you're welcome, tom

I hope you find the links of some use to you.

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Radio takes up effort to save cross. Talk shows held at site with hosts pushing signature drive on the air.

Carl Dustin (left) and Charles Leighton lowered the flag at the Mount Soledad memorial yesterday afternoon.

The Resurrection.
Did it really happen?

From "The Resurrection" by Matthias Grünewald, 1515.

billmon is writing again... and I was reminded of this snippet after reading the San Diego newspaper article just posted...
_________________________________

Burton Mack -- one of the Biblical scholars who reassembled the original gospel of "Q" from the fragments found scattered throughout the New Testament -- has suggested the Passion story served as a powerful unifying theme for those early Christians, who had to reconcile their, well, unkosher habits and polygot origins with their desire to regard themselves as the true children of the God of Israel. To do this, they used two pre-existing cultural artifacts: the Greek concept of the "noble death" (as personified by the Spartans at Thermopylae and, later, by Socrates) and the Jewish tradition of the persecuted prophet (Daniel, Elijah).

Every movement needs a martyr, they say, and by zeroing in on the bloody and painful details of Jesus' death, the Christ cultists made one that both Jew and gentile could relate to. In that sense, Jesus could be regarded as the first religious artist with crossover appeal.

But in both cultural traditions, the justification for the sacrifice is earned on this earth, not the next -- either through glory (Spartans) or ultimate triumph over the evil doers (Daniel). Neither applied to crucified Jesus.
The solution, according to Mack: Get God involved.

The only way to overcome the implicit contradiction was to exaggerate the drama and consider the event from God's point of view. What better way than to have God himself involved in the action? . . . It was that need to imagine God's involvement in an otherwise implausible martyrdom for a very problematic cause that resulted in the odd and grotesque notion of God raising Jesus from the dead.

A second plot twist also helped solve the community's underlying problem of existing outside the Law of Moses and the Prophets. By adding the notion that Jesus died for (and thus extirpated) their sins -- sins in this case meaning violations of the Torah and the "traditional family values" of temple Judaism -- the early Christ cultists solved their existential dilemma: Being Judaic outlaws didn't matter any more, because the law itself didn't matter any more:

The image was that of a trial in which God, the righteous judge, "vindicated" the gentiles as rightful members of the community if only they regarded Jesus' death as the mythology portrayed it.

For a small and fragile movement, vulnerable to the centrifugal forces that usually pull religious cults apart -- persecution, selfishness, disillusionment, boredom -- the Passion myth was a powerful psychic rallying point. It was the secret sauce that eventually made Christianity the brand name in the religious marketplace of the Roman Empire, instead of just another ephemeral dot.com wonder.

But commercial success had a price:

The need to justify the inclusion of gentiles called forth a venture in mythmaking that shifted attention away from Jesus the teacher and his teachings to focus on his death as a dramatic event that established the movement's claim to be the people of God.

I would add, even though Burton Mack doesn't, that I think Christianity was, and still is, ethically the poorer for the tradeoff. The centrality of the martyrdom myth gave the cult-evolving-into-a-religion a distinct thanatotic cast -- an obsession with death and the after life (or underworld), combined with a blatantly sadomasochistic fixation on all the gory details of the crucifixion.

I suppose similar death trips can be found in other religions, maybe all religions. Maybe death, and fear of death, or fascination with death, are the ultimate psychological foundations for all religious experiences. I don't know. But it's hard to think of a faith that is more obsessed with death than Christianity -- at least since the ancient Egpytians entombed the mummified remains of the last pharaoh.

_________________________________________
From a much longer March 25th essay on the creation of a modern day martyr, located at billmon's Whiskey Bar. scroll down to March 25 to read the whole thing. There are a number of additional links in the original essay, of which this excerpt is only a side note to the greater context in which this was found.

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> The purpose of this thread should not be conversion or preaching, but an
> exchange of ideas, such as the purpose of religion (anyone's view, from any
> philosophy). Why would one adhere to a religion, or not have anything to do
> with one. Is science a religion?

Science, at least by Karl Popper's definition, isn't a religion. Science is based on theories, and science operates as a system of conjecture and refutation; that is, that it's guesses and then going out and disproving those guesses. The purpose of science, and scientists, is not to reaffirm current viewpoints, but as an attempt to refute. In science there are really only weak theories(ones with questionable support) and strong theories(ones that are so far completely credible). Theories provide the framework for analyzing data, and by the faults of this framework compared to the data we find faults in the theory.
I think this distinction of what a theory is gives the backdrop for what science is, and what religion is not. In science, the qualifying factor for something to be a theory is the ability to refute it via observation, and theories are what science really is. Religion, on the other hand, isn't scientific, as you can't find any way to make a universe-observation that would clearly refute the religious claims. Religion is belief, something that can't be refuted(but also can't be verified). Science can both be verified and refuted.
In that way, I don't think science is a religion, and conversely, religion is not a science.

