PETER NOT PAUL'S BUDDY!

Continuing our discussion about the Ebionites / Nazarenes, the people Paul considered the “saints in Jerusalem”; the original apostles who knew Jesus, his teachings and what he envisioned for the future.

The existence of this group is supported by Paul himself in his “Letters” and also by the “Acts of the Apostles” a New Testament book thought to be written by the same author who wrote the Gospel according to Luke.

We also have more on this group from non-biblical sources. These sources are Church authors such as Justin Martyr, Iranaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, Origen, Epiphanius and Jerome who wrote in the fourth century.

These Christian writers, historians and apologists often quoted from the Gospel of the Nazareans and the Gospel according to the Hebrews and that is how we can reconstruct portions of these Gospels even though no original manuscripts survive. The common thread between these authors is a confirmation that the Ebionites opposed Paul as a false prophet.

To the Ebionites (apostles), Jesus was a human born of a human (no virgin birth and no divinity). They did believe that he was a prophet and the next messiah that would deliver Israel from its oppressors and bring peace and justice to the whole world. They were strict Jewish monotheists where only one god is possible and not three in one as the Catholic Church teaches (Trinity).

What happened to these original Christian Jews with the only direct link to the actual Jesus of Nazareth?

Well, they got the whammy from both sides. The Jewish community (Pharisees) gave them the benefit of a doubt at the outset. They waited to see if what they said was going to happen. In 135 C.E. the Jewish Pharisee rabbis declared the Ebionites heretics of the Jewish faith. Obviously Jesus did not appear as a messiah so he was a “failed messiah” just like so many before him. And as far as his prophetic powers, well he must have been delusional, like so many before him. The new Kingdom of Heaven did not materialize.

The Roman Catholics (Pauline Christians) also called them heretics because they stuck to their Judaism when Christians were now anti-Semites and they did not tow the orthodox Christian line of believing that Jesus was the son of god, a god himself and also part of a trinity; all one god.

Ironically, Paul was also preaching that the end was near and a new world order will be here soon but as life went on and his predictions were not coming true, he and his followers just altered their story somewhat while the poor Ebionites waited and waited till there was no one left to wait anymore.

My point - Jesus was a Jew, wanted to reform Judaism, believed he was the messiah and was crucified and buried. His followers kept the faith in his return for as long as they could and then vanished. But under no circumstances did he start a new religion, especially a religion that would despise and murder his own people.

The Roman Catholic Church cannot trace its roots to Jesus through Peter because Peter opposed Paul saying Paul knew nothing about the true teachings of Jesus since he never met him in the flesh and bases his ideas of Jesus on delusive visions.

So how has the Church kept the delusion(s) going? Well that is another story we will explore.

JESUS WAS NOT A CHRISTIAN!

This is my challenge to the Roman Catholic Church’s claim as the only Church / religion that can declare a direct relationship with Jesus through Peter and therefore the Church Jesus founded and therefore the only “way” to salvation as Pope Benedict has recently reiterated.

My premise is that Jesus remained a devout Jew till his death and that his so called apostles or followers remained the same. The Christian religion is a creation of St. Paul who was never an apostle, never met Jesus and really did not know much concerning what Jesus was about or what he taught.

In fact, Paul and the followers of Jesus were at odds which means Paul and Peter were on opposite sides and not part of the same religion. Since the Roman Catholic Church is based on Pauline Christianity but uses Peter as the link to Jesus to support its legitimacy, I suggest that the Church does not have a valid basis to support any of its claims.

The critical time period in this whole matter is the time after the death of Jesus. The Gospels, written from legendary accounts and hearsay type of information many years after the crucifixion and were meant as works of theology, cannot be trusted as history.

A very important book on the subject which I read in 1987 is: THE MYTHMAKER: PAUL AND THE INVENTION OF CHRISTIANITY by Hyam Maccoby, New York, Harper & Row.

Another very important (fat) book on the subject is: JAMES THE BROTHER OF JESUS by Robert Eisenman (1997) that I received as a present from my wife in 2001 and took the whole year to read it (1074 pages) of small print.

Historians have put together an account of what happened after the crucifixion from a variety of sources. They agree that the followers of Jesus which, I have to believe, included the apostles, stayed together as a group and were called either by the Hebrew name of EBIONITES which meant the “poor ones” or they were termed the NAZARENES after Jesus of Nazareth. I call them the original JEWISH CHRISTIANS.

This group remained as devout, practicing Jews except for the fact that they believed Jesus to be a messiah, a human of human birth that was given prophetic power by god and upon his return, will rule and judge for a thousand years and make the world right. They considered Jesus as a successor to the kings of Israel David and Solomon.

I suppose you could call the Ebionites a messianic sect within Judaism clinging to the teachings and hope of Jesus of Nazareth and waiting for him to appear.

We do not have any surviving written works of the group but we know of them and about them from the books of early Christian fathers (historians) who knew of the group in some detail and quoted from their writings.

James the Just, brother of Jesus became the leader of the group after the crucifixion and remained so until his untimely death (thrown to his death down temple steps) by a rival for a Jewish leadership position in 62 C.E.

