HuffPost Religion Round-Up: September 18-24

It has been a busy week on HuffPost Religion. Many of us prayed, watched with horor and mourned the execution of Troy Davis, wondering how the death penalty could be construed as pro-life. A new HuffPost Religion blogger, Rev. J.C. Austin, challenged and reminded us that another man, accused of a horrible hate crime was also executed. Are we also Lawrence Brewer?

We had a couple interesting reports this week starting with a survey that revealed that your view of God affects how you understand the unemployment crisis in the United Sates. In short, if you believe that God is directly involved in your every day life you are a less likely to want the government to intervene. There are others, however, who believe that the Bible is pretty clear about caring for the vulnerable and who lobbied for higher taxes on the wealthy, apparently inspired by Greg Carey's ON Scripture reflection on Ezekiel's vision for a just economic future .

And they say theology doesn't matter...

In another surprising report we learned that the majority of serious scientists believe that science and religion are not in conflict, which certainly was reinforced by Hindu blogger, Gadadhara Pandit Dasa, who sees the spiritual truths in his own tradition in harmony with science. But are evangelicals willing to hang with this? Another poll found them increasingly out of step with the rest of the country when it came to global climate change and evolution, which made blogger Karl Giberson wonder why evangelicals were more likely to accept "pseudoscience."

We had a somewhat scathing critic of western Buddhism by blogger Owen Flanagan, who questioned bourgeois Buddhists. Yet the same week we had a piece by Zesho Susan O'Connell about the difficulty and danger of practicing Zen, and an excerpt from Jack Kornfield's new book "A Lamp In The Darkness" that focused on the activism that must accompany spiritual discipline.

In any tradition, authentic religion depends on what you bring to it.

Speaking of what you bring to it -- we have a new philosophical segment called "Is That All There Is?" curated by a young sophist named Dimitri Hamlin. His opening piece on nihilism earns Dimitri the enormous honor of Post Of The Week. Deep meaning, existential questioning, all presented by an "ontological anarchist." It's going to be fun! And speaking of fun: Here is your sacred sounds video of the week compliments of The Bhakti Beat -- yeah, its the same old harmonica-playing swami you have seen a hundred times before.

May you have a great week and be blessed as you bless others.
Peace, Peace, Peace,
Paul

 

 

 

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Comments

[rationaljimmy]

10:08 AM on 09/26/2011

Furthermore, serious scientists, who happen to be atheist and who meditate and who ponder the beauty of sunsets are brave enough to say that none of those pursuits requires a belief in things without evidence. I admire their courage. I hope they chose not to participate in that 'survey'.

[rationaljimmy]

10:03 AM on 09/26/2011

We did not learn this week that "the majority of serious scientists believe that science and religion are not in conflict". To the contrary: we learned that surveys can produce whatever results they want, depending on how broad the questions, and how broad the survey group. Anyone paying attention to this false 'debate' between religion and science assumes that by 'religion' one means 'belief in the supernatural, or other evidence-free ideas, and almost certainly belief in 'god'. Any other definition of religion, like the preposterous inclusion of 'meditation' in the survey, is essentially a lie, and a perpetuation of falsehoods about scientists and science. The inclusion of economists and social scientists as "serious scientists" in the group further belies the 'results'. These 'scientists' are not generally involved in any of the current discussions, because their fields of study do not touch on these issues. Try getting serious about real ideas and real surveys if you want to play a part in real discussions.

The fact that Giberson actually wonders why evangelicals like pseudoscience is telling in itself. If one believes things of the greatest importance to one's 'soul' without the slightest evidence, then one certainly would believe things of lesser importance, like alien visitations or climategate.

[Pro-Reformation]

04:02 PM on 09/25/2011

I think it is great that HuffingtonPost has this forum welcoming people of all faiths, and treating all religions as valid and part of the world family of religions.

The Founding Fathers would applaud you, as is evident by what they wrote about religion and religious tolerance. See http://messenger2.cjcmp.org/foundingfathers.html

During the last ten years increasing numbers of people have realized the need for religious freedom and religious pluralism, and many scholars have been saying what needs to be said. They too should be applauded.

However, you should know that one man saw the need back in 1978, and he began writing what many have since realized.

He has been writing text since 1984, but his first works were songs, written between 1978 and 1982. But he knew they were way ahead of their time. He saw the ominous signs of the terrible things to come, and he didn't record his songs until 2009, after Obama won the presidency.

You can hear his songs at http://www.soundclick.com/ttap