TruthBook Religious News Blog

By TERENCE CHEA (AP) – 3 days ago

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal appeals court upheld the use of the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and "In God We Trust" on U.S. currency, rejecting arguments Thursday that the phrases violate the separation of church and state.

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel rejected two legal challenges by Sacramento atheist Michael Newdow, who said the references to God are unconstitutional and infringe on his religious beliefs.

The same appeals court caused a national uproar and prompted accusations of judicial activism when it decided in Newdow's favor in 2002, ruling that the pledge violated the First Amendment prohibition against government endorsement of religion.

President George W. Bush called the 2002 decision "ridiculous," senators passed a resolution condemning the ruling and Newdow received death threats.

That lawsuit reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 2004, but the high court said Newdow lacked the legal standing to file the suit because he didn't have custody of his daughter, on whose behalf he brought the case.

So Newdow filed an identical challenge on behalf of other parents who objected to the recitation of the pledge at school. In 2005, a federal judge in Sacramento decided in Newdow's favor, prompting the appeals court to take up the case again.

Judge Carlos Bea, who was appointed by Bush in 2003, wrote for the majority in Thursday's 2-1 ruling.

"The Pledge of Allegiance serves to unite our vast nation through the proud recitation of some of the ideals upon which our Republic was founded," he said.

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Please click on "exteranl source" for the complete article.

For your consideration, here is a Urantia Book quote which speaks of the separation of church and state as a "great peace move...":

70:1.14 7. Religion—the desire to make converts to the cult. The primitive religions all sanctioned war. Only in recent times has religion begun to frown upon war. The early priesthoods were, unfortunately, usually allied with the military power. One of the great peace moves of the ages has been the attempt to separate church and state.

Is our pledge's referral to God disregarding this attempt?

Does inclusion of God's name violate the separation of church and state?

Labels: church-state, God, Michael Newdow, pledge of allegiance, religion, Terence Chea

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Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Most Believe God Gets Involved

March 10, 2010
By TARA PARKER-POPE

When the "American Idol" judge Simon Cowell recently predicted the departure of the contestant Jermaine Sellers, the young singer shook his head in disagreement. "I know God," he replied, pointing upward.

Two days later, when Mr. Sellers failed to make the cut, he still had faith. "What God has for me is for me," he said. "In God there is no failure."

Mr. Sellers is not alone in his belief that God pays attention to reality television contests. New research shows that most Americans believe God is directly involved in their personal affairs, and that the good or bad things that happen are "part of God’s plan," according to a report in the March issue of the journal Sociology of Religion.

"Many people describe their relationship with God not in abstract terms but in the way they would describe a real personal friend, but a friend who would never betray you," said Scott Schieman, professor of sociology at the University of Toronto. "The interesting thing is that when you press people to start talking about things like speeding tickets or losing weight, a lot of people will weave a divine narrative in, describing God as somehow setting up situations or setting up scenarios for success or failure."

The research relied on data from two national surveys: the Baylor Religion Survey, a nationally representative sample of 1,721 Americans; and the Work, Stress and Health Survey, which collects data from phone interviews with 1,800 people across the United States. In reviewing the data sets, Dr. Schieman studied the influence of people’s religious beliefs on behavior, and how education and income are related to views about God’s involvement in everyday life.

The study found that 82 percent of respondents said they "depend on God for help and guidance in making decisions." And 71 percent believe that good or bad events are "part of God’s plan for them."

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Please click on "external source article" for the complete article...

Labels: faith, God, Tara Parker-Pope

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Sunday, February 28, 2010

Only Spirituality Can Solve The Problems Of The World

by Deepak Chopra
February 24, 2010 10:22 AM

Before addressing the importance of spirituality in modern times, we should first define it. Spirituality is the experience of that domain of awareness where we experience our universality. This domain of awareness is a core consciousness that is beyond our mind, intellect, and ego. In religious traditions this core consciousness is referred to as the soul which is part of a collective soul or collective consciousness, which in turn is part of a more universal domain of consciousness referred to in religions as God. When we have even a partial glimpse of this level of awareness we experience joy, insight, intuition, creativity, and freedom of choice. In addition, there is the awakening of love, kindness, compassion, happiness at the success of others, and equanimity. As the turbulence of our mind settles down, our body also begins to heal itself because it also quiets down. The body's self-repair mechanisms are activated when the mind is at peace because the mind and body are at the deepest level inseparably one.

