religion

10 Sep 09

20 Mar 09

Religion: News & Videos about Religion - CNN.com

Tens of thousands of people packed a soccer stadium in Cameroon Thursday, including President Paul Biya and his wife, for the first large-scale mass of Pope Benedict XVI's first visit to Africa."><link type="application/rss+xml" rel="alternate" title="CNN - News & Videos about Religion [RSS]" href="http://topics.cnn.com/topics/feeds/rss/Religion

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readitlater religion sites

22 Jul 08

Salon.com Books | Religion is poetry

Religion is poetry

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religion

13 Jul 08

John Templeton, Philanthropist of Science and Religion, Dead at 95: Scientific American

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religion science

28 May 08

Religion is a product of evolution, software suggests - New Scientist

God may work in mysterious ways, but a simple computer program may explain how religion evolved By distilling religious belief into a genetic predisposition to pass along unverifiable information, the program predicts that religion will flourish. However, religion only takes hold if non-believers help believers out – perhaps because they are impressed by their devotion.

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religion science

"If a person is willing to sacrifice for an abstract god then people feel like they are willing to sacrifice for the community,"
Theories on the evolution of religion tend toward two camps. One argues that religion is a mental artefact, co-opted from brain functions that evolved for other tasks.

Aiding the people

Another contends that religion benefited our ancestors. Rather than being a by-product of other brain functions, it is an adaptation in its own right. In this explanation, natural selection slowly purged human populations of the non-religious.
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- The model assumes, in other words, that a small number of people have a genetic predisposition to communicate unverifiable information to others. They passed on that trait to their children, but they also interacted with people who didn't spread unreal information.
  
  The model looks at the reproductive success of the two sorts of people – those who pass on real information, and those who pass on unreal information.
- Under most scenarios, "believers in the unreal" went extinct. But when Dow included the assumption that non-believers would be attracted to religious people because of some clear, but arbitrary, signal, religion flourished.

15 May 08

The Neural Buddhists - New York Times

the genetic and neuroscience revolutions would affect public debate. They would kick off another fundamental argument over whether God exists.

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science religion neuroscience

the militant materialism of some modern scientists.

To these self-confident researchers, the idea that the spirit might exist apart from the body is just ridiculous. Instead, everything arises from atoms. Genes shape temperament. Brain chemicals shape behavior. Assemblies of neurons create consciousness. Free will is an illusion. Human beings are “hard-wired” to do this or that. Religion is an accident.

In this materialist view, people perceive God’s existence because their brains have evolved to confabulate belief systems.
the genetic and neuroscience revolutions would affect public debate. They would kick off another fundamental argument over whether God exists.
6 more annotations...
- The cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it’s going to end up challenging faith in the Bible.
- This new wave of research will not seep into the public realm in the form of militant atheism. Instead it will lead to what you might call neural Buddhism.
- First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is.
- the faithful have been defending the existence of God. That was the easy debate.
- The real challenge is going to come from people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits.
- In unexpected ways, science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other. That’s bound to lead to new movements that emphasize self-transcendence but put little stock in divine law or revelation.

04 May 08

Salon.com | Wright's theology not "new or radical"

Black religion expert Jonathan Walton on black liberation theology's roots in slavery, MLK Jr.'s "God damn America moment" and what Jeremiah Wright has in common with Gennifer Flowers.

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religion politics

Luke 4:18 -- "Preach the Gospel to the poor, heal the brokenhearted, set the captives free, offer sight to the blind and liberate those who are oppressed" is one verse that is central to the black theology of liberation. Another one is Matthew 25:40 -- "As you have done unto the least of these, you have done it unto me."
white supremacy is akin to what the New Testament refers to as "principalities and powers."

