As a student of politics, my classes often ask me to take historical events and common themes to predict the outcome of a number of given contemporary scenarios (Note my position on political predictions). Iran seems to be the example that comes up more often than any other. Iran is an interesting case because it is attempting to force the international community to accept its terms of negotiation with very few concessions. The most common consensus is that Iran will have no future if it doesn’t liberalize. Oil profits will only get them so far.
Over at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen, there is a discussion about the prospects of Islam liberalizing so its values can come more into line with those of the modern western world:
Over the next few decades, it will not surprise me if major Muslim leaders begin emphasizing how Islam preserved the works of great philosophers and fostered scientific learning throughout the Middle Ages as evidence of their faith’s integral relationship with science and modernity. In fact, it’s already pretty common to hear similar talking points from moderate Islamic leaders in the United States and Europe.
Christianity has taken a similar direction over the last millennium, culminating in Vatican II for the Catholic Church. However, there are a few aspects of Islam’s current political position that could potentially hinder liberalization and even potentially exacerbate international isolation. Primarily, liberalism is a western construct, created in the Judeo-Christian mindset. As Europe moved towards more liberal societies, Islam evolved in a different direction. Liberalism emerged at a time when Europeans were able to accept a move away from divinity. To date, Islam has not shown great progress in this direction.
I realize that the author of the post isn’t expecting Islam to become fully liberalized and modernized in the next few decades–Christianity still has problems reconciling itself with enlightenment thought–and I agree that we will probably be seeing a more religiously tame Islam emerge in the coming decades. As for Islam on a global stage, this will be harder to predict. Countries such as Turkey have managed to balance Islam and the idea of a modern state. Then there is, of course, the relatively young state of Iran, who is the opposite. From Andrew Sullivan.
Do you think we can officially label the Westboro Baptist Church culture-jammers yet? Today, they made an appearance at Sasha and Malia Obama’s school as part of their organized effort to show children that God hates them. Counterproductive? Yes, particularly considering the witty response by school faculty and students. Serious? Yes, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the Westboro Baptist Church ended up being a group of radical anarchists operating under a guise of a right-wing religious organization (a la The Yest Men). Wait, strike that, I would be surprised.
Highlights from the Conservapedia page about their most recent undertaking: taking the liberal bias out of the bible:
- Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias….
- Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop; defective translations use the word “comrade” three times as often as “volunteer”; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as “word”, “peace”, and “miracle”….
- Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning
- Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story
…
Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
Is this a liberal corruption of the original? This does not appear in any other Gospel, and the simple fact is that some of the persecutors of Jesus did know what they were doing. This quotation is a favorite of liberals but should not appear in a conservative Bible.
…
Socialistic terminology permeates English translations of the Bible, without justification. This improperly encourages the “social justice” movement among Christians.
Note: I first wrote about Conservapedia in 2007.
So I was out of town again last week and I didn’t get back until Sunday. As you may be able to tell, I’m not really one that enjoys traveling with computers unless completely necessary. I went to check the RSS feeds that I had left for the seven days prior and discovered a new “Atheist’s Wager” being propagated throughout the blogosphere via social news sites. This new defense of atheism was being marketed as a “clever rebuttal” to Blaise Pascal’s famous wager about the existence of God:
Pensées, no. 680. “Pascal’s Wager”:
Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate the two chances. If you win, you win everything; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then without hesitation that He is!
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In the final episode of the HBO miniseries “Band of Brothers“, World War II had ended and the men of the 101st airborne were trying to figure out how to pass the time. Sadly, the official peace declarations did not put an end to the death in the 101st. People were still being reckless and held grudges resulting in the deaths of a few people.
As I was reading Philip Gourevitch’s “We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families” this evening, I couldn’t help but realize that a similar type thing happened after the genocide in Rwanda. About a year after the genocide, there was a large refugee camp in a town in southern Rwanda called Kibeho that held a couple hundred thousand misplaced persons. In one night, 2000 to 3000 people were killed in this camp. Mind you, this was after the genocide had ended. This was a camp that was supposed to be peaceful and safe for refugees.
