Theophobia

[Laodicean]

Here are some people of faith to emulate.

Hey, their intentions are good and they have courage!

does this prove your point, grand inquisitor?

*

If those don't - this one should:

[Saurian Tail]

Contrast with the Hopi Elders, who in the past would consider the consequences of major tribal decisions as far forward as seven generations...

"If we make this short term decision that seems good, but it has negative long term consequences, then it is not a good decision." That is critical thinking at it's best. So this takes us a step deeper into worldview. The Western Judeo/Christian worldview is fundamentally apocalyptic ... and the Hopi's worldview was not.

world·view
n. In both senses also called Weltanschauung.
1. The overall perspective from which one sees and interprets the world.
2. A collection of beliefs about life and the universe held by an individual or a group.

[Canadian_watcher]

Why Have Faith, Prayer and God Become American Jewish Taboos?
Rabbi Will Berkovitz

Before I moved to Seattle I used to work in Las Vegas. I wasn't a dealer at the Bellagio or doing weddings dressed as Elvis. I was working at one of the Conservative synagogues in the suburbs. It wasn't on the strip but it was just as colorful.

A member of the congregation, a physician, drove me to the airport at the end of my first weekend. I asked if the study of medicine brought him closer to a belief in God or further away. The Las Vegas airport is right next to the strip and I couldn't help but notice the discord between my theological question and the mega casinos glittering next to us. Without hesitating he said, "Closer. And I remember the moment," he said. "It was when I first saw the trochlea, in gross anatomy." The trochlea, he explained is a critical part of sight. It is a small round bone scarcely bigger than the head of pin that acts as a pulley. One of the tendons in the eye threads through this bone, does a 180-degree turn and attaches to the back of the eye socket. The resulting torque gives the eye the ability to track diagonally. "It was perfect engineering," he said. "And I just felt it could not be random. The design was too precise." It absolutely deepened his faith in a higher being, he said.

As a follow up question I asked whether the conversation of science and intelligent design ever comes up with his colleagues. His response was equally without hesitation. "Absolutely not." He suggested, somewhat sadly, that something in the study of medicine puts the conversation off limits -- an unwritten rule, a tacit agreement.

I have asked this question to many physicians, mostly Jewish, and the conversation virtually always follows a similar trajectory. Yes, the study of medicine has deepened their faith, brought them closer to a belief in a Something and no they would never speak to their colleagues about it. I find echoes of the Jewish experience in these conversations.

...


I strive to make the entirety of my life prayer -- a constant striving to see the Transcendent in the world and in the people around me. Our tradition has never said that prayer needs to be limited to the pages in a book.

...

"Something that is not hidden does not require faith," says the Mei Hashiloach, "only something concealed requires faith." The hidden and the revealed are woven together in the quest for the Transcendent. Yotzer Or U'vera hoshech, we say with the Shema. God forms light and creates darkness -- in the present tense, not the past. The One of all Being is still creating. Ze Eli, This is my God, declares Moses at the sea. This is my God to which Sforno says, "the everlasting First Cause, from Whom flows all existence that is impermanent and transitory." The Jewish God is everywhere and in everything. At once as imminent as a breath and as far away as the edge of the universe: The One who heals the broken hearted and binds up their wounds. The One who counts the stars and gives each one a name. Ze Eli. This is my God.

How different would our lives be if we tried to live out what we declare with Nishmat kol chai -- The breath of all that lives praises you our God. How would we pray differently if song filled our mouths as water fills the sea? Would joy flood our souls? Have we ever tried to live a life of praise as limitless as the sky? Perhaps we could never fully state our gratitude, but do we even try to live in a state of gratitude. And what would it look like if we did? This is the challenge we are commanded to say each morning when we open our eyes and our mouths for the first time -- modeh ani lefanecha. I am grateful before you for putting my soul back in my body. Great is Your faith God. Great is God's faith in us.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-will-berkovitz/finding-god-in-vegas_1_b_837381.html

[justdrew]

Contrast with the Hopi Elders, who in the past would consider the consequences of major tribal decisions as far forward as seven generations...

