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ken meece

Think Again: God - By Karen Armstrong | Foreign Policy - 1 views

www.foreignpolicy.com/...god_0

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shared by ken meece on 19 Oct 09 - Cached
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • In the Middle East, overly aggressive secularization has sometimes backfired, making the religious establishment more conservative, or even radical.
avivajazz jazzaviva

Why Voters Aren't Motivated by a Laundry List of Positions on Issues | George Lakoff - 0 views

www.alternet.org/...ry_list_of_positions_on_issues

obama ethics fear fearmongering ultraconservatives rightwing fundamentalists propaganda charisma unethical healthreform healthcare reform politics

shared by avivajazz jazzaviva on 29 Aug 09 - Cached
  • avivajazz jazzaviva on 29 Aug 09
     
    Obama, letting policy wonks sell his healthcare reform, fails. Why? Policymakers share a list, not a unifying idea.
avivajazz jazzaviva

Salon.com News | Meet the man who changed Glenn Beck's life - 0 views

www.salon.com/...print.html

glennbeck #glennbeck glenn beck cleon skousen skousen right-wing ultraconservative conservative fundamentalist

shared by avivajazz jazzaviva on 17 Sep 09 - Cached
  • avivajazz jazzaviva on 17 Sep 09
     
    Cleon Skousen was a right-wing crank whom even conservatives despised. Then Beck discovered him
avivajazz jazzaviva

Ignorance & Bigotry: The Tragedy of the 9.12 DC Tea Party | Watch & Weep | NewLeft VIDEO - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

#912dc #teaparty 912 project teaparty rallies demonstrations protests conservatives ultraconservatives wingnuts rightwing extremist extremists bigotry racism ignorance fundamentalist propaganda

shared by avivajazz jazzaviva on 16 Sep 09 - Cached
  • avivajazz jazzaviva on 16 Sep 09
     
    Mindboggling ignorance, bigotry, racism, and...dare I say it? stupidity! There's a tiny seed of truth, of genuine fear, rage, and hope for the future. A very, very, very TINY seed. The rest of what's on display here? It's a dramatic demonstration of how the Nazi Holocaust could have occurred on everyone's watch.
  • avivajazz jazzaviva on 16 Sep 09
     
    Mindboggling ignorance, bigotry, racism, and...dare I say it? stupidity! There's a tiny seed of truth, of genuine fear, rage, and hope for the future. A very, very, very TINY seed. The rest of what's on display here? It's a dramatic demonstration of how the Nazi Holocaust could have occurred on everyone's watch. Glenn Beck and FOX News wreak destruction, suffering, and misery on this country--and their audience, having little ability or willingness to think for themselves, find sustenance and solace in that prepackaged propaganda (agit-prop). "Thank G-d for Glenn Beck," they gush. They've been saved.
ken meece

AlterNet: The Nightmare of Christianity: How Religious Indoctrination Led to Murder - 0 views

www.alternet.org/...142605

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shared by ken meece on 11 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is among the 2.5 million Americans who have attended Gothard's Basic Seminar. According to Huckabee, who once earmarked state funds to distribute Gothard's literature in Arkansas prisons, Gothard was responsible for "some of the best programs for instilling character into people."
  • Oral Roberts University. ORU at the time was beginning to unravel under the weight of scandalous revelations that its new president, Richard Roberts--the scion of its beloved founder--had allegedly looted university coffers to pay for his daughter's junkets to the Bahamas and bankroll his wife's shopping sprees. (Oral Roberts's other son, Ronnie, was a cocaine-addicted closet homosexual who committed suicide in 1982)
  • "Discipleship Training School" of Youth with a Mission (YWAM), a Christian Reconstructionist-inspired missionary group that trained bright-eyed youngsters to spread the gospel of Colorado Springs to under-evangelized Third World nations.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • another student of YWAM bluntly put it, the school's training methods resembled "cult mind-controlling techniques."
  • Crowley's mock-religious order, Ordo Templi Orientis, following in the footsteps of famous Crowley followers such as Scientology cult founder L. Ron Hubbard and Jack Parsons, the eccentric rocket fuel inventor who prayed to the Greek god Pan after each successful launch.
  • Crowley, like him, was raised by fundamentalist Christian parents he loathed.
  • Crowley's philosophy of sex "magick," narcotic hallucination and self-degradation (he allegedly ordered his followers to have oral sex with goats and drink the blood of cats) was forged in reaction to his parents' Puritanism and, in fact, was first practiced in English boarding schools, where homosexual experimentation was practically de rigueur.
  • neo-evangelical macho Christ
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