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ken meece

Think Again: God - By Karen Armstrong | Foreign Policy - 0 views

www.foreignpolicy.com/...god_0

ReadItLater

shared by ken meece on 19 Oct 09 - Snapshot
  • An
    inadequate understanding of God that reduces “him” to an idol in our own image
    who gives our likes and dislikes sacred sanction is the worst form of spiritual
    tyranny. Such arrogance has led to atrocities like the Crusades. The rise of
    secularism in government was meant to check this tendency, but secularism
    itself has created new demons now inflicting themselves on the world.
  • In the West, secularism has been a
    success, essential to the modern economy and political system, but it was
    achieved gradually over the course of nearly 300 years, allowing new ideas of
    governance time to filter down to all levels of society. But in other parts of
    the world, secularization has occurred far too rapidly and has been resented by
    large sectors of the population,
  • Shiism had for centuries separated
    religion from politics as a matter of sacred principle, and Khomeini’s
    insistence that a cleric should become head of state was an extraordinary
    innovation.
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • In the same spirit, Hassan al-Banna
    (1906-1949), founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, began his movement by
    translating the social message of the Koran into a modern idiom, founding
    clinics, hospitals, trade unions, schools, and factories that gave workers
    insurance, holidays, and good working conditions. In other words, he aimed to
    bring the masses to modernity in an Islamic setting. The Brotherhood’s
    resulting popularity was threatening to Egypt’s secular government, which could
    not provide these services.
  • In the Middle East, overly
    aggressive secularization has sometimes backfired, making the religious
    establishment more conservative, or even radical.
  • John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama have invoked faith as
    a shared experience that binds the country together -- an approach that recognizes
    the communal power of spirituality without making any pretense to divine right.
  • it is not God or religion but violence itself -- inherent in
    human nature -- that breeds violence. As a species, we survived by killing and
    eating other animals; we also murder our own kind. So pervasive is this
    violence that it leaks into most scriptures, though these aggressive passages
    have always been balanced and held in check by other texts that promote a
    compassionate ethic based on the Golden Rule
  • "religious" wars, no matter how
    modern the tools, always begin as political ones.
  • In recent Gallup polling conducted in 35



    Muslim countries, only 7 percent of those questioned thought that the September
    11 attacks were justified. Their reasons were entirely political.
  • Fundamentalism is not conservative.
    Rather, it is highly innovative -- even heretical -- because it always develops in
    response to a perceived crisis. In their anxiety, some fundamentalists distort
    the tradition they are trying to defend.
  • All fundamentalism -- whether Jewish,
    Christian, or Muslim -- is rooted in a profound fear of annihilation.
  • The Bible
    and the Koran may have prohibited usury, but over the centuries Jews,
    Christians, and Muslims all found ways of getting around this restriction and
    produced thriving economies. It is one of the great ironies of religious
    history that Christianity, whose founder taught that it was impossible to serve
    both God and mammon, should have produced the cultural environment that, as Max
    Weber suggested in his 1905 book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,
    was integral to modern capitalism.
  • the religious critique of excessive greed is far from irrelevant.
    Although not opposed to business, the major faith traditions have tried to
    counterbalance some of the abuses of capitalism. Eastern religions, such as
    Buddhism, by means of yoga and other disciplines, try to moderate the
    aggressive acquisitiveness of the human psyche. The three monotheistic faiths
    have inveighed against the injustice of unevenly distributed wealth
  • Religion is not simply a matter of subscribing to a set of obligatory beliefs;
    it is hard work, requiring a ceaseless effort to get beyond the selfishness
    that prevents us from achieving a more humane humanity.
  • in their rebellion against the modern ethos,
    fundamentalists tend to overemphasize traditional gender roles. Unfortunately,
    frontal assaults on this patriarchal trend have often proven counterproductive.
  • But their reading of scripture is
    unprecedentedly literal. Before the modern period, few understood the first
    chapter of Genesis as an exact account of the origins of life; until the 17th
    century, theologians insisted that if a biblical text contradicted science, it
    must be interpreted allegorically.
  • Ironically, it was
    the empirical emphasis of modern science that encouraged many to regard God and
    religious language as fact rather than symbol, thus forcing religion into an
    overly rational, dogmatic, and alien literalism.
  • What
    has alienated many Muslims from the democratic ideal is not their religion but
    Western governments’ support of autocratic rulers, such as the Iranian shahs,
    Saddam Hussein, and Hosni Mubarak, who have denied people basic human and
    democratic rights.
  • a 2006 Gallup poll revealed that 46 percent of
    Americans believe that God should be the source of legislation.
  • A fatwa is not universally binding like a papal edict; rather,
    it simply expresses the opinion of the mufti who issues it. Muslims can choose
    which fatwas they adopt and thus participate in a flexible free market of
    religious thought, just as Americans can choose which church they attend.
  • Religion should be studied with the same academic
    impartiality and accuracy as the economy, politics, and social customs of a
    region, so that we learn how religion interacts with political tension, what is
    counterproductive, and how to avoid giving unnecessary offense.
ken meece