All religions are founded on a deep spiritual experience of unity consciousness where there was complete union between the personal and universal. Unfortunately, many times the followers of religion, instead of understanding the religious experience and seeking it for themselves ended up merely worshiping the founder of the religion. It is more important to fully grasp the teaching of the religion and its basic tenets, that have come from a deeper experience of transcendence. Self-righteous morality is not a means for experiencing higher consciousness. Higher consciousness, spontaneously leads to moral and ethical behavior...

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Here is another of the Huffington Post's series on religion. You are invited on this blog to contribute what religion means to you. It might be a good forum to share some of our Urantia teachings with the larger community. This particular article seems pretty consistent with what TUB teaches...Please click on "External Source Article" below to access the entire article and the website...

Labels: Deepak Chopra, God, HuffPost Religion, religion, spirituality

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Wednesday, February 24, 2010

The Great Recession: A Spiritual Crisis

Jim Wallis
Founder of Sojourners; speaker, author, activist
February 24, 2010

The Great Recession is not just an economic crisis, it is the result of a loss of values, a moral crisis. And to say that it is a moral crisis is also to say that it is a spiritual crisis. At the center of most religions is the question of who and what we worship? Where is our deepest allegiance?

So the Great Recession bears some "religious" reflection, as the market has gradually become all pervasive--a replacement for religion and even for God. It is the Market now that now seems to have all the godlike qualities--all-knowing, all-present, all-powerful, even eternal--unable to be resisted or even questioned. Performing necessary roles and providing important goods and services are not the same things as commanding ultimate allegiance. Idolatry means that something has taken the place of God. The market can be good thing and even necessary; but it now commands too much, claims ultimate significance, controls too much space in our lives, and has gone far beyond its proper limits.

Idolatry comes in a lot of different forms. Today, it is much more subtle than bowing down to a golden calf. It often takes the form of choosing the wrong priorities, trusting in the wrong things, and putting our confidence where it does not belong.

Today, instead of statues, we now have hedge funds, mortgage-backed securities, 401(k)s, and mutual funds and, for some, bonuses. We place blind faith in the hope that the stock indexes will just keep rising and real estate prices keep climbing. Market mechanisms were supposed to distribute risk so well that even those who were reckless would never see the consequences of their actions. Trust, security, and hope in the future were all as close to us as the nearest financial planner's office. Life and the world around us could all be explained with just the right market lens. These idols were supposed to make us happy and secure, and provide for all our needs. Those who manage them became the leaders, to whom we looked, not just for financial leadership, but direction for our entire lives. That is indeed idolatry.

Rich and poor alike were sucked into making heroes out of those who seemed to be able to turn everything they touched into gold. Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Elie Wiesel lost virtually all of his personal wealth and his foundation's, up to $37 million, to Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. "We gave him everything, we thought he was God, we trusted everything in his hands," Weisel said.

The market even has its priests, pastors, rabbis, imams, and shamans. These money and market commentators translate the often confusing signals of the Dow, international currency exchange rates, or futures indexes and tell us all what they mean and how they should act as a result...

This is one man's take on our present economic crisis. He lends a spiritual angle to it, and it is a thought-provoking opinion...Please click on "external source" below for the complete article.

Labels: God, idolatry, Jim Wallis, religion, the economy

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Friday, February 05, 2010

How Does an Atheist Come to Believe in God?: An Interview with Jacob Needleman

By Lisa Webster
January 28, 2010

RD’s senior editor sits down with philosopher Jacob Needleman, whose autobiography What is God? describes his journey from young Ivy-educated professor and atheist, to talk about fundamentalism, atheism, separating the sacred from religion, and why listening is the first step of every ethics.

Sitting in Jacob Needleman’s living room in the Oakland hills, I fished in my bag for the tiny microphone I planned to use with my iPhone, to record our conversation. "Is that what you’re using?" he asked, with great interest. He held up his own phone. "I just got one of these. Will this really work?"

He sat next to me on the couch as I pointed him through the app store on his phone. "There it is," I said, pointing to iTalk. "That’s what I’m using."

He tapped the screen, but the app that came up for download was... iTalk to God.

"That can’t be it," he laughed. It wasn’t—but what a setup.

What is God? is an unlikely title for a book by a philosopher, unless the question is meant rhetorically, or as a starting-off point for a discourse on language, or on the foibles of the mind, perhaps. But Jacob Needleman asks the question in earnest, and then proceeds—in the course of this most personal of the dozen or so books he's written—to answer it.