From a sociological viewpoint, I see religion as a means of sociocultural(did I just make up a word?) inertia.
From a scientific/investigative viewpoint, I see it as outrageous claims of universal absolutes based on highly questionable sources.
From a individualist/"spiritual" viewpoint, I see religion as a means for feelings of purpose, belonging, and hope.


I hope this is helpful to the discussion.

-smeg

Science won it's public acceptance by it's ability to 'debunk' superstition and it's ability to direct us towards progress that was, before 'science', stifled by superstition.

Religion affirms superstition.

It's instructive to look at statements where 'faith' is substituted for superstition....
------------------------------------------------

Superstition. Many dictionaries define superstition as "belief which is not based on human reason or scientific knowledge." The American Heritage Dictionary defines superstition as "a belief, practice or rite irrationally maintained by ignorance of the laws of nature" and "a fearful or abject state resulting from such ignorance or irrationality."

Consider the impact on the audience if we switched the interchangeable terms in President George W. Bush's following statement, posted on a federal web site:


I believe in the power of superstition in people's lives. Our government should not fear programs that exist because a church or a synagogue or a mosque has decided to start one. We should not discriminate against programs based upon superstition in America. We should enable them to access federal money, because superstition-based programs can change people's lives, and America will be better off for it.

It is long past time we stopped giving a free pass to organizations that refuse to be guided by reason and would force their unreason on the entire society. A first step would be to stop calling these "faith-based institutions" and start calling them by the synonymous and much more instructive term, "superstition-based institutions."

-----------------------------------------
Not meaning disrespect to those who have 'faith', but when faith collides with reason, I prefer we to lean towards reason.

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I hope this is helpful to the discussion.
Maybe.

In honor of your handle, I'll quote several positions on religion:

<li>Cat: "God made me. God made designer label clothing. You figure it out"</li><li>Rimmer: "I'm a lapsed agnostic. I believe in God. I'm just not sure I trust Him."</li><li>Kochanski: "I feel we are all connected in the great Dodecahedron of Life. But I could be wrong. It might be a polygon"</li>

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> Science won it's public acceptance by it's ability to 'debunk' superstition
> and it's ability to direct us towards progress that was, before 'science',
> stifled by superstition.

I think it's interesting, though, that science itself is just as much a mythical cultural creation as superstition. It just showed for practical results.

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> I think it's interesting, though, that science itself is just as much a
> mythical cultural creation as superstition. It just showed for practical
> results.

That's kinda a fuzzy relationship. Both religion and science were born from the ability of humans to think in abstract terms, true. So were pop songs, tie-dyed fabrics, and Frank Lloyd Wright buildings. But as pointed out above, religion and science (human failings notwithstanding) diverge immediately in method and axiom.

At its core, religion seeks to build itself without questioning basic tenets, and it has been only human "failing" that has caused religions to change to suit differing worldviews. Science, on the other hand, holds that none of its laws can go without question and support, and it's only human "failing" that enshrines some misguided theories as dogma.

> At its core, religion seeks to build itself without questioning basic tenets,
> and it has been only human "failing" that has caused religions to change to
> suit differing worldviews. Science, on the other hand, holds that none of its
> laws can go without question and support, and it's only human "failing" that
> enshrines some misguided theories as dogma.

Tools and methods do what they are intended to do, and only what they are intended to do. You cannot use faith to explain the structure of an atom or how to fix a car. You cannot use science to explain love, bravery or honor. To deduce that God is mythical because he cannot be examined scientifically is as methodologically flawed as to say (for the same reason) that love, bravery and honor do not exist. They do not exist TO SCIENCE, but science is only one tool, and can only see one type of phenomenon. Faith is another tool, and sees different phenomena that science cannot. To choose to use one tool to the exclusion of the other is the same as choosing to be blind or deaf, because you believe sight to be better than hearing, or vice versa. You need all the tools to experience all that is real. A scientific man who ignores faith and ridicules those who live by it is as ludicrous as a man who has deafened his own ears, then who ridicules those whom he sees dancing to music. He has chosen to be just as crippled as the man who rejects science in favor of "blind faith".