Charter For Compassion :: stories - 0 views

charterofcompassion.org/stories

shared by ken meece on 12 May 09 - Snapshot
  • ken meece
    ken meece on 12 May 09
     
    Karen Armstrong
ken meece

Concept of 'hypercosmic God' wins Templeton Prize - opinion - 16 March 2009 - New Scientist... - 0 views

www.newscientist.com/...-god-wins-templeton-prize.html

ReadItLater

shared by ken meece on 22 Mar 09 - Snapshot
  • "There must exist, beyond mere appearances … a 'veiled reality' that science does not describe but only glimpses uncertainly. In turn, contrary to those who claim that matter is the only reality, the possibility that other means, including spirituality, may also provide a window on ultimate reality cannot be ruled out, even by cogent scientific arguments."
  • So what is it, really, that is veiled? At times d'Espagnat calls it a Being or Independent Reality or even "a great, hypercosmic God". It is a holistic, non-material realm that lies outside of space and time, but upon which we impose the categories of space and time and localisation via the mysterious Kantian categories of our minds.
ken meece

Printer Friendly - 0 views

entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/...article5516624.ece

ReadItLater

shared by ken meece on 25 Jan 09 - Snapshot
  • The dramatic decline of traditional moderate forms of
    religion has resulted in a spiritual void and thus a desperate need to
    believe intensely in something.
UNIVISIONS SPIRIT CONNEXIONS

U N I V I S I O N S - 1 views

karing4u.blogspot.com

spiritual lightworkers

shared by UNIVISIONS SPIRIT CONNEXIONS on 04 Jan 09 - Snapshot
  • "You are not one of many, you are really many of ONE. Reality -- Is like an enormous crystal: Every form, every possible expression, is but a facet of that same one Jewel. Within its own context, each aspect appears complete and whole. Yet each flicker of brightness, like pieces of a huge puzzle, reaches beyond its horizon to join with that Greater Light."
  • UNIVISIONS SPIRIT CONNEXIONS
    UNIVISIONS SPIRIT CONNEXIONS on 04 Jan 09
     
    articles of love, light and inspiration
ken meece

First Council of Nicea - 0 views

webulite.com/1706

shared by ken meece on 10 Dec 08 - Snapshot
ken meece

Beyond Greed - 0 views

beyondgreed.blogspot.com

shared by ken meece on 10 Nov 08 - Snapshot
  • Bernard (ben) Tremblay
    Bernard (ben) Tremblay on 10 Nov 08
     
    I'm flattered! Alas, I swore off the "solitary blogger" thing a while back so this is rather dusty now, as is it's sister site http://basicbliss.blogspot.com
ken meece

AlphaDawg's Mandala - 0 views

bentrem.sycks.net

shared by ken meece on 10 Nov 08 - Snapshot
ken meece

Postmodern Unitarian Universalism by Robert M. Price - 0 views

www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/art_unitar.htm

robert price

shared by ken meece on 24 Feb 08 - Snapshot
  • Unitarian Universalists
    have decided that the truth is a moving target, or that the motion of the quest
    for the truth is itself the target: a way, not a destination.
  • ken meece
    ken meece on 24 Feb 08
     
    When logocentrism reigns no more, one can feel free to explore spiritual experiences without having to explain them and to account for them first. One need only approach them in the spirit of phenomenology, bracketing the ontological question, temporarily and willingly suspending disbelief as one does in a playhouse or a movie theatre. One may navigate the experience ­as­ an experience, whatever may or may not lie "behind" it. As Nagarjuna said, one need not despise that which one suspects to be ultimately phantasmal, so long as one does not mistake it for more than a pleasant phantom.
Arne Løining

Gnosis I - Boris Mouravieff - 0 views

www.bibliotecapleyades.net/...mouravieff1.pdf

esoteric religion

shared by Arne Løining on 28 Jul 08 - No snapshot
  • Arne Løining
    Arne Løining on 28 Jul 08
     
    Mouravieff argues that most of our actions and thoughts are just mechanical reactions to stimulae. We identify ourselves with those thoughts and actions and put the label "I" on them, thus giving them authorship. However, it would be more correct to speak of many "I"s. And, if we are truthful with ourselves, we will admit that these actions and thoughts do not proceed from our will but sort of "happen to us".
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