For reference Jesus died ~ 30 C.E. Paul’s Letters started ~ 50 C.E., Mark, the first Gospel is dated ~70C.E., Mathew and Luke to 85 C.E. and the last Gospel; John, to 95 - 120 C.E.

To get a better dateline perspective I transpose the years into modern times so as to get a better understanding of the time intervals we are talking about.

Keeping the time intervals the same, I imagine that Jesus died in 1930 and that the first bits of information about him started coming out in 1950s in the form of letters by Paul some 20 years after the fact. Please remember that Paul said very little about Jesus per se but mostly about his (Paul’s) new theology / religion.

The first comprehensive account considered as “scripture” was written in 1970 (Mark), two more in 1985 and the last in 1995. Just imagine someone in 1995 trying to write a story about something that happened in 1930 and before and relying on only oral accounts or by now, legends that have been passed down for generations. No newspaper archives to check, no nothing to check!

Don’t forget that the Gospels were written in Greek and Jesus spoke Aramaic and so did his followers. You see why I don’t put too much stock in the accuracy of the Gospels?

Many of my Christian friends think the Gospels were written by actual Apostles (they were anonymous) given names just to make them easy to distinguish from one another plus historians agree that Jesus and his apostles were most probably illiterate.

These friends also believe that the Gospels were written from eyewitness accounts. I think you can see by the dating and the language difference that that belief is really a stretch.

We do know that Paul interacted with the Jerusalem Church as the Ebionites / Nazarenes were known. We also know that Paul and members of this Jerusalem Church, namely James the leader of the Church and Peter one of the main apostles had some very serious disagreements. In fact these disagreements were deal breakers; unfixable and therefore Paul and the Apostles went their separate ways.

We know this from the New Testament book “Acts of the Apostles” and Paul’s own letters. The fact that these disagreements are reported in the New Testament lends credence to their historicity because scholars maintain that if “embarrassing” items are reported then they probably did occur since logically, why would the writers include something negative about themselves if it wasn’t true.

I will present more evidence of Paul’s break with the followers of Jesus in my next blog but suffice it to say that the Roman Catholic Church cannot trace its roots to Jesus through Peter and in fact all of Christianity cannot claim Jesus as their founder since Paul only “usurped” Jesus for his own use and is solely responsible for the advent and spread of “his” religion.

More to come…

MORE ON THE POPE AS SUCCESSOR TO PETER!

Back from San Diego – what a town – had a great time!

During the long flight there and back, I had the opportunity to review some material about the Pope’s “Petrine Doctrine” or “Apostolic Succession” claims that I touched upon in my last blog.

I read Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s (Pope Benedict) missive “Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today” and the chapter titled “The Primacy of Peter and Unity of the Church” or “Peter and Succession” that he wrote before becoming the Pope.

He starts out saying that the primacy (portrayed as the leader) of Peter in the New Testament is incontestable but nothing in the New Testament addresses the Petrine succession issue directly.

He weaves through a variety of arguments to prove his point including pointing out that the Popes were in place governing the Church before Scripture was Scripture. He means that the New Testament did not come into being as a recognized “holy” scripture (canon) till around the fourth or fifth century when Popes were already seated for some time.

The Popes and the Church had direct influence on which books made it into the New Testament so they ostensibly “created” the scripture being the “preeminent original authority of the Roman see and as a constitutive element” in the process of creating the New Testament.

I will confess that Benedict is not easy to understand especially when he writes in German and someone has to translate it into English.

He places emphasis on the fact that Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome as if that makes Rome somehow special and he ends with the notion that God must have meant the Catholic Church to be his Church because he has protected it and made it thrive throughout all these years; this in the face of bad Popes and bad Papal behavior, wars, schisms and on and on.

If you know anything about the history of the Papacy you will have to agree that it is a “miracle” that it has existed so long and has managed to retain its strength and significance.

Benedict assumes a lot in his arguments. Since we do not have a definitive and reliable secular historic account of what happened after Jesus was put to death, we have to assemble bits and pieces from many sources and come up with some plausible conclusions.

I personally think the Catholic Church has been living a lie and it knows it and has known it for a very long time. I am talking about the smart dudes at the top whose job is to defend the faith according to tradition come hell or high water or even in the face of evidence that may potentially expose their lie.

I read a book in the early 1970s that was very influential on my thinking. The book was THE WORD by Irving Wallace. It was fiction but very authentic when it came to detail. It was about the discovery of an ancient papyrus, a Gospel by James the brother of Jesus, dealing with the time of his ministry and the time after his death. The new Gospel basically contradicted the existing accounts of his life and therefore destroying the foundation that Christianity and Western Civilization were built on.

The story includes attempts to have this new information revealed to the world and obviously the desperate measures by the religious (Roman Church) to destroy it or at least prevent it from ever becoming public.

The book was fiction but I will try to show in the next blog where the premise of the fiction may absolutely be what really happened.

THE POPE IS AT IT AGAIN!

Well, well, well, our ole’ Pope Benedict is not done yet. Last time I wondered what inspired him to bring the old Latin Mass back (all Catholic churches speaking the same language?) and this time he is asserting the old argument that salvation is only available through the Roman Catholic Church and not through “other” Christian denominations.

