send me $124 dollars U.S.D., and I will believe in that same God for a FULL HOUR at some point in the following month. That’s right, total, unswerving adherence to the superstition of your choice, no questions asked!
Shepherd Superstition Services LLC. From Aa, the ancient moon goddess of the Chaldeans to the Bronze Age Fertility goddess Zywie of Lusatia (within what is now Poland), we’ve got your ridiculous, unwarranted fantasy covered, nay, nurtured and cherished. Just the way you want it. Comforting, huh?
N.B. The superstition service described above includes no ritual observances or use of ritual accoutrements, no reading or recitation of nor listening to scriptures (however quaint and marvel-filled), neither setting up nor maintenance of idols or shrines, and no attendance at services. Service includes belief only but not any behaviors associated with or required by said belief. So, for example, eating wafers and drinking wine, pouring out oblations, passing children through the fire to Moloch, FGM, horse sacrifice, handling of snakes, laying palms before donkeys, ingesting peyote, and so on are NOT covered. In the busy season, B.S. might have to believe in several different and incompatible gods simultaneously, and your acceptance of the terms of this superstitioning entails acceptance of this possibility. Void where prohibited by religious law or fatwa involving capital punishment of said B.S.
SOS
Save Our Superstitions
Haaa!
Do you offer a special Satan Service for $666?
If not, I think it would be a good moneymaker
Ad for Bob’s Satan Service
Satan Service
666
Linda Blair is
Doing tricks
Screwing head
And oozing pus
Living dead
Are not a fuss
My ditty about Bobs Satan Service was comment number 66, by the way.
Coincidence?
I think not
Thanks for this new product line suggestion, SD!!!
Would Bonner benefit from a research exercise?
He could type into a search engine any variation of the question, are Christian and Catholic the same? Then, he could ask people at random, is Liberty University a Christian university. Are Notre Dame, Catholic University of America and Georgetown, Christian Universities? I’ll put money on an answer to the 2nd question, those who answer have to take time to think about it. At this blog, commenters describe Hillsdale as Christian. They mean Christian as in protestant.
A Priest in S.C. wrote “10 reasons why Catholics Don’t Evangelize.” It’s posted at the Catholic Education Resource Center which appears to be associated with the influential conservative Catholic, Tim Busch’s National Catholic Register. I suggest Paul read the 10 points and then ask himself if Alito, Thomas and Barrett are evangelists.
IMO, people like Paul unwittingly use the talking points of a very successful right wing religious PR campaign that attempts to position conservative Catholic activism out of the political fray when it is, instead, the major player.
Conservative Catholics claim to be, “defending the faith,” while they aggressively pursue authoritarian theocracy. The Busch-funded “premier academic building in D.C.” is part of Catholic University of America. IMO, it’s a bastion of free market ideology. CUA’s board is very cozy with Koch. Georgetown hired Ilya Shapiro, from the Koch network, for a top position in its law school. Ilya’s disparagement of the newest SCOTUS jurist appear to be in line with long time conservative and Koch network objectives.
1959 is the year that Georgetown first admitted Black students. It’s never had a female president.
Linda,
The Republicans of the Chaos Caucus kept nominating Rep. Byron Donalds, a far-right Black man from Florida (whose wife Erika is active in Mons for Liberty). I googled him and learned that he went to Catholic school, but “became a Christian” at the age of 21. One of his nominators repeated this. Does this mean that Catholics are not Christians? Was he a heathen until he became an evangelical?
At one of the large fundamentalist churches, the pastor rails against Catholics. It’s like the clueless GOP free marketers who believe Bill Gates is their liberal opponent. 63% of a similar demographic to the pastor’s flock, who are Catholic, agree with the referenced pastor’s social, economic and political views and support Trump. They are in the red states. My view- there is a well-orchestrated PR campaign to keep people like the pastor ill-informed. The campaign’s goal is to muddy the waters about where conservative political action originates and who implements it.
Others at the blog can provide answers about whether specific religious sects believe children are going to learn their own religion is superior and/or if there is an expectation that views, e.g. about abortion, should be imposed on those in and out of the faith.
My experience in a Methodist church for 20 years, decades ago, was that of no lesson in superiority, emphasis on God’s love, each person having his own agency in relating to God (the absence of authoritarianism). Many people similar to me don’t recognize what passes as Christianity today. There have always been snake handlers but, they weren’t mainstream. Religion has been weaponized for political purpose e.g. privatization of public education, in some cases, initiated and implemented by the Koch network and state Catholic Conferences.
The Catholic bishop’s state conferences whose sole purpose is political influence provided the model that evangelicals are following? The Christian universities (protestant) understand growth and political influence is possible by focusing on the success of Catholic universities like those in D.C., tied to Koch?