"If we make this short term decision that seems good, but it has negative long term consequences, then it is not a good decision." That is critical thinking at it's best. So this takes us a step deeper into worldview. The Western Judeo/Christian worldview is fundamentally apocalyptic ... and the Hopi's worldview was not.

world·view
n. In both senses also called Weltanschauung.
1. The overall perspective from which one sees and interprets the world.
2. A collection of beliefs about life and the universe held by an individual or a group.

this assumes it's a simple matter to know if something has "negative long term consequences" - if we could accurately predict the future it would be one thing, but we can't be certain of the long term ramifications of any action. If we could accurately predict the future we would most probably see that every possible course of action has both positive and negative long term consequences. So - the essential thing is to ensure that we maintain agility, flexibility; and so quality pragmatic responses can be summoned when needed, free of any form of dogma or predetermination. The best courses are ones that can easily be reversed.

[Laodicean]

Contrast with the Hopi Elders, who in the past would consider the consequences of major tribal decisions as far forward as seven generations...

"If we make this short term decision that seems good, but it has negative long term consequences, then it is not a good decision." That is critical thinking at it's best. So this takes us a step deeper into worldview. The Western Judeo/Christian worldview is fundamentally apocalyptic ... and the Hopi's worldview was not.

world·view
n. In both senses also called Weltanschauung.
1. The overall perspective from which one sees and interprets the world.
2. A collection of beliefs about life and the universe held by an individual or a group.

this assumes it's a simple matter to know if something has "negative long term consequences" - if we could accurately predict the future it would be one thing, but we can't be certain of the long term ramifications of any action. If we could accurately predict the future we would most probably see that every possible course of action has both positive and negative long term consequences. So - the essential thing is to ensure that we maintain agility, flexibility; and so quality pragmatic responses can be summoned when needed, free of any form of dogma or predetermination. The best courses are ones that can easily be reversed.

Very true. And who doesn't have faith in the future, at least? The future is unseen, afterall. I was inspired to goog "faith in the future" and lo and behold! I found this interesting site:

Faith in the Future: Religion, Aging and Healthcare in the 21st Century

Check out the video on the right sidebar.

[justdrew]

Contrast with the Hopi Elders, who in the past would consider the consequences of major tribal decisions as far forward as seven generations...

"If we make this short term decision that seems good, but it has negative long term consequences, then it is not a good decision." That is critical thinking at it's best. So this takes us a step deeper into worldview. The Western Judeo/Christian worldview is fundamentally apocalyptic ... and the Hopi's worldview was not.

world·view
n. In both senses also called Weltanschauung.
1. The overall perspective from which one sees and interprets the world.
2. A collection of beliefs about life and the universe held by an individual or a group.

this assumes it's a simple matter to know if something has "negative long term consequences" - if we could accurately predict the future it would be one thing, but we can't be certain of the long term ramifications of any action. If we could accurately predict the future we would most probably see that every possible course of action has both positive and negative long term consequences. So - the essential thing is to ensure that we maintain agility, flexibility; and so quality pragmatic responses can be summoned when needed, free of any form of dogma or predetermination. The best courses are ones that can easily be reversed.

Very true. And who doesn't have faith in the future, at least? The future is unseen, afterall. I was inspired to goog "faith in the future" and lo and behold! I found this interesting site:

Faith in the Future: Religion, Aging and Healthcare in the 21st Century

Check out the video on the right sidebar.

hmm, ok, Harold Koenig, he's talking about "religious" religion, but any larger than life narrative in which a person can write themselves a role and place at least near-certainty of validity in would suffice, so long as some peer group support exists.

[Laodicean]

Agreed. Dream a big dream of (for) me, man.

[Laodicean]

Just to lighten things up a bit:



Source.

[American Dream]

http://www.historyofcuba.com/history/oriente/hatuey.htm

The Legend of Hatuey





In 1511, Diego Velásquez sailed from Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic) to conquer and colonize Cuba. Among his soldiers in that expedition was Hernán Cortés, who later conquered Mexico. When he arrived in Cuba, Velásquez founded the island’s first Spanish settlement at Baracoa.

Meanwhile, reports from the Indians of Hispaniola reached Cuba. Hatuey, a Taíno chief, had escaped in canoes with about four-hundred men, women and children, to warn the Cubans about what to expect from the Spaniards. He explained the need to join against their common enemy, the white men who had inflicted so much suffering on his people.

