I am off for mini-moon (that is, a short honeymoon) with my wife over the holiday, but there's been some news revolving around my pet issues that I wanted to comment on before heading on out of here for a weekend in Sturgeon Bay.
That Old Time Religion // God against the Gods
Neo-paganism is on the rise.
Apparently, my last post which I argued reductio and in the spirit of Julian the Apostate that monotheists should become polytheists does have some merit. (Although not for the same reasons.) The Denver post reports that pagans "...numbers roughly double about every 18 months in the United States, Canada and Europe, according to the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance," and "is now among the country's fastest-growing religions." Accordingly, many leave monotheism as a rejection to the authoritarianism of those monotheistic religions and in pursuit of their own religious experiences. To me, this is very much like the American value of "rugged individualism." This individualism can be found with founders like Jefferson, Madison, and John Adams. The Enlightenment Rationalist (probably Christian) Adams, stated
"The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning. Read over again all the accounts we have of Hindoos, Chaldeans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Celts, Teutons, we shall find that priests had all the knowledge, and really governed mankind. Examine Mahometanism, trace Christianity from its first promulgation; knowledge has been almost exclusively confined to the clergy."
Adams was very much a religious iconoclast and it was his view that religious dogmatism was a barrier to rational thought. While it is nearly always true that religion is a barrier to the free inquiry of science, so to is it true with the varieties of religious experience.
Anyway, this study seems to confirm the trend as reported by the the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life's U.S. Religious Landscape Survey of 35,000 Americans have "... 'stunning' lack of alignment between people's beliefs or practices and their professed faiths."
My incidental experience seems to confirm this. In my debates with Christians and other supernaturalists over the past decade, the tendency that I've noticed that when one leaves a monotheistic faith like Christianity (other than professing a belief in a "higher power" ) it is quite not uncommon to become a pagan. These religions are highly individualistic and allow for a greater sense of experience of the divine. Also some of these pagans that I know do not literally believe that these gods are real beings, but participate in paganism in some metaphorical sense. This is not uncommon even for an atheist. One of my favorite authors, Dr. Robert Price (Books: The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man, Deconstructing Jesus and Beyond Born Again) and former editor of The Journal of Higher Criticism still attends church and enjoys the metaphorical aspects that the religion provides.
The irony, oddly enough, as classical society around the first century of the common era turned away from the conservatism of polytheism and to the radical monotheism of the Christian state, it removed more spirituality from the public sphere by its narrowed prohibitions on what religious experience could be in its pursuit of certainty about the mysteries of its own unprovable beliefs.
I think we might be on the precipice of another turning of the tide.
Evolution // Paradigms and Consciousness Raising
Yesterday, July 1st, one-hundred and fifty years ago, Charles Darwin and Russell Wallace, presented their papers on evolution by natural selection.
Richard Dawkins observers evolution as a consciousness raiser
That scientifically savvy philosopher Daniel Dennett pointed out that evolution counters on of the oldest ideas we have the 'idea that it takes a big fancy smart thing to make a lesser thing. I call that the trickle-down theory of creation. You'll ever see a spear making a spear maker. You'll never see a horse shoe making a black smith. You'll never a pot making making a potter.' Darwin's discovery of a workable process that does that very counter-intuitive thing is what makes his contribution to human thought so revolutionary, an so loaded with the power to raise consciousness. (The God Delusion)
The
Wired article points out that because of this simple, yet powerful discovery that
It involved not a simple invention or discovery but a paradigm shift, inventing the reigning paradigm that organizes modern biology -- and in some sense all modern science.
Gregor Johann Mendel, a Christian monk, had presented his paper on experiments on genetics with pea plants around the same time. His observations and experiments with pea plants had no explanatory power in itself, other than human selection could affect inheritance. Darwin's and Wallace's work was able to provide a mechanism for genetic selection without a god of the gaps.
Which is the beauty of evolution. That something so simple can do so much.
Church and State // Let's do away with the Constitution Already
Pandering once again, Obama announced that he would expand faith based initiatives to the tune of some half a billion dollars per year. Don't we already give these particular institutions who do not have to pay taxes, enough? Yes, I know the money is supposed to be used for humanitarian causes, but the religious can't help bringing their particular brand of religion into the mix. Of course, last year the Supreme Court ruled that citizens do not have the right to sue over executive mandates like the Office of Faith Based Initiatives. (Read about the Freedom from Religions lawsuit over this program, here.)
I'm sure this will play well in mobilizing the progressive religious left to vote for Obama, probably better than McCain will get the regressive religious-right to vote for him. But I have to confess, all these appeals to religious groups on both sides of our political spectrum makes me rather queasy. I think I prefer outright religious warfare, than this cool war of votes.
Well, not really, I just tire of it. I wonder when can we leave our religious differences at home and vote and decide on the merits of an issue, rather than what we think that God says with his invisible mouth? McCain has said in the past said some smart things about the religious-right (in the style of a Goldwater conservative), but his overtures to religious-right at the Farwell's Liberty University completely turned me away from the "maverick" McCain. Sorry McCain, but we know what type of Supreme court justices you will now appoint.
Unfortunate as this is, as both conservatives and liberals are expanding government by co-opting religion.
I am not sure now if I want to vote for Obama. He may have lost my vote.
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Happy Woden's Day to you. See you in a week!