My, my, he really is trying to reverse Vatican II which “modernized” the Church and brought it into the real world. Benedict maintains that the “old” ways were the best and he intends to take the Church back there. He maintains that he is only “reinterpreting” Vatican II because many got it all wrong; Vatican II was held from 1962 to 1965.

The last Pope was on a mission to unite but not this Pope…

Well, let’s examine what the Pope is talking about. He feels that since Jesus established his Church “on the Rock” which meant St. Peter (rock in Greek) and since Peter was the first Pope in Rome and all subsequent Popes were/are direct representatives of Peter (therefore of Jesus) only the Pope and his Church are true representatives of Jesus’ Church; all others are not “true” churches and thus cannot deliver salvation. Did you get all that?

Well many Christians including millions of Protestants and millions of Orthodox Christians disagree and history or the lack of will sustain their arguments.

Mathew 16:18 indeed has Jesus saying “You are Peter and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it”. I don’t believe the Gospels have any historic validity and have been translated so many times that one cannot be sure of what the original words actually were. Later on in the passage, Jesus tells Peter that he will have the keys to heaven and can “bind” things on earth and they will be bound in heaven – seemingly giving Peter some sort of authority.

People will translate Scripture in a way that will prove their point so you can argue Scripture interpretation till you turn blue and not convince anyone BUT the Catholic Church translated that passage as if Jesus was designating Peter as the head of His Church and they are sticking with that!

Now the fact about Peter being the first Pope IN ROME is a little harder for the Pope to explain. There is no historical corroboration that Peter was ever in Rome unless you saw the movie Quo Vadis and take that as historic fact.

This is a good time to remind everyone that there is NO mention of Jesus, his life and death and of his apostles in secular historic sources; the Gospels are not history books. Scholars always marvel at the power of Christianity today and through the ages but they also marvel at the absolute lack of any evidence – someone literate should have witnessed something and wrote it down – but nary a word exists.

The Catholic Church is adamant about Peter being in Rome and becoming the first Pope, etc. but even the Church maintains that the story of Peter is a “traditional” belief as in we have always believed that so it must be true. They even claim that Peter is buried under the Vatican – and how can that ever be proven even if they have a bunch of bones.

The PETRINE DOCTINE or the DOCTRINE OF PETRINE SUCCESSION is all important in the Pope’s claim that only the Roman Catholic Church is the legitimate Church founded by Jesus; without it the claim collapses.

Benedict is plainly stating that a Christian church MUST recognize Papal authority if it wants to be a “legitimate” Christian church through which people can obtain salvation; otherwise they are just wasting their time?

There is a lot more to this matter but I am off to San Diego for a conference and fun time and will revisit this exiting topic when I get back.

WHAT HAPPENED TO McCAIN?

I was once going to vote for John McCain. He won the Michigan primary back then with straight talk challenging Bush at every turn. The Democrats even wanted him to run for VP on the Dem’s ticket. He truly represented the center with common sense as his guiding philosophy. But that was then…

I spotted trouble when I saw him make nice with the religious right. In the last campaign he told the religious twits to cram it and stay out of politics, but now he was kissing up.

He went and hired the same people that ran Bush’s campaign figuring they knew how to win and religion played a big role in Bush’s victory; at least that is what he thought.

When he said he was going to support the war on Iraq come hell or high water, I knew he was in trouble; I wrote him off at the Jerry Falwell ass kissing.

Yesterday, he fired all his former Bush advisors and said he was very low on money but he would keep going. His campaign is all but dead.

I wonder if he knows where he went wrong. How could he believe that the times and the people were the same as they were in 2000?

He either was misled or he misread the American people. He was the predicted front-runner and I predicted it would be him against Hillary but boy did he tank big time.

We are lucky we found out early that he was NOT presidential material; it could have been another Bush type disaster and this country could not take another disaster such as the one we have now.

THE WAR IN IRAQ IS LOST - GET THE HELL OUT!

The New York Times this Sunday had an editorial titled “The Road Home”. It is a detailed look at the Iraq situation today and what we need to do; go home is their answer.

Some of my friends concede that the Bush administration has totally flubbed the war in Iraq from lying about the reasons for the war to total incompetence in prosecuting the war BUT they keep saying “we cannot just leave”.

Well, that argument no longer holds water if it ever did; Iraq cannot get any worst but it can get better if we leave. A de-facto civil war has been in progress for a while and the slaughter has only escalated.

The editorial in the Times confirms what I and many others have been saying; the war is lost and it is wrong to keep killing and maiming our soldiers for no good reason.

On the other hand, what I and many others have been suggesting is happening anyway; the country is splitting into three (3): Kurds, Sunni and Shia. We would have saved many lives if we just divided the place at the outset.

The Iraqi government, as predicted, cannot govern because of sectarianism so why even have one, let the individual areas govern themselves and let us develop and split the oil revenues between sectors.

Keep a U.S. military presence in the north of Iraq to keep other countries from invading but other than that, we pull out of Iraq.