Both Band of Brothers and the killings in Kibeho got me thinking about the ends of wars. Has there ever been a war that has ended “cleanly”? For the United States, once we pull out of a country there is no more killing of our soldiers but the people in the occupied contries still kill each other. If there is never a clean ending, shouldn’t we think of the signing of treaties more as the beginning of the end than the clear cut ending?
I guess history needs a set date for posterity’s sake but I think the end of the war should be marked in the history books as the date of the last official death of a soldier that is deployed during the war. This would be more respectful and honorable to those who gave their lives to serve their cause, even after the goal has been “accomplished”.
Technorati Tags: war
With all of the recent news about religious illiteracy in the United States, I got to wondering not just how well people know the stories in the bible but if people even know which books belong in which testament of the bible. So I put together a little survey.
The idea is simple. Just match the books of the bible to their corresponding testament. You don’t even have to read the bible to know this stuff. I’m trying to get a lot of people to do this of various backgrounds so please send it to your friends.
Technorati Tags: bible, christian, religion, survey
Earlier this week, the Catholic Diocese of San Diego filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy. This topic will not be discussed in the post but will help to explain the events that are covered.
My church sits atop a large hill in San Diego overlooking the ocean. There is a large window in the front of the church with eucalyptus trees behind it. Behind them you can see the pristine waters of of the Pacific Ocean. The street in front of the church is at an incline and the church is slightly lower than the street, on level ground.
It is Sunday, the sabbath. In church today, I had no place to sit but with my mother in the choir. I am now an unofficial member. Though cool for me, this is not the amazing event of which this writing for. After the priest had left church and the choir stopped with their final round “Parce domine, parce populo…” the congregants slowly began making their way to the exit.
I was among the last of those to leave with my mother. As we were standing outside, my mom greeting various people and slowly trying to make her way to the choir room to put her robes away. We were not quite to the door yet when the education minister, kind of the mother figure of the church, came up behind us pointing to the sidewalk next to the street, yelling “What in the world is that?”
It was surreal. It took a minute for me to register. The first thing I saw was a man in a black suit jumping up and down next to a music stand. A man was standing next to him with a video camera and another man was across the street with a video camera. “Oh no,” I thought to myself. “More people out condemning the Catholic church.”
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Out of my new encyclopedia of quotations:
Pensées, no. 680. “Pascal’s Wager”:
Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate the two chances. If you win, you win everything; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then without hesitation that He is!
Pensées, no. 894:
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction
Cross posted to Newsvine.
The other day, I entered a discussion with my math teacher (who happens to have a philosophy degree) on the subject of global warming. It is his position that global warming has been blown out of proportion and is not extremely different than the climate changes that have happened throughout the world’s history. What is going on right now is, in fact, smaller than what has happened before. I saw what he was doing, he even explained it. He was trying to get us to research a topic and come to our own conclusions.
My evangelical friends, however, took it a different way. I have recently branched off of the average Creation debates I have with these friends and have ventured into the touchy subject of global warming or, so the Christianists have redubbed it, climate change. A few weeks ago I asked a one friend whether he believed global warming was happening or not and he replied that he didn’t because “God wouldn’t allow that to happen to the earth before Jesus comes” (That might not be exaclty right but that is what I got out of it). Global Warming and the return of Jesus is a topic for another time but my position now is: “Why does it matter?”
Regardless of whether global warming is happening or not, we should be taking measures to cut down our contribution to the degredation of this planet and its precious resources. Like it or not, we are stuck here for at least the next couple decades, why not make the world a more livable place while we’re here? American’s are too stubborn and large corporations enjoy profits too much. This is the way it was with sweatshops in the late 1990s, until somebody protested the mistreatment of workers. More recently, those who protested the treatment of the environment are labelled as hippies or tree-huggers. Luckily however, green has started to become cool. Corporations are realizing that environmentalists are a lucrative market and major grocery stores have started providing more organic foods.