What is God?, out last month from Tarcher/Penguin, is an intellectual autobiography—the story of Needleman's education and formation as a scholar and teacher—but it’s also a narrative of what might be called a conversion. A young Ivy-educated professor, "allergic" to religion, enthralled by science, finds himself obliged to teach a religious studies survey class; to his surprise, he discovers a world of rigor and inquiry in theological writing. The story he tells, of the intertwining of his intellectual and spiritual searches, has a real suspense to it: how does an atheist come to believe in God?

In a conversation earlier this month we discussed this question, the challenges of talking about religion in the contemporary cultural arena, fundamentalism and atheism, and the practice of real communication.

This is just the beginning of a 2-page article - an interesting interview with Jacob Needlemann and his conversion from atheist to a man who has experienced God. Please click on "external source" for the complete piece.

Labels: atheism, ethics, God, Jacob Needleman, Lisa Webster, listening, philosophy, religion

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Thursday, January 21, 2010

And yet, the Haitians praise God

And yet, the Haitians praise God
Monday January 18, 2010
Categories: Religion

The other night, a day after the Haiti earthquake, ABC News ended its evening broadcast with video of destitute and shell-shocked Haitians standing in the street, singing alleluia. It was a stunning sight. Last night on Fox, Geraldo Rivera reported on a Fox crew that had gone out in search of an orphanage rumored to have been repeatedly assaulted by looters, who stole what little the poor children had. The crew was having trouble finding the place, until they heard the sound of children singing hymns. The footage Fox broadcasted of these children was absolutely heartbreaking (and Fox reported receiving a call from Colorado viewers offering to adopt the kids). This morning, the New York Times reports on how Haitians have responded to the catastrophe by turning to God. Excerpt:

Five days after Haiti's devastating earthquake, an evangelical pastor in a frayed polo shirt, his church crushed but his spirit vibrant, sounded a siren to summon the newly homeless residents of a tent city to an urgent Sunday prayer service.

Voice scratchy, eyes bloodshot, arms raised to the sky, the Rev. Joseph Lejeune urged the hungry, injured and grieving Haitians who gathered round to close their eyes and elevate their beings up and out of the fetid Champ de Mars square where they now scrambled to survive.

"Think of our new village here as the home of Jesus Christ, not the scene of a disaster," he called out over a loudspeaker. "Life is not a disaster. Life is joy! You don't have food? Nourish yourself with the Lord. You don't have water? Drink in the spirit."

And drink they did, singing, swaying, chanting and holding their noses to block out the acrid stench of the bodies in a collapsed school nearby. Military helicopters buzzed overhead, and the faithful reached toward them and beyond, escaping for a couple of hours from the grim patch of concrete where they sought shelter under sheets slung over poles.

In varying versions, this scene repeated itself throughout the Haitian capital on Sunday. With many of their churches flattened and their priests and pastors killed, Haitians desperate for aid and comfort beseeched God to ease their grief. Carrying Bibles, they traversed the dusty, rubble-filled streets searching for solace at scattered prayer gatherings. The churches, usually filled with passionate parishioners on a Sunday morning, stood empty if they stood at all.

Please click on "external source" to access the entire article.

Labels: church, God, grief, Haiti Earthquake, Haitians, Steven Pinker

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Monday, January 18, 2010

Searching among a Haitian cathedral's ruins

The collapse of Notre Dame Cathedral in Port-au-Prince struck at the heart of a religiously fervent people.

By Tracy Wilkinson
January 16, 2010

Reporting from Port-Au-Prince, Haiti - The woman wailed outside the ruins of the Notre Dame Cathedral of Port-au-Prince, the iconic Roman Catholic church that symbolized Haiti's religious fervor.

"This is what God did!" she cried Friday morning. "See what God can do!"

Tuesday's earthquake brought down the roof of the enormous pink-and-cream church, filling the apse and nave with tons of rubble. The quake punched out its vivid stained glass windows, twisted its wrought-iron fencing and sliced brick walls like cake. The western steeple, which had soared more than 100 feet, toppled onto parishioners praying at an outdoor shrine to St. Emmanuel. Flies buzzed around the pile of copper, plaster and felled columns.

The senior Catholic figure in the country, Msgr. Joseph Serge Miot, was killed in the magnitude 7.0 earthquake. As many as 100 priests were still missing, sacristan Jean Claude Augustin said.

By the cathedral's ruins lay a small blue copy of the New Testament. Sheet music for Christian hymns was scattered through the street.

Haiti is, officially, predominantly Catholic, with some Protestant faiths. But across the board is an underlying belief in, or respect for, voodoo and other indigenous traditions, which are often mixed in with those religious practices.