When the American Pledge of Allegiance is altered to include Catholic doctrine, like at the school that Pat Cippolone attended, those who believe in U.S. democracy should take note? Which faith is receiving the most money from vouchers?
Diane, I grew up among fundamentalists. They did not think of Catholicism as Christian. They would have been quite surprised to learn that for some 1,500 years, the Catholic Church WAS the Christian Church. LOL. Most of these people are profoundly ignorant of history and of the history of ideas, including the history of religious ideas. Yeah, there are lots of fundamentalist evangelicals who don’t understand that Catholicism is one of the varieties and, indeed, the progenitor, of Christianity.
Three questions-
(1) Is there evidence that right wing influencers selectively frame Catholicism as Christian when it benefits their purposes? (2) On the other hand, does there appear to be PR that distances the Catholic church from Christian nationalism? (3) Does the false perception of the Church as liberal enable right wing Catholic political wins that are under reported?
Actually Linda, Right wing Catholicism. is very much a part of the Fundamentalist spectrum. I am therefore not sure how a rejection of religious fundamentalism is a right wing talking point supporting Catholic dogma (For the sake of disclosure, I am an Episcopalian). The cultish history of the church from all sides is problematic, but I do not see a true reading of the gospels as a fundamentalist exercise. Many of Jesus’ confrontations that led to his crucifixion were with the very orthodoxy that we confront today through what we call fundamentalism and generalize as the church. Simply dismissing faith as a form of make believe devalues the ongoing human search for meaning as an exercise in futility. Science, philosophy, the arts, and any other intellectual/ psychic exploration is a search for meaning. My comments were related to the manipulative human structure that exploits ignorance for the sake of power based on a mysticism that is disingenuous. The Old Testament or Hebrew Bible is not about a punitive God as much as an example of human struggle, failure, and the search for redemption if it is read with integrity. It is human greed and avarice that has resulted in the collapse of all empires and religion has often been the tool leading to this demise. The abuses of churches of all denominations are a continuation of this cycle. Some seem to say that this justifies a dismissal of belief as a pipe dream. I say that the fact that we continue to struggle for good might just be a sign that there is better for us to find.
These ancient stories need to be read as one would read any other ancient stories, in terms of their time and place, with the understanding that they instantiate the primitive worldviews, understandings, morals, and so on of their time. Oh, let me tell you about the guy who commanded the sun to stand still. And the virgin who conceived. And the guy with magic hair that made him super strong. Oh, and the guy who died for your sins because that’s what his father demanded. Oh, and the magic beans that grew into a beanstalk. Oh, wait, different set of ludicrousness ancient stuff, amusing, interesting, revealing, but uh, false.
With many meant to bring others along for the “leader’s” devices…
Deflection that attempts to reframe what is going on at the governance level in U.S. capitols, today, by employing sweeping religious generalizations, is lame.
This comment thread gets shifted when and because a discussion about PR for the Catholic church that creates/bolsters the bogus perception of it as liberal, is uncomfortable.
The links between GOP men like Matt Schlapp and Leonard Leo and Koch set the stage for conservative Bishops’ wins in areas like school privatization, abortion, birth control and, wins for the unfettered capitalism that rejects government safety nets, etc.
It makes no difference to the those who reject the info. I present, that there are state Catholic Conferences, created for the sole purpose of politicizing conservative religion to benefit the Catholic sect within the U.S., a network that is under the direction of right wing bishops.
Commenting on what I perceive is not a form of deflection.
Many of Jesus’ confrontations that led to his crucifixion were with the very orthodoxy that we confront today through what we call fundamentalism and generalize as the church.
So true. Well observed, Paul.
If it is read with historical fidelity, it is a LIBRARY of works produced over about 1,500 years produced by people who at first were polytheistic, then believed in an extremely jealous and punitive sky Daddy, and then ameliorated some of the worst excesses of the sky Daddy religion (genocide, anyone?) but added a heaping helping of world denial, aka Contemptus mundi.
What accounts for the surprise of the majority of Americans at the overturn of Roe?
Successful PR that hid the players and their actions, any impact?
This is a good question: why the surprise? I think at one level it was expected, and seemed inevitable. The moves to get an anti-Roe majority on the court were right out in the open, and if anything, ham-handed. The surprise was perhaps that there were so many political reasons not to do it. Almost like biting the hand that feeds you. Republicans have lost a perennial wedge issue that served to keep fundamentalists politically engaged. Democrats benefited from increased political engagement of women and younger voters. Trust in the legitimacy of the court tanked. There was also how badly the decision was written: disrespect, even scorn for previous courts; a weak argument that comes across as transparently disingenuous in sections…
Republicans carried on about abortion as long as they could. They have now pivoted to immigration where they have no intention of improving because it would take away their talking points. Grifters gotta grift…
This explains why Congress is unable to develop a bipartisan bill to limit and regulate immigration. They want the issue, not a solution.
