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Contents contributed and discussions participated by ken meece

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

www.foreignpolicy.com/...god_0

ReadItLater

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.
ken meece

Charter For Compassion :: stories - 0 views

charterofcompassion.org/stories

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

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

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

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shared by ken meece on 22 Mar 09 - Cached
  • "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 - Cached
  • 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.
ken meece

First Council of Nicea - 1 views

webulite.com/1706

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

Beyond Greed - 0 views

beyondgreed.blogspot.com

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

AlphaDawg's Mandala - 0 views

bentrem.sycks.net

shared by ken meece on 10 Nov 08 - Cached
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 - Cached
  • 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 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.
ken meece

We Are Stardust, We Are Pond Scum - 0 views

natbs.info/...-are-stardust-we-are-pond-scum

devine profane

shared by ken meece on 22 Jul 08 - Cached
  • ken meece on 22 Jul 08
     
    Perhaps humanity is a contronym, a word which is it's own antonym, like awful.
ken meece

Salon.com Books | Religion is poetry - 0 views

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

religion

shared by ken meece on 22 Jul 08 - Cached
  • ken meece on 22 Jul 08
     
    Religion is poetry
ken meece

The Lost Gospel: Book Review by Laura Knight-Jadczyk - 0 views

www.cassiopaea.org/...lost_gospel.htm

bible science spirituality

shared by ken meece on 22 Jul 08 - Cached
Arne Løining liked it
  • ken meece on 22 Jul 08
     
    The Book of Q and Christian Origins
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