Former Haitian President Bertrand Aristide was at one time wildly popular in part for his blend of superstitious spirituality, social activism and Catholic faith.

Many have turned to God for an explanation of this catastrophe visited upon Haiti. Tens of thousands of people have been spending the nights in the streets, singing hymns and calling out the Gospel.

Dudu Orelian, whose brother and nephew were killed, stood outside the cathedral.

"God is angry at the world," Orelian said.

Jack Fisner, a Haitian seminarian who lives in the Dominican Republic, came to Port-au-Prince to begin coordinating aid and prepare a report for the pope.

"This has been a terrible blow to the church and the people," Fisner said. "You have to question your faith, but hopefully not lose it."

Please click on "external source" for the rest of the article.

Labels: Catholicism, God, Haiti Earthquake, superstition, Tracy Wilkinson, voodoo

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Friday, January 15, 2010

Bar mitzvahs without God

Jan 3, 2010
By SUE FISHKOFF

When Mark Neuman celebrated his bar mitzvah seven years ago at the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture in Vancouver, B.C., he didn't read from Torah, wear a yarmulke or pronounce Hebrew blessings. He gave a talk on the psychology of Jewish humor.
Secular families demonstrate...

Secular families demonstrate in support of J'lem Mayor Nir Barkat over the opening of a parking lot on Shabbat.
Photo: Eyal Ackerman

His brother Ben's bar mitzvah "portion" was a report on their grandfather's escape from Nazi-occupied Poland.

That's typical in the Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations, a loose-knit group of some two dozen North American communities that emphasize Jewish history and culture while eschewing Jewish ritual, faith and anything that smacks of a deity.

In contrast to the better known Society for Humanistic Judaism, founded in 1963 by the late Rabbi Sherwin Wine, Secular Jewish communities are lay led and emphasize Yiddish rather than Hebrew. But the philosophy and beliefs of both groups are quite similar.

"I feel Jewish," says Mark, now 20 and a teacher at the Peretz school. "To me that means upholding the culture. It's about the history, the Holocaust, the holidays, the language - all these are very important to me. But I don't believe in the religious aspects."

Please click on "external source" for the complete article...

Labels: bar mitzvah, God, Jews, secular, Sue Fishkoff

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Sunday, December 20, 2009

God exists. Sort of.

December 21, 2009
By Joe Hildebrand

GOD exists. Sort of. In a Galactic exclusive, The Daily Telegraph has obtained an interview with the creator of the universe - or at least the next best thing.

We asked six of Australia and the world's top religious leaders and scientists what God was like and found out that all of them agreed there was something extraordinary moving throughout humanity and the laws of nature.

From archbishops to astronomers, physicists to sheiks, all came back to one theme - a sense of wonder at the world and how we came to be in it.

There were big surprises and an extraordinary convergence between religion and science.

Both the arch-conservative Catholic Cardinal George Pell and the fire-and-brimstone Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen accepted the big bang and evolution.

At the same time Australian scientists leading the world in the search for hard evidence of the origins of the universe said they had a sense of something transcending physical.

Take the words of astronomer Brian Schmidt, the man who is leading the "SkyMapper" project, an unprecedented international survey of the heavens that will allow human beings to gaze upon stars and galaxies never before seen.

"I have faith that there is an absolute truth - a structure to the laws of nature which underlies all things - and if I have a God, this is it," he told The Daily Telegraph.

Indeed, Schmidt - who also led the international team that discovered the universe was expanding more and more rapidly - said that scientists must be open to the possibility of a God.

He describes himself a "militant agnostic".

"I don't know and neither do you," he said.

Please click on "external source" to read the statements of two of these religious leaders.

Labels: Archbishop Peter Jensen, Brian Schmidt, Cardinal George Pell, God, Joe Hildebrand

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Religious Independents: God Without the Religion

DECEMBER 17, 2009
By MARK PENN
With E. Kinney Zalesne

This is the season for traditions: chestnuts roasting on an open fire, carolers on the doorstep, and the endless argument about the secularization of Christmas. This isn't the usual complaining about the toy and greeting card companies commercializing the holidays, but a much broader trend involving the secularization of religion around the country.

We are still a nation whose coins say "In God We Trust," where most witnesses in U.S. courts swear "so help me God," and where our school kids pledge allegiance to "one nation, under God, indivisible."

But God, as we have traditionally known Him, is evolving for more and more worshippers. Belief in the God revered by most mainstream religions -- a highly specific, paternalistic deity with an agreed-upon history and behaviors -- is on the decline.