The Christian Right and the Rise of American Fascism by Chris Hedges

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religion fascism

Christian fundamentalists now
hold a majority of seats in 36 percent of all Republican Party
state committees, or 18 of 50 states, along with large minorities
in 81 percent of the rest of the states. Forty-five Senators and
186 members of the House of Representatives earned between an
80 to100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential
Christian Right advocacy groups - The Christian Coalition, Eagle
Forum, and Family Resource Council.
Bush may turn out to be a transition figure,
our version of Otto von Bismarck. Bismarck used "values"
to energize his base at the end of the 19 th century and launched
"Kulturkampt", the word from which we get "culture
wars," against Catholics and Jews. Bismarck 's attacks split
the country, made the discrediting of whole segments of the society
an acceptable part of the civil discourse and paved the way for
the more virulent racism of the Nazis. This, I suspect, will be
George Bush's contribution to our democracy.
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- The Reconstructionist movement, founded
  in 1973
- 1,600 page three-volume work, Institutes of Biblical
  Law
- an ideology that advocated
  violence to create the Christian state
- The world
  was to be subdued and ruled by a Christian United States.
- Promise Keepers
- These leaders believe that God has selected them
  to battle the forces of evil, embodied in "secular humanism,"
  to create a Christian nation.
- One of the most enlightening books that
  exposes the ultimate goals of movement is America's Providential
  History
- The book denounces
  income tax as "idolatry," property tax as "theft"
  and calls for an abolish of inheritance taxes in the chapter entitled
  Christian Economics. The loss of such tax revenues will bring
  about the withering away of the federal government and the empowerment
  of the authoritarian church
- Dominionists have to operate, for now,
  in the contaminated environment of the secular, liberal state.
  They have learned, therefore, to speak in code. The code they
  use is the key to understanding the dichotomy of the movement,
  one that has a public and a private face. In this they are no
  different from the vanguard, as described by Lenin, or the Islamic
  terrorists who shave off their beards, adopt western dress and
  watch pay-for-view pornographic movies in their hotel rooms the
  night before hijacking a plane for a suicide attack.
- The Christian Right finds its ideological
  justification in a narrow segment of the Gospel, in particular
  the letters of the Apostle Paul, especially the story of Paul's
  conversion on the road to Damascus in the Book of Acts. It draws
  heavily from the book of Revelations and the Gospel of John. These
  books share an apocalyptic theology. The Book of Revelations is
  the only time in the Gospels where Jesus sanctions violence, offering
  up a vision of Christ as the head of a great and murderous army
  of heavenly avengers.
- These books rarely speak about Christ's
  message of love, forgiveness and compassion. They focus on the
  doom and destruction that will befall unbelievers and the urgent
  need for personal salvation. The world is divided between good
  and evil, between those who act as agents of God and those who
  act as agents of Satan. The Jesus of the other three Gospels,
  the Jesus who turned the other cheek and embraced his enemies,
  an idea that was radical and startling in the ancient Roman world,
  is purged in the narrative selected by the Christian Right.
- The cult of masculinity pervades the ideology.
- This image of Christ as warrior is appealing
  to many within the movement. The loss of manufacturing jobs, lack
  of affordable health care, negligible opportunities for education
  and poor job security has left many millions of Americans locked
  out. This ideology is attractive because it offers them the hope
  of power and revenge. It sanctifies their rage. It stokes the
  paranoia about the outside world maintained through bizarre conspiracy
  theories, many on display in Pat Robertson's book The New World
  Order .
- Only by reintegrating the working
  class into society through job creation, access to good education
  and health care can the Christian Right be effectively blunted.
- "Any teaching of peace prior to [Christ's]
  return is heresy."
- the 9 th chapter of the Book of Revelations where four angels
  "which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released
  to slay the third part of men." The march towards global
  war, even nuclear war, is not to be feared but welcomed as the
  harbinger of the Second Coming. And leading the avenging armies
  is an angry, violent Messiah who dooms millions of non-believers
  to a horrible and painful death.
- The movement seeks the imprint of law
  and science. It must discredit the rational disciplines that are
  the pillars of the Enlightenment to abolish the liberal polity
  of the Enlightenment. This corruption of science and law is vital
  in promoting the doctrine.
- Facts become interchangeable with opinions. An understanding of
  reality is not to be based on the elaborate gathering of facts
  and evidence. The ideology alone is true.
- "What convinces masses are not facts,"
  Hannah Arendt wrote in Origins of Totalitarianism, "and
  not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system
  which they are presumably part. Repetition, somewhat overrated
  in importance because of the common belief in the "masses"
  inferior capacity to grasp and remember, is important because
  it convinces them of consistency in time."
- watch closely what the
  Christian Right did to homosexuals. He has seen how the Nazis
  had used "values" to launch state repression of opponents.
- The attacks on homosexuals handed to the foot soldiers
  of the Christian Right an easy target. It gave them a taste of
  victory. It made them feel empowered.
- All debates with the Christian Right are
  useless. We cannot reach this movement. It does not want a dialogue.
  It cares nothing for rational thought and discussion. It is not
  mollified because John Kerry prays or Jimmy Carter teaches Sunday
  School. These naive attempts to reach out to a movement bent on
  our destruction, to prove to them that we too have "values,"
  would be humorous if the stakes were not so deadly. They hate
  us. They hate the liberal, enlightened world formed by the Constitution.
  Our opinions do not count.
- The spark that could set it ablaze may
  be lying in the hands of an Islamic terrorist cell, in the hands
  of the ideological twins of the Christian Right. Another catastrophic
  terrorist attack could be our Reichstag fire, the excuse used
  to begin the accelerated dismantling of our open society. The
  ideology of the Christian Right is not one of love and compassion,
  the central theme of Christ's message, but of violence and hatred.
  It has a strong appeal to many in our society, but it is also
  aided by our complacency.

28 Apr 08

Salon.com Life | You are the river: An interview with Ken Wilber

The integral philosopher explains the difference between religion, New Age fads and the ultimate reality that traditional science can't touch.