As later recorded by Spanish priest Bartolomé de las Casas, Hatuey showed the Cubans a basket full of gold and jewels. “Here is the God the Spaniards worship,” he said, “for these they fight and kill; for these they persecute us and that is why we have to throw them into the sea…

“They tell us, these tyrants, that they adore a God of peace and equality, and yet they usurp our land and make us their slaves. They speak to us of an immortal soul and of their eternal rewards and punishments, and yet they rob our belongings, seduce our women, violate our daughters. Incapable of matching us in valor, these cowards cover themselves with iron that our weapons cannot break…”

The Taínos of western and central Cuba could not believe the horrendous message brought by Hatuey, and few joined him.

Hatuey’s strategy against the Spaniards was to attack, guerilla fashion, and then disperse to the hills, where the Indians would regroup for the next attack. For about three months Hatuey’s tactics kept the Spaniards on the defensive, afraid to leave their fort at Baracoa.

Through a traitor, Velásquez was able to surround and capture Hatuey. On February 2, 1512, Hatuey was tied to a stake at the Spanish camp, where he was burned alive. Just before lighting the fire, a priest offered him spiritual comfort, showing him the cross and asking him to accept Jesus and go to heaven. “Are there people like you in heaven?” he asked. “There are many like me in heaven,” answered the priest. Hatuey answered that he wanted nothing to do with a God that would allow such cruelty to be unleashed in his name.

De Las Casas describes the fate of the Taínos. A village of about twenty-five hundred who welcomed the Spaniards, fed them and gave them drink, was immediately wiped out once the feast was over, “they set upon the Indians,” he wrote, “slashing, disemboweling and slaughtering them until their blood ran like a river.”

Of those sent to the mines, he said, the Spaniards “required of them tasks utterly beyond their strength, bending them to the earth with crushing burdens, harnessing them to loads which they could not drag, and with fiendish sport and mockery, hacking off their hands and feet, and mutilating their bodies in ways which will not bear description.”

Aside from being one of the first guerilla-style warriors in Cuba’s history, Hatuey is the first martyr in the struggle for Cuban independence.

[Laodicean]

This is my [our] body, which will be given for you [us]; do this in memory of me [all]...

[Canadian_watcher]

http://www.historyofcuba.com/history/oriente/hatuey.htm

The Legend of Hatuey

I am missing the point of this.

It seems to be a story about evil conquerors who came to pillage riches and decimate the local culture and a hero who escaped to warn others.
The others didn't believe the hero and later he was captured, killed and martyred.

Is this supposed to make us think faith is a bad idea somehow?

[justdrew]

http://www.historyofcuba.com/history/oriente/hatuey.htm

The Legend of Hatuey

I am missing the point of this.

It seems to be a story about evil conquerors who came to pillage riches and decimate the local culture and a hero who escaped to warn others.
The others didn't believe the hero and later he was captured, killed and martyred.

Is this supposed to make us think faith is a bad idea somehow?

in and of itself faith is neutral, non-determinative.

[Laodicean]

Deserved to be posted, cause there is a sync. ^ from The Four "critical thinker" (Atheist) Horsemen.

Related (and recent) RI Sam Harris thread posted by nomo here:

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=32506

And a big thank you to C_W for this thread. You could post the following in both this one and your misogyny thread:

The Atheism Movement's Misogyny Problem

[Trigger warning for misogyny, rape culture, violent imagery, anti-Islamism.]

Rebecca Watson of the skeptics blog Skepchick recently posted a video in which she speaks, in part, about being on a panel in an atheist conference in Dublin during which she spoke about misogyny in the atheist movement. The video, with transcript for the relevant section, is at the bottom of the post. (If the video does not automatically start playing at 2:20, skip ahead.) She then describes how the discussion continued at the hotel bar late into the night, and how a man who purported to be interested in what she was saying followed her into the hotel elevator and propositioned her. Missing the point award.

PZ Myers wrote a post in which the video was mentioned, largely making another point about naming people with whom one disagrees, but acquiescing that perhaps hitting on women and backing off when they signal disinterest possibly is not enough: "Maybe we should also recognize that applying unwanted pressure, no matter how politely phrased, is inappropriate behavior. Maybe we should recognize that when we interact with equals there are different, expected patterns of behavior that many men casually disregard when meeting with women, and it is those subtle signs that let them know what you think of them that really righteously pisses feminist women off."