This is just a small step in the right direction but small steps lead to big changes in the long run. The United States has a tendency to let problems just grow and grow until one day everything explodes in their face but this will not be so with global warming. If the earth is indeed getting warmer, then the signs will be more subtle and, by the time we realize what is happening, it will most likely be too late.
Jesus Camp is the sort of movie that needs to be watched at home with a group of people. I say this because the movie brings up so many points that need to be discussed that one cannot possibly remember them after seeing the movie at a theater.
Overall, Jesus Camp was an amazing movie. The editing was awesome and the viewpoint was very objective. It told the story from both sides and showed everybody in a human way. The kids are innocent and playful. The camp owner is charismatic and kind. The parents looked like they were genuinely looking out for their kids’ best interests.
There was, however, the matter of isolationism. The parents didn’t want their kids going to public schools because schools were no longer based on “Judeo-Christian values”. Instead of watching Spongebob or Sesame Street, the kids watched videos about creationism and were quizzed about whether global warming was real by their parents.
If you never let the kids see the “real” world, how will they be able to decipher what they want to believe or not believe? When they are indoctrinated at a young age, there is no chance for doubt to arise. Any doubt that does arise is called the “work of the devil”. When it comes time for these kids to go to college and get jobs, they will be forced to see all of the things that have been hidden from them for their entire childhood. This will be shocking and some will have a very difficult time getting over it.
The crowd at the theater last night was pretty mixed. A lot of people laughed at the idea of people praying and speaking tongues to president bush (to which the person behind me reminded everybody that doing this is what kept the church’s tax exempt status).
I would definitely recommend this movie. The evangelical movement is one of the most important forces in current affairs and is bound to shape society for years to come.
Technorati Tags: jesuscamp, movie, religion, christian
I have recently added a couple new items to the list of things I should probably not leave home without. First is a moleskine notebook. I know I am just following the internet “cool kids” with this one but these little books are amazing. I carry around a small un-ruled notebook and jot down notes and things I should remember.
The other item I have started carrying around is a rosary. I fell in love with this set of beads last weekend when I was attending the Steubenville San Diego catholic conference for teens. It is amazing because, after you are done praying a decade, you don’t remember what you were thinking about before.
Technorati Tags: catholic, moleskine, rosary, sandiego, steubenville
For as long as I can remember there has been a cross on top of Mount Soledad in San Diego. And for as long as I can remember there has been a legal battle going on around the cross. On one side are the people that say it is a war memorial that should be preserved. On the other are the people that claim it is a violation of church and state to have a christian symbol on city property. I have naturally assumed that the supporters of the cross are Christians, but the Voice of San Diego has an interview with a leading imam in San Diego who also supports the cross.
As Muslims, we believe this is the freedom of the people here, because the majority of the people here are Christians, they are free to have this monument there and it shows the Christianity here.
So we are not against that thing, because it’s the majority of the people. So we don’t have any problem if we see people going to the church or those things. Because we don’t see this as fighting between religions. We support each other. We support the believers who go into the church, who go into the synagogue, who go into the mosque. Today, our fighting is with the secular, with those people who don’t believe in God. We believe in God and we support the Christians. We support the believers, the Jewish who believe in God, who believe in values.
Today we have a problem with people who don’t have values. I don’t see any problem with the Christians and with this cross in La Jolla.
Technorati Tags: christian, cross, lajolla, mountsoledad, muslim, sandiego
I was confirmed… (In the picture, I was looking at another camera)
Technorati Tags: catholic, christianity, confrimation, teen, weekend
Tomorrow night, starting at 8PM eastern time and 9PM pacific, there will be a television special about the Gospel of Judas on the National Geographic Channel. I will try to watch it and have a follow up post sometime in the next couple days.
Technorati Tags: gospel, gospelofjudas, jesus, judas, nationalgeographic, religion, television