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religion science mysticism

05 Apr 08

Godchecker.com - Your Guide To The Gods. Mythology with a twist!

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religion mythology reference

27 Mar 08

INTEGRALWORLD.NET - EXPLORING THEORIES OF EVERYTHING

COnventional Wisdom of the DUmiNant Group
From my book: Science, Religion, Education and a lot of Bull

scientific and religious fundamentalists join hands in their fight against natural spirituality originated in expanded consciousness and rational thinking: active perception, active intelligence and active ethics.

www.integralworld.net/index.html - Preview

natural spirituality religion science wilber

25 Mar 08

Where angels no longer fear to tread

Science and religion have often been at loggerheads. Now the former has decided to resolve the problem by trying to explain the existence of the latter

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religion science

23 Mar 08

Proto-Indo-European religion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The existence of similarities among the deities and religious practices of the Indo-European peoples allows glimpses of a common Proto-Indo-European religion and mythology. This hypothetical religion would have been the ancestor of the majority of the religions of pre-Christian Europe, of the Indian religions, and of Zoroastrianism in Iran.

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indo-european religion

Zoroastrianism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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apocalypticism eschatology religion zoroastrianism

- There is one universal and transcendental God, Ahura Mazda, the one Uncreated Creator to whom all worship is ultimately directed.
- Ahura Mazda's creation — evident as asha, truth and order — is the antithesis of chaos, evident as druj, falsehood and disorder. The resulting conflict involves the entire universe, including humanity, which has an active role to play in the conflict.
- Active participation in life through good thoughts, good words and good deeds is necessary to ensure happiness and to keep the chaos at bay. This active participation is a central element in Zoroaster's concept of free will, and Zoroastrianism rejects all forms of monasticism.
Ahura Mazda will ultimately prevail, at which point the universe will undergo a cosmic renovation and time will end (cf: Zoroastrian eschatology). In the final renovation, all of creation — even the souls of the dead that were initially banished to "darkness" — will be reunited in Ahura Mazda.
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- In Zoroastrian tradition the malevolent is represented by Angra Mainyu, the "Destructive Principle", while the benevolent is represented through Ahura Mazda's Spenta Mainyu, the instrument or "Bounteous Principle" of the act of creation. It is through Spenta Mainyu that Ahura Mazda is immanent in humankind, and through which the Creator interacts with the world.

Freedom of thought and of religion

Article 145 of the Constitution of Guyana provides as follows:
145. (1) Except with his own consent, no person shall be hindered in the enjoyment of his freedom of conscience, and for the purposes of this article the said freedom includes freedom of thought and of religion, freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others, and both in public and in private, to manifest and propagate his religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance.

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Freedom religion thought

Mixing medicine with religion may limit our potential

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medicine religion

12 Feb 08

Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia - Book Reviews - Books

Even before you open John Gray's book, its cover tells you to be afraid, to be very afraid.

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apocalyptic john Gray religion utopia

05 Feb 08

BYU NewsNet - Lecture Examines Evolution, Religion

Nelson, a professor in the College of Biology and Agriculture, explained in his lecture titled "Evolution, Science, Religion: Overlaps and Boundaries," that neither faith, nor science alone can answer every inquiry.

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religion science

31 Jan 08

Faith and Science Not Mutually Exclusive

"A New Voice Arising: A Pastoral Letter on Faith Engaging Science and Technology,"

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dialogue religion science

"Many today are hungering for an authentic spirituality that is intellectually honest and at home in a scientific era," the UCC's pastoral letter states. "They are searching for a new kind of wisdom to live by, one that is scientifically sophisticated, technologically advanced, morally just, ecologically sustainable, and spiritually alive."

Cleric Urges a Science and Religion Dialogue - New York Times

Faith is not a matter of “clinging to ancient misconceptions.” “Today one of God’s most provocative voices is science.”

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dialogue religion science

ken meece's Library tagged religion → View Popular

The Immanent Frame

Religion: News & Videos about Religion - CNN.com

Salon.com Books | Religion is poetry

John Templeton, Philanthropist of Science and Religion, Dead at 95: Scientific American

Religion is a product of evolution, software suggests - New Scientist

Aiding the people

The Neural Buddhists - New York Times

Salon.com | Wright's theology not "new or radical"

The Christian Right and the Rise of American Fascism by Chris Hedges

Salon.com Life | You are the river: An interview with Ken Wilber

Godchecker.com - Your Guide To The Gods. Mythology with a twist!

INTEGRALWORLD.NET - EXPLORING THEORIES OF EVERYTHING

Where angels no longer fear to tread

Proto-Indo-European religion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Zoroastrianism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Freedom of thought and of religion

Mixing medicine with religion may limit our potential

Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia - Book Reviews - Books

BYU NewsNet - Lecture Examines Evolution, Religion

Faith and Science Not Mutually Exclusive

Cleric Urges a Science and Religion Dialogue - New York Times

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