According to the most recent American Religious Identification Survey, only 76% of Americans identify as Christians, down from 86% in 1990. But interestingly, while non-Christians are not choosing Islam or Judaism, neither are they choosing atheism. A poll done by Gallup in 2008 found that 15% of Americans – up from 8% in 1999– say they don't believe in God, but they do believe in a "Higher Power" or "Universal Spirit." More and more, Americans believe that the world was created by a spiritual being, but they reject the Torah, the Koran and the New Testament as the explanation for it.

These universal-spirit worshippers, or what we call Religious Independents, are defining a secular Third Way in religion. They are like political independents who vote but refuse to affiliate with a party. Consequently, attendance at Christmas mass may be declining, but celebration of Christmas and the holidays remains as high as ever. Paradoxically, overall belief in a God is rising, while participation in organized religion is declining.

Demographically speaking, the Religious Independents, like their political counterparts, are more affluent and well-educated than traditional God-believers. We did our own poll to get at the differences between the traditionalists and the Religious Independents, and the results were striking. Americans with just a high school diploma are Religious Independents at a rate of just 10% – but attend even some college, and it shoots up to 30%. As more and more students attend college here and elsewhere, we can expect this trend to mushroom, since higher education strongly correlates with a rejection of organized religion in favor of a more amorphous notion of a Supreme Being.

The data suggest, though, that modern secularization will not lead us back to Sodom and Gomorrah, where lack of religion caused unrestrained amoral and reckless behavior. Religious Independents have a high belief in values like doing good, giving back to the community, and taking responsibility for our planet. They accept most of the Ten Commandments on moral, if not religious, grounds.

Our poll also revealed that whereas almost 70% of traditionalists say that after death, "there is either heaven or hell," 54% of the Religious Independents say that "there is only what people remember of you." A remarkable 75% of traditionalists say that they believe in angels, compared with only 45% of the Independents. And while 53% of traditionalists say they've had a "spiritual or mystical life experience that defies simple scientific explanation," only 1 in 3 Religious Independents says that--and a majority (53%) reject that statement strongly.

Perhaps most importantly, 83% of Religious Independents say it is more important to be ethical than to be devout, compared to only 64% of traditionalists. Seventy-two percent of Religious Independents say that living a good spiritual life depends on how you act, not what you believe -- compared with only 59% of traditional followers. In other words, Religious Independents have just as strong a desire for repairing the world, even as they reject the habits and practices of religion.

Please see "external source" for the complete article

Labels: ARIS, E. Kinney Zalesne, God, life after death, Mark Penn, Religious Independents, Supreme Being

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Author Debates Beyond Reasonable Doubt: God Exists

Friday, 18 December 2009, 12:05 pm
Press Release: Brendan Roberts

Brendan Roberts, author of >God: Fact or Fiction?: Exploring the Relationship of Science Religion and the Origin of Life" will release the second edition of the controversial book in 2010. Using the spectacular Big Bang Theory, Natural Selection, astronomy, biochemistry, archaeology, Intelligent Design, philosophy, miracles, and theology he weaves compelling evidence for the existence of a Creator.

Even atheistic philosophers are being persuaded by the colossal amount of evidence shown through the Intelligent Design debate which is a hot topic in the US. Brendan illustrates how one such philosopher has converted to a deist position and another holds that Intelligent Design should be taught in schools but impartially.

Brendan quotes the astronomer, Sir Fred Hoyle regarding the possibility of the universe coming to exist by chance, like lining up 1050 blind people, giving them all a scrambled Rubik’s cube and finding they solve it at the same moment.
In fact, few realise that the principles of Natural Selection predate Darwin to ancient Greece. But Brendan does not only explore evolution and thus neo-Darwinism but also the distinctness of human beings from the possible ape ancestors.

Humans are unique, rational creatures, able to create distinct signs pointing out that their atheism is probably defunct. If one claims there is probably no God, the door is left open to claim that there is probably a God. Humans have abstract thought and are self-conscious, can enhance and even transcend our natural environment as we can fly even to other planets. Moreover humans have a love for the truth, first able to recognise it – or else science would be meaningless; and also a self-giving love, able to truly love others, including our enemies, at times without any catches and others with great cost or suffering. We also have a unique wonder of life and creation; we ponder our own existence.

Please click on "external source" for the rest of the article

Labels: Brendan Roberts, God, humanity, intelligent design

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Majority of Australians believe in God, miracles

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Sydney: A new poll conducted has found that a majority of Australians believe in God or a similar universal spirit, miracles, heaven, life after death and angels.