---

Every time I go to Port au Prinze
I stop at the Iron Market
To talk to the Witchy Women
I just love superstition

Religion, on the other hand, is about submission-
And disapline
Rules and regs
No fun at all

Now that the Cardinals are conclaving in Rome
It's about time they got back to basics
Pick them a Pope who'll set Mother Church
To back where she belongs

Where there's nothing but mystery
And nobody can understand
A damn thing
About what's going on

They want believers
Dont they?

The world needs a dancing Pope
Who speaks only in tongues...cc

> Every time I go to Port au Prinze
> I stop at the Iron Market
> To talk to the Witchy Women
> I just love superstition
>
> Religion, on the other hand, is about submission-
> And disapline
> Rules and regs
> No fun at all
>
> Now that the Cardinals are conclaving in Rome
> It's about time they got back to basics
> Pick them a Pope who'll set Mother Church
> To back where she belongs
>
> Where there's nothing but mystery
> And nobody can understand
> A damn thing
> About what's going on
>
> They want believers
> Dont they?
>
> The world needs a dancing Pope
> Who speaks only in tongues...cc
>

Amen to that, Carl! :-)

Even the late pope was into the mystery of faith, I'm afraid the main purpose for the Catholic church today is power!

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

In 1970 I lived on Calle Chihuampata
A few blocks straight up above the broad Plaza de Armas
In Cuzco, Peru
On Sundays there was the Cathedral

Inside there it was dark and cobwebs stretched over the old wood
There was gold in abundance and ivory and alabaster and obsidian
The cruxifix over the golden altar was almost twice lifesize
Blood was carved into the wooden Christ in great glots
The Stations of the Cross were housed in separate little alcoves
Each one a little creepier than the one preceeding

Camposinos arrived in swarms-
Red chapped-faced babies wrapped in bright mantas on the backs
Of stout, braided glossy haired barefoot panama-hatted women
Half drunk, the men herded enormous eyed silent children inside
The cathedral clouded over with wet wool and unwashed animal and corn beer smell

Eight black-clad seminarians appeared from the wings
In a dance of smoke they crossed center stage swinging insense burners
Altarboys followed with torches to light a hundred fat candles
The candlelight seemed to accentuate brooding darkness

The main man would appear now with his attendants
Go through a few moves with his ornate vestments
Re-arrange some of the magic stuff up on the magic table
And then launch into some long spiel in latin punctuated by his humming helpers

An hour a week in there and you got some churchification for sure
Everybody sat silent and gawked at the spectacle
Nobody understanding a single thing or wanting to
It was all just too weird to contemplate

Shortly afterward, the Cardinals got together in Church Central
And dropped the Latin Mass
Then they started letting folk-singers in to moon over peace and love
Church eventually got to be like a boring assembly program from the 4th grade

I stopped going after that
They just took all the fun out of it...cc

I stopped going when I found that I couldn't hear the Rabbi's schpeil over the snobby gossiping in the front, back, middle, 3rd, 5th, etc., rows...

...and that was Yom Kipur.

Conservative Judaism takes all the fun out of being Jewish. Ashkenazim take all the taste out of food. Lubbavitch take all the credit for "bringing in more Jews". And I couldn't take it any more.

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Earth's Oldest Known Object on Display

MADISON, Wis. (AP) - A tiny speck of zircon crystal that is barely visible to the eye is believed to be the oldest known piece of Earth at about 4.4 billion years old. For the first time ever, the public will have a chance to see the particle Saturday at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where researchers in 2001 made the breakthrough discovery that the early Earth was much cooler than previously believed based on analysis of the crystal.

To create buzz about an otherwise arcane subject, the university is planning a daylong celebration of the ancient stone - capped with "The Rock Concert" by jazz musicians who composed music to try to answer the question: What does 4.4 billion years old sound like?

"This is it - the oldest thing ever. One day only," said Joe Skulan, director of the UW-Madison Geology Museum, where the object will be displayed - under police guard - from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. "The idea of having a big celebration of something that's so tiny - we're playing with the obvious absurdity of it."

With the aid of a microscope, anyone will be able to check out the tiny grain, which measures less than two human hairs in diameter.

A concert by Jazz Passengers, a six-piece group from New York hired to compose music for the event, will follow on Saturday evening. In posters hanging on campus, the concert is advertised as "a loving musical tribute to the oldest known object on Earth."

Composer Roy Nathanson said the concert will mix humor, jazz music, computer-generated beats, and the occasional rocks being banged together to "follow the geological history of how this zircon came about."

"It's an amazing story. The whole thing is something that captures your imagination," said Nathanson, 53, a saxophonist who spent one year composing the performance.