We have Bosnia as a historical example, so why are we so goddamn stupid, excuse me, why is Bush so goddamn stupid.

Bush will continue the war until his term expires and then will blame the incoming president for losing the war; we need to stop him now.

More and more Republicans are deserting Bush but they are being political about it and not asking for the war to end but just to change our war policy.

The Democrats are going to start an offensive this week, I hope, that will make the republicans either shit or get off the pot, no more sitting on the fence.

And please don’t give me that shit about supporting our troops, the only support they need is for us to get them the hell out of there!

PAKISTAN HOLDS THE KEY!

I have been following the situation in Pakistan with keen interest. The Pakistani government is in a siege of the “Red Mosque”. This militant Islamic school was trying to bring the rule of Shariah Law to Pakistan in other words, make it into a theocracy. The school’s students have been rampaging around town smashing CDs and music tapes and anything “sinful”.

The government of Pervez Musharraf stepped in to stop the rampaging students. One of the students shot a soldier dead and the rest barricaded themselves in their school hence the siege.

This on-going saga reveals a lot more than just a siege and I think an answer to Islamic militancy. In Pakistan there are many “madrasas” or religious schools like the Red Mosque (Lal Masjid) mentioned above. All teach a virulently anti-Western theology to their young impressionable students. This is where the Taliban finds its recruits. Terrorist organizations pour money into these schools to train more and more suicide bombers, etc.

Here, I think, is part of the answer for winning the war against Islamic terrorism; eliminate the schools.

Pakistan is a testing ground. Most Pakistanis support the government’s crackdown on these schools and their students but a large part of the Pakistan population is backwards and religious fundamentalists; they are easily swayed by their religious leaders.

The terror groups supporting the schools are rich and powerful. These groups are also trying to assassinate Musharraf and may yet succeed.

The U.S. nominally supports Musharraf but that is a mixed blessing for him as far as his own countrymen are concerned.

The Bush Administration is too stupid to come up with a plan to help Musharraf destroy these schools for terrorists. My only hope is that the next president has a brain that functions normally.

POPE BENEDICT GOING BACKWARD?

Having been raised a Catholic, I am still fascinated by all things Catholic even though I treat Catholicism as I do all religions; human inventions.

What caught my eye this time was Pope Benedict XVI’s removal of sanctions against the old Latin Mass of my youth called the Tridentine Mass.

If you are my age or later, you will remember a Mass where the priest basically faced the altar and not the congregation and muttered everything in Latin.

As a former altar boy, I was required to learn all the Latin responses to what the priest was saying. I knew the words, just did not know what they meant; neither did the congregation nor maybe even the priest. The rationale was that the priest is facing the altar just like the congregation is and is actually leading the congregation in prayer to the altar where God resides.

The new Mass has the priest facing the people with the monstrance (where God resides) in front of him as in joining the people in prayer instead of leading them – kapish?

I must admit that the whole Latin Mass affair had a kind of mystery about it and a certain solemnity that the English language just can’t compete with mainly because we understand it.

I admired Pope John XXIII for his liberal views and for calling together the Second Vatican Council which reformed the Mass and proscribed the use of the local vernacular in the new Mass among other changes.

There was opposition of course, even my mother was against the change but it was smart policy to allow more congregational participation in the Mass and my mother along with most Catholics are used to it and love it.

The Vatican had to ban saying of the old Latin Mass because it had to force the new one into use otherwise people just wouldn’t change. So why is ole’ Benedict reversing that order now?

I know Benedict is conservative but to go against Vatican II? – that is very big and may cause a big split.

On the surface, it seems he is trying to reconnect with the ultraconservative twits that never accepted the changes made by Vatican II. Remember Archbishop Lefebvre in France that started a splinter group of Catholics? He was excommunicated in 1988 along with all his followers. Does Benedict want them back? Why? How many are there?

Benedict maintains that it is much ado about nothing. He isn’t revoking the changes made by Vatican II or turning back the clock or starting in a new direction backwards towards fundamentalism but I am not sure of his motives.

If he is just trying to accommodate a group of Catholics, he is making a huge change just to please a few? Benedict is a smart boy and he maybe be thinking that a common Mass language (Latin) is a uniting factor among world Catholics and that using local languages is a dividing factor.

I may not know Benedict’s motives entirely but I will tell you this may change things big time as far as Church unity is concerned. He may go down in history as a Pope that started the big modern schism.

He did allow for a re-visit to his proclamation in three (3) years and if all hell has broken loose then maybe he will retract his ruling – so much for Papal infallibility.

Oh and also the Jews are mad because the old Mass called for their conversion to Christianity which Vatican II threw out as stupid and insulting – is there a trend here?

Islamic Dress Close to Home!

I would like to add to my comments on the extreme dress of some Muslim women in this country and in fact, in my neighborhood.

In my last blog on this subject, I dispelled any ideas that the religion of Islam demands such extreme clothing and that it is and was usually a cultural and/or a specific ethnic custom practiced in the Middle East. I have problems with the practice being continued here in this country but I am conflicted as to my justification for such feelings.

Anyway, I was taking my grandson to the park the other day, specifically where the children enjoy a “splash” area since it is very hot at this time.