The findings by a Nielsen poll showed that Aussies are willing to mix and match religious faith with belief in other phenomena.

The research showed that Australians are more religious, with 68% believing in God or a universal spirit, and 50% saying religion is important or very important in their lives.

But atheists and agnostics also had a strong showing in the national survey of 1000 respondents, taken early this week.

Almost one in four Australians (24%) do not believe in either God or a universal spirit, and 7% are not sure or say they "don't know'".

Women have more faith than men, with 56% saying they believe in God and 13% saying they believe in a universal spirit, compared with 43% and 11% of men, respectively.

Most people with faith hold it strongly, with 88% saying they were either absolutely or fairly certain in their belief.

Christianity, generally considered to be on the decline, was still the largest faith, with 64 % of believers nominating it as the religion they most identified with.

The next biggest was Buddhism, at 2%, followed by Hinduism and Islam, which each had 1% of believers.

Judaism accounted for less than half of 1% of believers.

But God is not the only thing Australians believe in. They place their faith in a range of other phenomena. For example, 63% believe in miracles, and 53% believe in life after death.

Angels are also popular, with 51% of respondents saying they believe in them, slightly more than the 49% who hold faith in psychic powers such as ESP.

While 56% of people believe in heaven, only 38% believe in hell, and belief in God is much more popular than faith in the devil, with only 37% of respondents believing in Satan.

Please click on "external source" for the complete article

Labels: angels, Australia, God, heaven, life after death, Nielsen poll

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Thursday, December 03, 2009

How Best To Teach Children About Religion?

Nov 2, 2009
By Amelia Santaniello and Frank Vascellaro
EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. (WCCO) ?

According to a survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 92 percent of Americans believe in God. It's a smaller number -- 54 percent -- who attend services regularly.

It shouldn't have come as a surprise when WCCO-TV asked first-graders at the International School of Minnesota if they regularly attend religious services, about half the children raised their hands. Then we asked them if they believe in God. The answer: a loud and collective, "Yes." The children don't just believe. They like God.

Six-year-old Evan said, "God is kind and nice because he brings people happiness." Seven-year-old Jerod said, "I really like God 'cause he made our whole world." Their classmate Anna said simply, "I love God."

If they could ask God anything, what would it be?

Trudie, the class clown, wants to ask God "to give me $1,000." More seriously, Apurva would ask God to "help other people who don't have money, give them more money."

Then there are the big questions.

From Will, "How did you create people?" Victor one-upped that one with, "How did you create everything in the whole entire universe?"

"Some of those are the earliest questions, why and where and how," said Carol Dittberner. "And of course the big question, 'Who made God?'"

Dittberner is the director of religious education at St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Church in Minneapolis. For 27 years, she's been teaching children about Catholicism using Maria Montessori's hands-on approach.

What does she think is the best way to teach children about God and religion?

"By example," answered Dittberner. "The best thing is to always include your children when you go to worship, when you go to church, when you say your prayers."

Please click on "external source" to access the entire article.

Labels: Amelia Santaniello, children, Frank Vascellaro, God, religion

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Friday, November 20, 2009

Oh My God: Peter Rodger Talks Religion

Oh My God: Peter Rodger Talks Religion

by Tom Allen | Published November 13, 2009

There is one universal question that never fails to stir up passion, curiosity, self-reflection and often wild controversy: “What is God?” Peter Rodger’s film, Oh My God, opening in a dozen cities nationwide this month, asks the question in 23 countries around the world and in the process weaves a tapestry that is both breathtaking and hopeful.

By every measure a skeptical Hollywood artist, Rodger sets out to confirm his suspicion that the world’s intractable conflicts are caused by religion and religious people. He poses the question “What is God?” with a bluntness that steels some viewers for a Religulous-type neo-atheist assault. But as the film unspools we are disarmed by Rodger’s intellectual honesty. He confounds expectations by allowing the warmth of his interviews with people of faith to emerge without the derision that we’ve come to expect in an age of mocking skepticism (with one or two entertaining exceptions). The result is a non-fiction feature that affirms faith despite the moviemaker’s lingering ambivalence, and offers the best Hollywood-driven opportunity for fruitful dialogue about transcendent issues in recent memory.

With wars indeed raging over religious differences, and evil and extremism garnering all the media’s attention, it is fair game to wonder whether the religious are causing much of the world’s strife. But to push beyond that toward reconciliation after discovering that people of faith are just like everybody else, well, that requires courage, especially in Hollywood. This is the landscape Oh My God navigates.