Analysis of the object in 2001 by John Valley, a UW-Madison professor of geology and geophysics, startled researchers around the world by concluding that the early Earth, instead of being a roiling ocean of magma, was cool enough to have oceans and continents - key conditions for life.

"It's not very much to look at because it's so very small. But to me, the miraculous thing about the crystal is that we've been able to make such wide-ranging inferences about the early Earth," Valley said. "This is our first glimpse into the earliest history of the Earth."

Valley found that the planet had cooled to about 100-degrees Centigrade less than 200 million years after it was formed. Before the research, the oldest evidence for liquid water on the planet was from a rock estimated to be much younger - 3.8 billion years old.

As part of Saturday's event, Valley will display a brand new, $3 million ion microprobe that he and other researchers will use to analyze tiny samples such as the zircon crystal. The hand-built instrument weighs 11 tons and takes up an entire laboratory.

Valley, who has tried to obtain the equipment for 22 years, had to travel to Scotland and Australia while he analyzed the zircon to use equipment there. A federal grant is paying for most of the new instrument.

After the festivities the object will return to its native Australia with Simon Wilde, professor at Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Western Australia, who made its discovery in 1984. The sample will eventually be put on display at a natural history museum in that country.

> Tools and methods do what they are intended to do, and only what they are
> intended to do. You cannot use faith to explain the structure of an atom or
> how to fix a car. You cannot use science to explain love, bravery or honor.

We are using science to explain love, bravery, honour (note proper English spelling :)). Sociobiology, psychology, anthropology, among others, have set themselves the tasks of explaining these behaviours.

To
> deduce that God is mythical because he cannot be examined scientifically is as
> methodologically flawed as to say (for the same reason) that love, bravery and
> honor do not exist. They do not exist TO SCIENCE, but science is only one
> tool, and can only see one type of phenomenon. Faith is another tool, and sees
> different phenomena that science cannot. To choose to use one tool to the
> exclusion of the other is the same as choosing to be blind or deaf, because
> you believe sight to be better than hearing, or vice versa. You need all the
> tools to experience all that is real. A scientific man who ignores faith and
> ridicules those who live by it is as ludicrous as a man who has deafened his
> own ears, then who ridicules those whom he sees dancing to music. He has
> chosen to be just as crippled as the man who rejects science in favor of
> "blind faith".

I'm not entirely sure of the assumptions behind your reasoning here. Science is pretty much the only tool we have to explain phenomena, anything else surely becomes defined as "belief" or "faith". Science also has faith and belief underpinning a lot of its work, for example in the research I do I have the faith that I could be on the right track when I set up my hypotheses to test them out. Therefore, logically, I cannot see how science excludes faith or belief.

Religion, on the other hand, simply requires faith and belief. The prepositions/hypotheses arising from religion are not scientifically testable. Therefore, questions such as "is God/are Gods real?" is not a scientific question as the question is untestable. From a philosophical perspective, this means that such questions are termed "meaningless" because they are untestable now, and will be untestable in all futures as well, therefore the meaning is forever undefinable/unknowable.

To be defined as science, one must have a *testable* (aka "falsifiable") hypothesis/idea/belief. One must also be prepared to remove/amend one's scientific beliefs when those are shown to be false. Religion (regardless of which) has NO falsifiable tenets, all are untestable.

However, there seem to be some areas of "science" (IMO this requires quotes) which are providing theories that are just as untestable as those of religion/faith. One that springs to mind immediately is social constructionism/ social relativism .

Karl Popper has written a lot in this area. :)

Pierre Laplace (1749-1827), ....to Napoleon on why his works on celestial mechanics make no mention of God.
.
.
.

"Your Highness, I have no need of this hypothesis."
.
.---------------------------------------------------------------------

Pierre-Simon Laplace was among the most influential scientists in history. Often referred to as the lawgiver of French science, he is known for his technical contributions to exact science, for the philosophical point of view he developed in the presentation of his work, and for the leading part he took in forming the modern discipline of mathematical physics. His two most famous treatises were the five-volume Traité de mécanique céleste (1799-1825) and Théorie analytique des probabilités (1812). In the former he demonstrated mathematically the stability of the solar system in service to the universal Newtonian law of gravity. In the latter he developed probability from a set of miscellaneous problems concerning games, averages, mortality, and insurance risks into the branch of mathematics that permitted the quantification of estimates of error and the drawing of statistical inferences, wherever data warranted, in social, medical, and juridical matters, as well as in the physical sciences.



book

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How will it end?

I think the X-Files found religion.