Please look at the pictures I took of the children and parents enjoying the cooling water. You will notice a few girls in full Islamic dress. You will also see a blond girl without a top on; now is that a perfect juxtaposition or what.

First, I think all girls should wear appropriate swim wear even when they are very young and therefore the mother of the topless girl was wrong in allowing her to run around that way.

But let us talk about the little girls forced to wear extreme Muslim wear on a hot and humid day; both me and my wife felt sorry for them. We discussed our feelings later on.

I look at the issue emotionally because I equate the Islamic dress as male oppression of women. They perform female circumcision to prevent women from liking sex too much. They feel God created women to give pleasure to men and not to themselves so you can see why I want the practice banned.

But my wife correctly points out that in this country we allow people to dress the way they want to; it is after all a free country.

Yes, we are a nation of immigrants and although we keep some ethnic customs we have basically all assimilated into the melting pot that is America. She feels that eventually they will too and I should just be patient and let natural social forces have their way.

She probably is correct on all points but I still am conflicted. More to come…

More on Racialy Fair Justice!

In my letter to the editor in the previous blog, I have responded to an editorial in the Detroit Free Press titled “Make justice racially fair”.

The editorial disturbed me for a number of reasons and I thought that the editorial should not go unchallenged even though I do agree with some of what it proposes.

The editorial decries the fact that here in Michigan, our prison population is over 50% black while the general population of blacks in Michigan is somewhere around 13-14%. In Detroit it is over 85%.

The editorial also finds alarming that black children make up over 50% of children in foster care but make up only 17.5% of the general population of children in the state.

The editorial then goes on to list legal and social conditions that it feels contribute to the dismal statistics in the black community, conditions that need to be addressed and corrected.

Taking on the enormous disparity in the prison population, the NAACP and the editorial writer would like to see many more blacks seated on criminal juries. They are advocating allowing even ex-felons to serve on juries, anything just to get more blacks on juries.

To me allowing a convicted criminal to sit on a jury is the height of absurdity. I realize that many blacks have criminal records, especially in Detroit, and that leaves fewer blacks eligible for jury duty but my god, how stupid do you think our society is? NO to that!

The whole idea of trying to pack juries with blacks begs for rationale and the only rationale that I can detect is that blacks are more likely not to convict their own kind and fewer convictions will translate to a lower black prison population. OK, makes sense but how is that fair and how does that serve justice?

On the other hand it does imply that whites on a jury tend not to be fair when judging black defendants. I cannot deny that racism exists in the white community but it is not as obvious as in the old days. I think a majority of whites can and are fair when sitting on juries with black defendants, in fact, because of white guilt; many are too fair and forgiving when it comes to blacks.

I have been called to jury duty many times and I did not see a lack of blacks there but I did see blacks begging off jury duty for economic reasons. They don’t have the transportation available to them or the luxury to take a leave of absence from their jobs. It is an unfortunate circumstance of life. Whites can also be in the same position but in most cases, blacks are more likely to lack the economic means to serve on a jury.

I will agree that public defenders will need to be paid a decent fee so capable lawyers represent the indigent. Right now the public defenders do as much as they are paid and that is pittance so they do a pittance of defending.

As far as the disparity of black children in foster care, well that is a result of the same reasons that land more blacks in jails than whites. They make babies, go to jail and leave the kids with a mother that cannot handle the kids or herself – foster care.

I have a problem with the NAACP and the Detroit Free Press editorial writers for again trying to blame others for the dismal state of the black community in Detroit. Here they are trying to get more blacks off after they commit a crime instead of trying to prevent blacks from doing the crime in the first place.

The national NAACP convention is in town this week and I hope there are some people with a vision that are coming up in the ranks of the organization. In the past, we had a bunch of incompetents that wasted money on stupid projects like fighting for more blacks in baseball, etc. or themselves and their girlfriends.

Bill Cosby has been trying to educate the black community by telling them they have to look at themselves first before blaming others. The NAACP should follow his advice but I am not sure it is capable of doing what needs to be done.

RACIALLY FAIR JUSTICE?

Tuesday, July 03, 2007
To: The Detroit Free Press
Re: “Make justice racially fair”, July 2.

In your editorial “Make justice racially fair”, July 2, I agree with you that the prison population in Michigan is disproportionately black and that is and should be totally unacceptable to the black community but I question your suggestions for easing that disparity.

Your plan to get more blacks on juries by including ex-felons, among other suggestions, implies that blacks and especially blacks that are also ex-felons are less likely to convict fellow blacks thereby sending fewer blacks to prison. On the other side, your plan can also be understood as implying that whites on juries are somehow less fair to black defendants.

Although I strongly support jury diversity I feel your efforts would be better spent on trying to prevent blacks from committing criminal acts in the first place and not concentrating on getting them off after the fact.

MUSLIM WOMEN'S CLOTHES - AN OPINION.

A recent article in the local paper devoted a full page to the wearing of head coverings by Muslim women in the United States, specifically right here in Michigan; we have the largest Arab / Muslim population in the whole country.

What attracted me to the article was the sub head that implied that young, modern women WANT to wear the head scarves and are enticing their mothers to wear them also.