Rodger’s quest serves as both travelogue and mini-course in world religions, spanning the United States, Africa, the Middle East and Far East and covering a stunning array of human faith expressions. Through his revealing lens we meet everyday people, spiritual leaders and celebrities, believers, fanatics and atheists. In this personal, visceral and brutally honest non-fiction feature, Rodger—and the rest of us—are moved by the light and the truths his subjects reveal. We are invited closer and come away changed, enriched, and better for the experience.

Tom Allen (MM): What was your inspiration for making your epic documentary film, Oh My God?

Peter Rodger (PR): I was frustrated with the childish schoolyard mentality that permeates this world—I call it the “My God Is Greater Than Your God” syndrome—where you have grown men flying airplanes into buildings shouting “God is Great"—where you have the leader of the free world telling the BBC in 2003 that he invaded Iraq because God told him to—where you have the constitution of a country (Iran) that dictates that its supreme leader is God’s representative on earth—where you have young men and women blowing themselves up (and innocent others) to buy a place into heaven. None of these concepts made any sense to me. Does it matter what I believe? Does it matter what you believe? And what is this entity that goes by the name of God, which seems to bring about so much friction, hurt and pain? I decided to go around the world and ask people what they think.

MM: Why did you ask, ‘What is God?’ versus ‘Who is God?,’ since most of us personalize God in some form or another?

PR: I wanted to look at God as a concept and be as objective as possible. Referring to God as “who” is already putting the concept into the image of Man and therefore the objectivity becomes lost. I wanted to get as far away from preconceived ideas as possible to see what I would find. I felt that phrasing the question as “what is...” instead of “who is...” would make the interviewee immediately look at God from the outside-in rather than the inside-out, and thereby help quench preconceptions. I wanted the film to have a wide application and ultimately get to the question, “Did God create man, or did man create God?”

PR: MM: Did you set out with a goal in mind? Did you find a common theme in the answers you received?

PR: My goal was to find out what “God” means to people, and to determine whether religion and religious people were causing all the world’s problems. There was such commonality in all the responses that at one point I didn’t even think I had a film. It was frustrating because all the answers seemed to be the same from all over the world. “God is everything...” “God is the creator...” “God is in the birds and the bees in the trees...” “God is the energy that binds us all together....” etc., etc. And then it occurred to me that if there are all these placid descriptions, why is there so much turmoil, upheaval and war in the name of God? I realized that the problem in the world may be what Man does with “God”—how he uses it to control other men, how he twists the preaching of its prophets to create politicized clubs that serve his narrow ends. When I realized that it was Man creating God in his own image, I knew I had a film.

PR: MM: What criterion were set in place for which countries you visited and interviewees you sought? Did you try to interview leaders such as the Dalai Lama or the Pope?

PR: I had to have representation from as many diverse places as possible in order to capture as wide a spectrum of faith expressions as possible. You can’t, of course, make a film about who or what people think God is without going to the Holy Land. Indigenous cultures are also important, so Australia, the United States and Tribal Africa were a must. I wanted celebrities in the film to help navigate us through, so their geographical locations and schedules became a factor. Then Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, Muslims had to be represented somewhere, so that dictated India, Bali, Rome, Mexico, Morocco, Turkey, the Palestinian Territories, UK. I wanted the Mayans in there too, so Guatemala… Put all of that in a melting pot and I passed the buck over to American Express Platinum Travel and that’s how we made the schedule!

Most religious leaders turned us down—and I am very thankful that they did, because they are all “professional God people,” so all I would have gotten was politicized rhetoric and theology. The film is not about religion and its leaders. The film is about who or what people think God is. If I had the Dalai Lama in the film, I would’ve had to have the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury, and then Ali Khamenei and other religious people and my film would be really, really boring.?

MM: Is that why you decided to include so many everyday people and ‘man on the street’ insights?

PR: Yes, that is precisely the intent of the film—to find out what God means to the common man—not just professional God people, politicians and celebrities, but “normal” people.

MM: How were you able to capture such personal insights about God and religion from so many notable celebrities?

PR: I asked them one simple question: “What is God?” They did the rest. Then, based upon their answers, I would take it to the next level until we were yapping away. All of them were colorful and gracious and I am very grateful for the time and effort they contributed to the film.

MM: Is it true you that encountered some difficulties when you first set out to make this film and almost gave it up?