I almost can't conceive of a more innocuous, virtually noncommittal ("maybe") expression of support for the idea that it's pretty gross to creepily pursue a woman who has said she is going to bed in order to invite her back to your hotel room to further discuss an idea she had introduced in a professional capacity, no less when the idea is not sexualizing women.

And yet, totally predictably, the thread erupted in a hideous gushing explosion of misogyny, anti-feminism, and rape apologia, not only proving Rebecca Watson's point, but illustrating precisely why it is that, despite being an atheist and online activist, I don't touch movement atheism with a 10-foot pole. Were it a place merely hostile to feminist women and outspoken survivors of sexual assault, well, so is the rest of the world. Of course, the rest of the world doesn't passionately advocate against ignorance, only to feign it when asked to examine its privilege.

Anyway, among the many comments in the thread was one left by the prominent atheist Richard Dawkins, who had also sat on the panel at which Rebecca Watson spoke about misogyny in the atheist movement. Given Dawkins' history of doing things like making anti-Muslim rape jokes and reckoning that a child is "arguably" better off repeatedly raped than raised religious, his comment (which Myers has confirmed is indeed the real Dawkins) is not surprising, but it is nonetheless appalling.

Dear Muslima

Stop whining, will you. Yes, yes, I know you had your genitals mutilated with a razor blade, and . . . yawn . . . don't tell me yet again, I know you aren't allowed to drive a car, and you can't leave the house without a male relative, and your husband is allowed to beat you, and you'll be stoned to death if you commit adultery. But stop whining, will you. Think of the suffering your poor American sisters have to put up with.

Only this week I heard of one, she calls herself Skep"chick", and do you know what happened to her? A man in a hotel elevator invited her back to his room for coffee. I am not exaggerating. He really did. He invited her back to his room for coffee. Of course she said no, and of course he didn't lay a finger on her, but even so . . .

And you, Muslima, think you have misogyny to complain about! For goodness sake grow up, or at least grow a thicker skin.

Richard

Ah, the old there are more Important Things to worry about chestnut. I always love when a man decides what the Important Things feminists should be worried about are for us feminist women. I also love the idea that "Muslim women" and "American women" are mutually exclusive groups, and the idea that there no American women, Muslim or otherwise, whose lives are controlled and whose bodies are violated with impunity. And I love the mendacious misrepresentation of Rebecca Watson's experience—being innocently invited to coffee, as opposed to followed into an elevator at 4am after announcing her intention to go to bed and asked back to a man's room "for coffee" immediately following her public request to not be sexually objectified—and the profoundly disingenuous implication that because Watson had the unmitigated temerity to mention this incident, she is either equating it with other women's suffering or somehow arguing that her experience is more important than other women's.

I love those things almost as much as I love the embedded premise that the marginalization of women is a series of unrelated injustices that exist in competition with one another for attention and concern, as opposed to a spectrum of injustices on which exists both women being creeped on in elevators by strangers and female genital cutting.

That is a silencing mechanism.

The implication is that women with relative privilege have no reason or right to "complain" as long as there are women who are experiencing something worse somewhere in the world—a truly despicable position given that it creates a justification for continued brutalization of women across the globe. Feminist scolds like Dawkins, who fancy themselves enlightened, recoil with horror at the suggestion that they support the violent oppression of women, and yet they nonetheless reference it at every opportunity they have in order to defend their lack of concern about injustices done to relatively privileged women in their own communities.

The abject suffering of the world's most vulnerable women is thus used as rhetorical weapon to silence feminists—and feminism is treated as some sort of finite resource that is meant to be kept under glass, broken only in case of a "real" and "serious" emergency, as determined by men who want to silence feminists.

Men who police feminism and feminists, and judge the worthiness of feminist complaints on a sliding scale, don't recognize oppressive acts as interwoven strands of the same rope, and they don't respect the reality that most feminists can multi-task: I can write about a sexist t-shirt being sold to little girls at Wev-Mart, and I write about the rape epidemic in DR Congo in the same day. And do, frequently.