And atheism has been so peaceful, right? Communism is responsible for the death of MILLIONS and counting, but it too is a type of cult and has its fundamentalist wing, some right here on this thread.
Jacqui
You are the poster child for the base that the right wing throws red meat to. Propaganda works well on you because you don’t like to ask questions and find your own answers.
Putin is right wing religious. The Koch’s Heritage Foundation chooses to tell people like you that Putin is a Marxist-Leninist (6-7-2022). The truth about the Koch network is that they understand, “ideology is a means to control people.” People in a true democracy are tough for the richest 1% to control which explains why they generate so many lies about it.
Linda, a lot of the rightwingers think now that Putin is the bee’s knees. Ever since Putin’s puppet became president of the U.S., they’ve welcomed him. Putin is a Fascist, sexist, homophobic, superstitious (religious) macho macho guy, just like them.
Bob-
Trump supporters like Matt Gaetz smirked at Zelensky.
Yes, to the chaos caucus folks like Gaetz and MTG, Putin is on their team. I suspect that with someone like MTG, it’s sheer ignorance and that with someone like Gaetz it’s worse. What a revolting piece of work he is. And yes, these people support Putin and oppose our assisting our ally, Ukraine. They are traitors.
This is true. Communist states have been responsible for horrific, genocidal atrocities, just as was the Church, which let rivers of blood throughout the millennia. And yes, indeed, many Communist regimes have been very much like religious cults.
It’s an interesting exercise to calculate which is responsible for more bloodshed, the Church or Communist Totalitarian States. For both, it’s millions and millions and millions. The Black Book of Communism is a great place to start.
I don’t think I’ve encountered any Communists on this blog, but the right in America is so looney, so utterly cracked, that it thinks support for Medicare for All is Communist. LMAO.
It would be interesting to hear one of the heroes of the right–someone like Trump, for example–try to define terms like Socialist, Communist, Marxist, and so on. One would expect that people wouldn’t try to talk about Marxism without ever having read a single word that Marx wrote, and, of course, Trump hasn’t read anything by Marx, or much of anything else for that matter, and couldn’t read Marx if he tried. He would be more successful trying to run a Marathon or swim the Hellespont.
It’s like a bad joke to hear Republicans refer to centrist Democrats as “Communists,” “socialists,” or “the radical left.” They are none of the above. But what can the GOP do? Acknowledge that “the radical left” wants Medicare for all, like most western democracies? Why is that so scary?
It is so like a bad joke. One just groans when people say something this uninformed.
Jacqui,
I have not encountered any Communists on this blog.
There are lots of different religions represented. There are also atheists and deists. None of the latter are Communists.
Communism (the USSR, Maoist China, Castro’s Cuba, Pol Pot, are indeed responsible for the deaths of millions.
Putin has no religion, to my knowledge. He had a life career as a KGB agent. Many of his critics have been murdered or “fallen” out of windows.
Religious fanaticism has been responsible for many deaths. Protestants killed Catholics, Catholics killed Protestants, everyone killed Jews. Muslim fanatics have carried out acts of terrorism. That’s only the Western World. Religious wars have occurred throughout the world. It stems from the belief of the religious zealot that my religion is true and everyone must accept my god or gods.
My personal view is live and let live. I’m not a very religious person so I don’t care whether anyone shares my views.
It may, indeed, be that Putin has no religion, but he professes to be a strict adherent to Russian Orthodox Catholicism, and he regularly does religious displays–ritual ablutions, events alongside the Patriarch of the Russian Church and Putin’s fervent supporter, Kirill, and so on.
Thanks Bob
Few Americans know about Putin’s religion and Krill’s involvement in supporting the invasion of Ukraine.
IMO, those who we might expect to expose it are wary that the info. would make it easier for the Koch network to propagandize anti-Ukraine sentiment.
Zelensky stands in contrast to the Koch false narratives that strengthen authoritarianism. Zelensky understood how right wing politicians use Christianity in the U.S. His speech to Congress deftly gained support for his democracy, undercutting the bogus story that power worshippers could concoct at the behest of the richest, American, right wing despot.
All Americans should wake up and recognize the links between Koch and conservative Catholics like Matt Schlapp. The public WON’T learn about it from main stream media influencers.
It fascinates me how corporatist oligarchs and right wing Christians spend so much time using one another as a means to reach their ends. This is happening in Israel where right wing Jews and Christian end timers are working together with promoting a theology of a second coming. Add to that mix the radical islamists who are seeking the same thing on their own terms and we can see how all of these end timers might get their wish.
Zelensky is a Jew married to a non-Jew.
Just curious about your opinion, Paul.
