Sayeth Paul Tillich - Dynamics of Faith

Faith is mankind's concern for an ultimate.
Religion is mankind's expression of that Concern

To say that I believe in nothing is the same as saying
I don.t believe in anything.
ERGO
Atheism is impossible.

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Classic WU= 7,237 Classic Hours= 42,079

Happy Passover.

Dietary duty requires some Passover finesse

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me@rescam.org

I am silent on the subject because of necessity. I have friends in both places.
- quoted in Mark Twain, His Life and Work, Will Clemens

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Man - a creature made at the end of the week's work when God was tired. - Mark Twain

Happy Passover.

Dietary duty requires some Passover finesse

Yes, I read about that back when I knew one.

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"I'm trying to maintain a shred of dignity in this world." - Me

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"I'm trying to maintain a shred of dignity in this world." - Me

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"I'm trying to maintain a shred of dignity in this world." - Me

Pope laments Christianity's decline in Holy Land

By Ethan Bronner
NEW YORK TIMES

May 13, 2009

JERUSALEM – Christians used to be a vital force in the Middle East. They dominated Lebanon and filled top jobs in the Palestinian movement. In Egypt, they were wealthy beyond their number. In Iraq, they packed the universities and professions. Across the region, their orientation was a vital link to the West, a counterpoint to prevailing trends.

But as Pope Benedict XVI makes his way across the Holy Land this week – his first visit as pontiff – he is addressing a dwindling and threatened Christian population driven to emigration by political violence, lack of economic opportunity and the rise of radical Islam. A region that a century ago was 20 percent Christian is about 5 percent today and dropping.

Because it was here that Jesus walked and Christianity was born, the papal visit highlights a prospect many consider deeply troubling for the globe's largest faith – its most powerful and historic shrines could become museum relics with no connection to those who live among them.

“I fear the extinction of Christianity in Iraq and the Middle East,” the Rev. Jean Benjamin Sleiman, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Baghdad, said in a comment echoed across the region.

The pope, in a Mass yesterday at the foot of the Mount of Olives, addressed “the tragic reality” of the “departure of so many members of the Christian community in recent years.”

He said: “While understandable reasons lead many, especially the young, to emigrate, this decision brings in its wake a great cultural and spiritual impoverishment to the city. Today I wish to repeat what I have said on other occasions: In the Holy Land there is room for everyone!”

On Sunday in Jordan, the pope argued that Christians had a role here in reconciliation, that their very presence eased the strife and that the decline of that presence could help to boost extremism. When the mix of common beliefs and lifestyles goes down, orthodoxy rises, he said, as does uniformity of the cultural landscape in a region where tolerance is not an outstanding virtue.

A Syrian international aid worker said, “When other Arabs find out that I am Christian, many seem shocked to discover that you can be both an Arab and a Christian.” The worker asked to remain anonymous so as not to bring attention to his faith.

The Middle East is now, of course, overwhelmingly Muslim. Except for Israel, there is no country where Islam does not prevail. This includes Lebanon, where Christians now amount to one-quarter of the population, and the non-Arab countries of Iran and Turkey.

Local Christians are torn between sounding the alarm and staying mum, unsure whether attention will reduce the problem or aggravate it by driving out those who remain.

With Islam pushing aside nationalism as the central force behind the politics of identity, Christians who played important roles in various national struggles find themselves left out. Because Islamic culture, especially in its more fundamental stripes, often defines itself in contrast to the West, Christianity has in some places been relegated to an enemy – or least foreign – culture.

“Unless there is a turn toward secularism in the Arab world, I don't think there is a future for Christians here,” said Sarkis Naoum, a Christian columnist for the Lebanese newspaper Al Nahar.

A century ago, there were millions of Christians in what is today Turkey; now there are 150,000. Violence against Christians in Turkey has risen.

Among Palestinians, Islam also is playing an unprecedented role in defining identity, especially in Hamas-ruled Gaza. Benedict's arrival in Jerusalem on Monday prompted a radical member of the legislature in Gaza to call on Arab governments not to greet him because of his contentious remark in 2006 regarding the Prophet Muhammad.

The Palestinian leaders of the West Bank are more secular and try to include Christians to ward off separatist sentiments and stop the population decline. It has been a losing battle.

In 1948, Jerusalem was about one-fifth Christian. Today, it is 2 percent.