The point of the story was that when the mothers first came to the U.S. they did not wear the head coverings popular in the old country because they wanted to fit into the new American society better by adopting the style of dress that predominates here. Younger women, on the other hand, now feel it is their obligation as Muslims to follow what they think the Koran and therefore Allah, demands.

The next day, the paper published a full page of “letters to the editor” about the article and most of the letter writers wrote negatively about wearing Muslim scarves in the United States.

As always, there is a lot of confusion and misunderstanding even on the part of the Muslims themselves. One young Muslim woman said why are nuns allowed to cover their bodies but not us?

Please allow some stream of consciousness on my part as I try to work through my own feelings on this subject.

I remember in my Catholic upbringing that women had to cover their heads when entering church. They don’t do that anymore but still it was a tradition if not actual canon law in the past. The basis for the tradition came from St. Paul and his Letter to the Corinthians in which he babbles on about the head of every man being Christ and the head of every woman is man…

The point is quite sexist and basically signifies that the woman was made FOR man and the covering of her head meant she is subordinate to the man (male). Most Catholic women had no idea why they covered their heads in church; they just did what they were told.

My wife said that Jewish women she knows wear wigs over their own natural hair. It is true that in some Hasidic sects’ women shave their heads and wear wigs to this very day. The point – well it goes back to the days when the Bible was written. In those days a woman with uncovered hair was basically nude – hey that is how they thought then!

In my neighborhood, we have women from India dressing in their saris and Sikh men from India wearing turbans because they never cut their hair – no idea why.

Mohammed essentially combined some Christian and some Jewish ideas to form Islam. He stressed that women be modest and dress accordingly. Their modesty was their protection from lustful men. Again, that is how these men thought then and it probably made sense for their social environment.

There is nothing wrong with dressing modestly and many if not most women do just that. On the other hand if you spend any time at local malls in the summer, you will get to see young women dress totally without any modesty. You might say that they are half-nude.

As far as enticing unwanted sexual attention by immodest dress; well that is a fact of life and does happen I suppose occasionally but when you read about 90 year old women being raped you realize that a rapist does not have to be turned on by immodest dress; rapists have other issues. Men will definitely stare though and quite frankly, that is why women dress the way they do; I think it is biological, but that is another matter.

If you saw how women were dressed in Taliban Afghanistan (blue birquas) with not even the eyes showing, you saw where extremism can take you. The Taliban men must be turned on and induced to rape a woman if any inch of skin or hair strand is visible. I feel sorry for those guys; all they see all day is guys that look just like them and smell like them but of course they get to see animals also.

The Taliban also forbad woman and girls to be educated and that is in direct opposition to what the Koran states and so when they tell you they are just doing what the Koran tells them to do, you know it is plain bullshit.

So do Muslim women have to cover themselves because their religion stipulates to do so – no; the Koran asks them to just dress modestly and not to draw attention to themselves – OK?

As you have surely noticed, Muslim women dress in varied styles dependent on their locale; in most cases, the more backward a country, the more severe the dress requirements. Some Muslim countries actually leave it up to the individual woman as to what to wear. On the other hand, some countries have “dress police” that whip and beat women that are not properly dressed in their eyes.

Because female dress requirements change from country to country means that there is no specific and definitive instruction in the Koran that applies to all Muslim women; women dress as is the custom in their individual ethnic group.

Now let’s talk about American culture. We too value modesty but we do not have strict rules about it; it is a matter of personal choice how someone defines modesty. We do have laws that prohibit public nudity and such but no specific dress codes.

Some schools have dress codes, especially parochial schools like Catholic schools. I happen to think it is a good idea because it is less expensive for the parents and takes the guess work out of what to wear each morning.

So why do Americans have problems with Muslim head scarves and especially the whole body covering? Number one, yes, we do associate that type of dress with female oppression. We know the Koran does not require it and we do know that in other countries like France, teachers and students are actually forbidden from wearing a Muslim scarf.

We feel that if you come into our country and want to settle here and raise a family here, you should become as American as possible, after all something about Americans and America made you want to come here. That does not mean to abandon your ethnic ways and traditions, we all keep them to a certain degree, but do not stand out to the point that you are perceived to be mocking our society, our traditions and the way we look.

The views on modesty have changed dramatically through the years and especially since Mohammad walked the earth. If American women do not see the need to cover themselves for safety or for modesty’s sake, neither should the Muslim women; they are after all, all women and they live in one society – the American society.

Well, I guess some of my feelings are starting to show. I will have to pass it through my crowd to see if I am missing something in my logic.

FUNDAMENTALISM, Part 2

OK, things quieted down after 1925 as far as Fundamentalism is concerned. We got into a DEPRESSION and then WWII - so we were pretty busy as a nation.

When did Fundamentalism raise its ugly head again, well in the 60s? And why you ask- because secondary education in the South and Midwest improved dramatically and that was due to, of all things, the Russian SPUTNIK. Yes, the Ruskis beat us into space and that made us look retarded.

The federal government in 1963 demanded better science education in our secondary schools and a much better science text book was introduced and yes, it had the subject of evolution in it this time.