If Ohioans knew almost every top position in their state government and on the state’s Ohio Supreme Court was held by conservative Catholics, would those candidates have received as many votes? If voters knew that taxpayers had made Catholic organizations the nation’s third largest employer, would it give pause?
Whoops, my error, “Christian” is the accepted term.
What’s your point? My original post was about the dangers of Fundamentalism from a plethora of religious origins that grow out of those religions. Many Christians have differing views on what it means to be Christian. If you read any commentary concerning the Papacy of Pope Benedict, after his death, in contrast with that of Francis, you would see that religious views are not uniform in the the Catholic Church either. I think right wing protestants have eagerly formed an alliance with right wing Catholics to oppose such things as abortion and contraception and push political agendas. Their political strategies for dominance are indistinct. Is this the shared perspective of all Christians? No.
Paul-
Thanks for the heads up.
Religious people have lots of views so, it’s best not to identify the originators of laws and court deciders of law especially when they tell us their sect’s religion drives them. Just because the sect is one of the two major religions, there is no added reason for interest.
(1) The Southern Baptist Convention’s decision, in the recent past, to follow suit with the Catholic church and exclude women from pastor positions is remote from politics.
(2) Politicking by the almost 50 state Catholic Conferences should be ignored because the Church has liberal members.
(3) Likewise, the spending of the Catholic Church on anti-LGBTQ messaging and for abolishment of pharmaceutical birth control should be ignored for the same reason.
I suppose we can look to Nazi Germany and learn that the religious people in that country had lots of differing views.
Did that rare outlier, a sympathetic church goer from one of the two major religions, have great success in protecting the Jewish religion’s people? And, was the Catholic church’s hierarchy immaterial to the fascist regime?
Odd comment, Diane.
I agree that there are very few ‘Communists’ to be found, but the idea that Christians haven’t killed millions of ‘others’, not just each other, and that Christianity isn’t an offspring of Judaism is just not supportable.
Live and let live is a good position, however. Yet, you still appear to be banning me because I don’t ‘share’ your ‘views’. Sad.
‘Try to live up to your own expressed ideals’ is also a good motto.
I Don’t recall saying that Christians haven’t killed others. Religious wars have been common throughout history. My comment at “Communists” was a response to someone who said many of the commenters on this blog are Communists. I haven’t asked anyone if he or she is a Communist. I certainly am not. I have read extensively about the history of the USSR, Maoism, and other Communist societies. I visited the killing fields in Cambodia, where you can still see bits of clothing come up from the earth after a heavy rain. The central building there is glass. It is lined with skulls.
First, we need to define a ‘Communist’. Christians lived in communal communities. Is the Roman Catholic Church ‘Communist’? Or, does it require a lack of hierarchy? As you should know, the word, ‘communist’, is now an almost pure evaluative in our current culture with a very limited descriptive component.
Next, we need to realize that the Pol Pot and Ho Chi Minh ‘communists’ were (like Al Qaeda) actually supported by the United States. Check out Tuchman for confirmation. AND, don’t forget that the ‘killing fields’ were carpet bombed in an indiscriminate manner by the US, so who knows where those shreds of clothing came from? Got proof they weren’t a result of American bombs?
Yes, atrocities were committed in Cambodia, but don’t forget that the US was involved (in an effort to ‘fight Japan’).
Daedalus,
In Cambodia, the people know who was responsible for the killing fields. I visited a high school that had been converted to a torture chamber. The walls were lined with the photos of thousands of men, women, teens, right before they were executed. They were executed by Pol Pot and his troops. Pol Pot sent every educated person out of the cities and made a point of killing medical doctors and teachers. This was not done by US carpet bombing.
There is a large tree on the killing fields where Pol Pot’s soldiers would slam the heads of babies, to kill them. Now, people hang mementos on the tree to memorialize the babies. The babies were not killed by US carpet bombing. They were individually killed, one by one. The bits of cloth on the ground were not remnants of carpet bombing. I guess you have to go there and see for yourself.
Not everything bad in the world is the fault of the US.
Could be. I can’t afford to go there, and even if I could I wasn’t present to see those events. I’m willing to believe that Pol Pot was not so good, or at least that he unleashed a rather bad tendency for people to hate one another. On the other hand, the US did support Pot (as an anti-Japanese and anti Chinese entity). If the US doesn’t want to be blamed, it should stay out of countries halfway around the world.
But, isn’t this blog supposed to concentrate upon American ‘education’, as in public education and, perhaps’ it’s interaction with other options? Why has this degenerated into a discussion about foreign policy?
It’s my blog and I focus on education. But democracy is crucial in the world, so I write about that too. And about anything else that I find interesting.
Yep.
However, ‘controlling the narrative’ is ‘teaching’, it’s not education.
Funny thing is, if you ‘educate’ instead of ‘teach’, you often can continue to learn.