In Bethlehem, where the Church of the Nativity marks where Jesus is said to have been born, Christians now make up barely one-third of the population after centuries of being 80 percent of it. Emigration is the first option for anyone who has the opportunity, and there are large communities of Christian emigres throughout the West to absorb them.

“Economy, economy, economy,” said Fayez Khano, 63, a member of the Assyrian community, explaining the reasons for the continuing exodus while cutting olive-wood figurines in his family workshop on Manger Street.

Khano's three adult children live in Dublin, Ireland, and because business is slow, he and his wife are about to go to Dublin for six months.

The story has been similar in Iraq. Of the 1.4 million Christians there at the time of the U.S. invasion in 2003, nearly half of them have fled, according to U.S. government reports and Iraqi Christians.

Many left early in the war when they were attacked for working with the Americans, but the exodus gained speed when Christians became targets in Iraq's sectarian war. Churches were bombed, and priests as well as lay Christians were killed.

In Egypt, where 10 percent of the country is Coptic Christian, the prevalent religious discourse has drifted from what was considered to be a moderate form of Islam toward a far less tolerant Islam, making Copts feel less comfortable in their own country.

In Saudi Arabia, churches are illegal. In the rest of the Persian Gulf region, Christians are foreign workers without the prospect of citizenship.

The decline of the Christian population and voice in the region is not only a source of concern for Christians, but also for broad-minded Muslims.

“Here in Lebanon, Muslims will often tell you Lebanon is no good without the Christians, and they mean it,” said historian Kemal Salibi. “The mix of religions and cultures that makes this place so tolerant would disappear.”

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me@rescam.org

Singing show brings Islamic message to pop music

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me@rescam.org

Singing show brings Islamic message to pop music

Back in the late 50's and early 60's I remember sitting in The Village Vanguard, and The Hip Bagel listening to dudes banging bongos and doing pseudo-Gregorian Chants about peace and anti-nuclear stuff.
I realized that the stuff wasn't going anywhere on the Neilsen Ratings and cast my vote for Judy Collins.
I hope some of them clerics take heed -
It aint gonna work in THIS neighborhood
History tends to repeat itself.

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Classic WU= 7,237 Classic Hours= 42,079

My view is in direct contrast to your own; I don't believe in souls, angels or demons, and I'd rather believe that nothing happens to us after we die than the alternatively proposed suggestion.

I wish to disagree........and hope that your alternative view serves you well.

MY God will forgive you for not believing..........in Him.


All BS aside........

I DO believe. Why do you think I do Seti?
I would like to believe that He created other souls in the universe other than just the 'human race'.......

And I take comfort in the fact that I shall one day have the chance to meet my maker and ask him what the reasons were for all of the things that have happened in my life.........

I am a tormented soul until that day.........then I shall have peace.

It gives me comfort and purpose..........what gives you hope, Ozz?

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

Good point Mark.

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

you do know lennon was an atheist

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

Khruschev too. Once he said "Thanks God I am an atheist".
Tullio

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you do know lennon was an atheist

Yeah......I do.

And look what happened to him.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

MY God will forgive you for not believing..........in Him.

God doesn't exist, so I need no forgiving.

It gives me comfort and purpose..........what gives you hope, Ozz?

The idea that maybe one day we can all grow up and stop believing in fictional beings and start working toward a better future without religion and all it's horrors it has brought upon mankind.

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MY God will forgive you for not believing..........in Him.

God doesn't exist, so I need no forgiving.

It gives me comfort and purpose..........what gives you hope, Ozz?

The idea that maybe one day we can all grow up and stop believing in fictional beings and start working toward a better future without religion and all it's horrors it has brought upon mankind.

I agree that the misinterpretation of religion has brought many bad things to mankind. But that is caused by man's view of God, not by God himself.
My faith, especially in the past few years, has kept me serene in the fact that something better awaits me after my time here is done. As it has for all those that I loved who have passed before me.
It's there for you too....even if you do not embrace it now.
If you refuse to acknowledge it, that is your choice to make, and I won't berate you for it.
I will, however, pray that one day you may have a change of heart.

Be well.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

MY God will forgive you for not believing..........in Him.

God doesn't exist, so I need no forgiving.

It gives me comfort and purpose..........what gives you hope, Ozz?

The idea that maybe one day we can all grow up and stop believing in fictional beings and start working toward a better future without religion and all it's horrors it has brought upon mankind.

God isn't any more fictional than the space aliens you are searching for with this project.

MY God will forgive you for not believing..........in Him.

No He wont. There is no heaven for atheists.

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me@rescam.org