The Fundamentalists attacked but were driven back by the Supreme Court in 1968 which allowed the subject of evolution to be taught in public schools. They turned to demanding equal time in the class room for creationism but in 1987 the Supreme Court ruled that creationism is a religious doctrine and not a science.

And now we have INTELLIGENT DESIGN as another way to stick God into our science courses. The few legal challenges that I am aware of followed the trend of still calling ID as another form of creationism and therefore a religious doctrine and therefore not to be allowed into our school science curriculums.

The election of the current George Bush pushed Fundamentalists into the forefront as king makers when actually Al Gore won the popular vote. The false perception that Americans are fundamentalists and vote for people of like mind continues to this day.

There is no question President Bush has a religious agenda and is trying to turn our nation into a Christian nation (his idea of Christianity) even if he has to circumvent or even defy our Constitution and unfortunately, we are allowing him to do just that.

I noticed in a debate among Democratic presidential contenders that all of them swore how important religion and God is in their lives and how their faith has helped them throughout their lives – gag! Whatever happened to religion being a personal matter?

The presidential aspirants, both Democrats and Republicans have failed to notice that Americans are sick and tired of fundamentalists and want religion OUT of their government. Did you happen to notice how many so called religious Republicans are being prosecuted for breaking the law or at least committing SINFUL acts? I think even the fundamentalists cannot support such stinking hypocrisy anymore.

History shows us that religion and science have coexisted together very well and in fact, continue to do so. Christian theology is quite flexible when it comes to new scientific findings; it has to be to remain relevant at least to the people with normal reasoning power.

Therefore, I continue to be puzzled by the seeming power of a minority, extremist Christian sect, especially political power or is this all an illusion propagated by a clever illusionist like Carl Rove.

More to follow…

AMERICAN FUNDAMENTALISM IS THE ANSWER!

In my on-going search to find out why current Americans are so much more religious than Europeans, Western that is, or at least why religion is such a large topic here and not there, I came upon a possible thread that may lead to an answer in one of my “Teaching Company” courses; I listen to a 30 minute lecture while exercising every morning.

The course is “Science and Religion” taught by Professor Lawrence M. Principe of Johns Hopkins University.

In his lectures, he points out that science and religion have coexisted mostly amicably throughout the ages. St. Augustine, all the way back in 354-430 A.D. declared the indispensability of both faith and reason and that statement has been reaffirmed by the Catholic Church as well as other Christian denominations to this very day.

So why here, in America, right now, are we having so much turmoil between faith and reason, science and religion, church and state?

Well it seems it is a relatively recent phenomenon, born in America and called the American Christian Fundamentalist Movement.

To properly examine this issue, I may have to spend a few blogs discussing it.

I cannot discuss every detail that factored into the rise and spread of the movement but I can touch on what I feel are the important reasons.

It started in the late 1800s and in its first phase went on strong until the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925.

It was the turn of the century and just like in 1999, the kooks were out in force especially the MILLENARIANS, those who took the Book of Revelation in the Bible literally to predict the end times with the second coming of Jesus.

This particular movement brought on the belief in BIBLICAL INERRANCY where the Bible cannot be wrong and what we call NAÏVE LITERALISM where every phrase and every word in the Bible is believed to be directly from God and means exactly what it says.

This could also be viewed as a direct reaction to HIGHER CRITICISM of the Bible, a method developed in Germany where words and ideas in the Bible are looked at in the historical and cultural context of the time they were written in and the audience they were intended for; in other words not us.

This higher criticism method of Bible study is accepted and used today by many Christian scholars and has been accepted by the Roman Catholic Church as an “indispensable method for the scientific study of the meaning of ancient texts”. They call the method the “HISTORICAL – CRITICAL METHOD”.

The Fundamentalist movement was also a social movement. At the turn of the century America was changing from rural to urban. Immigrants were streaming in bringing with them new religions and new ideas. WWI also broke our isolationism with American troops back from the war telling about all they have seen and experienced over there!
Fundamentalism was a reactionary movement against MODERNITY and all it brought with it. They wanted the old days back.

Fundamentalist preachers held revival meetings all over the country warning all to keep those wicked new ideas out of their lives and to do God’s bidding the way the Bible tells them to. Prohibition was enacted because of fundamentalism.

One other factor that I think is very important is the fact that as people left their farms for towns and cities, high school attendance sky rocketed and with that came exposure to modern science including evolution.

Fundamentalists like William Jennings Bryan attacked evolution with a passion. He took that passion to the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925 in Tennessee and a challenge to a state law banning the teaching of evolution by the ACLU.

The trial itself was a circus (see the movie INHERIT THE WIND) and was widely reported on. Clarence Darrow for the defense made Bryan look like an anti-intellectual baboon. Bryan died shortly after the trial and fundamentalism quieted down and was more or less dormant for 30 years, why?

Here is the kicker; evolution disappeared from textbooks because the people in charge of ordering textbooks for schools demanded its removal. Publishers not wanting to endanger the sales of their textbooks complied. Can you believe this?

See you on the flip side in the 1960s.

A CREATION MUSEUM IN AMERICA!