Commenters in the thread made variations on the same argument I am making now, reasonably concluding that Dawkins was arguing that "since worse things are happening somewhere else, we have no right to try to fix things closer to home." But Dawkins left a second comment, insisting that was not his meaning:

No I wasn't making that argument. Here's the argument I was making. The man in the elevator didn't physically touch her, didn't attempt to bar her way out of the elevator, didn't even use foul language at her. He spoke some words to her. Just words. She no doubt replied with words. That was that. Words. Only words, and apparently quite polite words at that.

If she felt his behaviour was creepy, that was her privilege, just as it was the Catholics' privilege to feel offended and hurt when PZ nailed the cracker. PZ didn't physically strike any Catholics. All he did was nail a wafer, and he was absolutely right to do so because the heightened value of the wafer was a fantasy in the minds of the offended Catholics. Similarly, Rebecca's feeling that the man's proposition was 'creepy' was her own interpretation of his behaviour, presumably not his. She was probably offended to about the same extent as I am offended if a man gets into an elevator with me chewing gum. But he does me no physical damage and I simply grin and bear it until either I or he gets out of the elevator. It would be different if he physically attacked me.

Muslim women suffer physically from misogyny, their lives are substantially damaged by religiously inspired misogyny. Not just words, real deeds, painful, physical deeds, physical privations, legally sanctioned demeanings. The equivalent would be if PZ had nailed not a cracker but a Catholic. Then they'd have had good reason to complain.

Richard

Again, he implies that "Muslim women" and "American women" are mutually exclusive groups; again, he implies that American women do not "suffer physically from misogyny," nor are their lives "substantially damaged by religiously inspired misogyny." Certainly, Dawkins and I would disagree on what constitutes "substantial damage," as I suspect his definition would start just beyond what any relatively privileged woman had ever suffered, but suffice it to say I disagree with his contention. As, I imagine, would the many American women who have been sexually abused by religious leaders, without justice. Just for a start.

Of course, I don't guess this is the sort of stuff that really matters to a man so privileged that he can, with a straight fucking face, assert an equivalency between being followed to an elevator and propositioned by a strange man and having to share an elevator with someone who is chewing gum. Yiiiiiiikes.

PZ Myers followed up with another post, attempting to inject some perspective back into the conversation, to no avail. Dawkins continued to insist that Watson had nothing to complain about in the first place:

I sarcastically compared Rebecca's plight with that of women in Muslim countries or families dominated by Muslim men. Somebody made the worthwhile point (reiterated here by PZ) that it is no defence of something slightly bad to point to something worse. We should fight all bad things, the slightly bad as well as the very bad. Fair enough. But my point is that the 'slightly bad thing' suffered by Rebecca was not even slightly bad, it was zero bad. A man asked her back to his room for coffee. She said no. End of story.

But not everybody sees it as end of story. OK, let's ask why not? The main reason seems to be that an elevator is a confined space from which there is no escape. This point has been made again and again in this thread, and the other one.

No escape? I am now really puzzled. Here's how you escape from an elevator. You press any one of the buttons conveniently provided. The elevator will obligingly stop at a floor, the door will open and you will no longer be in a confined space but in a well-lit corridor in a crowded hotel in the centre of Dublin.

Spoken like someone who does not understand what it's like to live as a woman in this world and has never even bothered to try.

Eventually, Myers appended this to his post: "[Rebecca Watson] asked for some simple common courtesy, and for that she gets pilloried. Sorry, people, but that sends a very clear signal to women that calm requests for respect will be met with jeers by a significant subset of the atheist community."

And 'round and 'round we go.

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/ar ... y_problem/

[tazmic]

"It was when I first saw the trochlea, in gross anatomy." The trochlea, he explained is a critical part of sight. It is a small round bone scarcely bigger than the head of pin that acts as a pulley. One of the tendons in the eye threads through this bone, does a 180-degree turn and attaches to the back of the eye socket. The resulting torque gives the eye the ability to track diagonally. "It was perfect engineering," he said. "And I just felt it could not be random. The design was too precise." It absolutely deepened his faith in a higher being, he said.

..............................................................................................................................................god

[Pierre d'Achoppement]

It's probably obvious that it's not a question of critical thinking OR faith, but critical thinking AND faith. Faith without criticial thinking is dangerous or silly (see cartoons), critical thinking without faith is pointless and directionless.