I have another example for the need in our society of “militant secularists” who aggressively attack preposterous religious beliefs instead of just “letting them be…”

A “Creation Museum” is opening on Monday in Petersburg, Kentucky. The museum cost $27 million dollars and was built by the “Answers in Genesis” ministry.

By all accounts, the museum is beautiful with 60,000 square feet of exhibits that were created by Patrick Marsh, the same guy that created the “Jaws: and “King Kong” exhibits at Universal Studios in Florida. I have visited those exhibits in Florida and they are stunning to say the least.

The only problem with this stunning museum is that most of what it shows and teaches is based on un-truths and in essence, is trying to promote a fabrication.

As the name of the museum implies, the builders of this museum believe in the literal truth of the Bible; in this case the Book of Genesis, hence their name: Answers in Genesis Ministry.

They believe the earth is barely 6,000 years old and that humans and dinosaurs inhabited the earth together and were present in Noah’s Ark.

Their belief system is so outlandish that conservative Christians have a hard time defending it because to defend it would mean to deny all the hard scientific evidence gathered to date. May I remind you that some of these people are college graduates?

This would be funny if it was some kooky billionaire doing this but the organization that built this museum has 9,000 charter members and their magazine has 50,000 subscribers. The $27 million debt has already been paid off, in some cases by money from international sources.

We must remember that these people have children or even grandchildren and that these children are brainwashed into believing this utter nonsense.

We have freedom of speech and freedom of religion in this country so they have every right to believe what they want BUT we cannot let them get away with this nonsense without saying something!

In my previous arguments, I have maintained that religion fills in gaps in our knowledge base. Once science offers proofs to fill those gaps, religion is then replaced by facts.

Science does not know how the universe began. The “Big Bang” theory is plausible and probably correct but how the Big Bang occurred, why or if someone caused it to occur; here you can throw in a god of your choice.

But science does know how old the earth is, when modern man evolved and when dinosaurs lived and when they all became extinct – these are knowable and proven facts. To deny them is to deny reality.

Deniers of the Holocaust are ostracized and condemned; in Austria they can be jailed since it is against the law to deny the Holocaust ever occurred. The builders of the Creation Museum belong to a similar group of people and should be exposed for what they are; insane.

MORALITY AS AN EVOLUTIONARY PRODUCT?

I want to share with you some new scientific discoveries. Yes, they do have something to do with religion and in effect, shed some light on my questions as to why, as humans, we seem to need religion.

The headlines that attracted my attention were: “Study: Morality has biological roots” and “Researchers: Morality appears to be hard-wired”. The sub-heads were interesting also: “Experiment shows good impulses such as altruism are basic to the brain like food and sex” and “When volunteers placed the interest of others before their own, the generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food and sex”.

I will not get into the minutiae of the actual experiment but suffice it to say that modern science can now map and view the brain as it never has before. Scientists can ask questions and see with what part of the brain you respond.

I have always maintained that knowing right from wrong is intrinsic to the human brain, i.e. we are born with that capability and do not need to be taught. Now, of course, we need to be taught manners particular to our culture as well as many other things but basic things like stealing and murder, etc. we automatically know are wrong.

The reason this particular scientific discovery about us humans interests me is that some of my religious friends and I suppose they represent a microcosm of the entire religious population; think that religion teaches right from wrong, good from evil and that is why kids have to have religious training.

Now of course, I can decimate that logic by just pointing to all the pedophile priests, mass murderers and the like that received religious training and so what…

This particular scientific study shows that culture is not what teaches us morality but that evolution has given it to us. Evolution as we all know is about survival of the fittest and even though genetic mutations happened at random, those with the strongest survival tools lived while the others did not.

To put this into perspective using our pre-programmed morality theory, people who got along with others and worked with and for the group (altruism) produced stronger groups which then protected individuals within the group better thus affording enhanced survivability.

I will take this a little further to suggest that the same group would be made even more cohesive and thus stronger with a shared belief system (religion) thus improving survivability.

Individuals that did not feel comfortable in groups because their brains did not have this morality gene programmed into their brains did not have as good a chance at survival and perished allowing the stronger, moral individuals to flourish.

You must admit this is interesting…

ISLAM ELEVATES WOMEN?

To: The Canton Observer
Re: “Islam elevates women”, Letter, May 31.


Mr. Mohammed Yunus is correct when he states that the holy book of Islam, the Koran, protects the rights of women and elevates them to a status in line with men. But, as in many religions, holy written words are subject to varied interpretations and we are left with the actual behavior of a group to form our impressions and not by what their holy book says.

Many Muslims are aware that the abominable treatment of women in places like Taliban Afghanistan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc. are because of cultural norms which are justified by and based on, in many cases, their distorted interpretation of the Koran.

I think American Muslims need to voice their objections to the perversion of Islam and the Koran by these so called radical Muslims and point out exactly how their actions are anti-Islamic. In this way you can show us how true Islam operates and how it teaches its followers to behave.

American Muslims have remained woefully silent about the barbarous behavior of some of their Muslim brethren and should not be surprised by our misconceptions about the religion of Islam; we judge by what we see.