PR: My first trip in 2006 was to Morocco and I chose the same day to fly that the British terrorist plot to blow up planes with liquid explosives was foiled by Scotland Yard. I was flying out of LAX to Tangiers via Heathrow with all my camera equipment. Normally you take the important stuff as hand luggage—phone, camera, notes, lenses, computer, stock, etc., but this was the first day in aviation history that hand luggage was completely banned. We had to check everything into the hold and needless to say, I never saw my equipment, notes, or toothbrush again. Because of the delay, however, I hit on a succession of events in which I was in the right place at the right time, something that would never have happened if I had started shooting two months earlier. In over 227 shooting days, I didn’t have a single weather problem. So I’ve come to believe that out of every negative there is a positive of exactly the same magnitude—maybe not exactly at the same time, but there always is one.

MM: What moved or surprised you the most on your moviemaking journey?

PR: How very small the world is. How similar all of us are and how blind most of us are to that fact. The similarities in belief-systems transcend time and geographical boundaries and this was the case long before the birth of the telephone, the airplane and the internet. I was also moved by the enormous desire for peace on the part of both the Palestinians and the Israelis. It is very clear to me that it is the politicians who are messing that situation up. It doesn’t seem to be a conflict of religion at all. It is a conflict of land, politics and emotion.?

This is the first of a two-page article. Please click on "external source" for the complete article.

Labels: God, movies, Peter Rodger, religion, Tom Allen

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Friday, October 02, 2009

At Czech Mass, Pope Says Societies Must Have God

At Czech Mass, Pope Says Societies Must Have God
Joe Klamar
September 27, 2009

BRNO, Czech Republic — Pope Benedict XVI warned some 120,000 worshipers at a Mass here on Sunday of the dangers of a society without God, forging ahead with his fight against secularism on the second day of a three-day trip to the Czech Republic.

Later, in an address to Czech academics in Prague, the pope inveighed against the perils of relativism. He also underlined the need to mend "the breach between science and religion."

Celebrating Mass in this southern city in the country’s Catholic heartland, the 82-year-old, German-born pope said that "history had demonstrated the absurdities to which man descends when he excludes God from the horizon of his choices and actions." He added: "Your country, like other nations, is experiencing cultural conditions that often present a radical challenge to faith and therefore also to hope."

While the pope received a warm and enthusiastic reception from the crowd — a large number of whom appeared to come from neighboring Poland, Germany and Slovakia — religious observers lamented that the Czech nation as a whole seemed unmoved.

Czech secularism was conditioned during decades of Communism, when the Roman Catholic Church was suppressed. In a recent survey by Stem, a research group, nearly half of respondents professed not to believe in God.

“We are a calm nation that drinks beer and eats dumplings, and we have strong antibodies to any kind of religious persuasion because of our history,” said the Rev. Ales Opatrny, a lecturer at the Catholic Theological Faculty of Charles University in Prague. "I believe that after the pope’s visit most Czechs will act like nothing happened."

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Labels: God, Pope Benedict XVI

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Sunday, September 27, 2009

The '2009 Parents of the Year' award goes to…The Duggars

September 16,
Jackie Kass

Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar were awarded the title of "2009 National Parents of the Year" by the National Parent’s Day Council. The council insists that the Duggar’s were not selected just because they have a large family of their own children, but because they have exhibited such high standards of parenting. The website states, "Their highly organized household centers around spiritual principles and is obviously filled with huge amounts of love, grace, joy and mutual respect."

However, there is no getting around the fact that the Duggar family is indeed super-sized. Michelle and Jim Bob were high school sweethearts, have been married 24 years and produced 18 biological children (with one on the way!). There are 10 boys and 8 girls ranging in age from 7 months to 20 years. The oldest son and his wife are expecting their first child, making Michelle and Jim Bob grandparents for the first time. Their grandchild is due before their own 19th child. Jim Bob states on his website, "We believe that each child is a special gift from God and we are thankful to Him for each one."

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Labels: children, family, God, parents, spiritual values, the Duggars

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Thursday, September 10, 2009

Twittering God

Charlotte White, Promotions Coordinator, www.AuthorHouse.com

SCOTTSDALE, Sept. 9 /Christian Newswire/ -- For centuries chirping was a bird thing. Not anymore. Now millions of people Twitter daily to keep in contact with friends through tweet messages that say what they are doing, much like 58% of the U.S. population who pray daily according to a recent Pew Survey. But can Twitter mesh with spirituality?

"Twitter seems to fill emptiness with short messages of 140 characters or less about what's happening in life. Tweets may provide warmth to senders and receivers like an electronic blanket," says John Groh, author of Rubbing God's Ear With His Promises, a book of prayers. "While Twitter may appeal to some who want self-affirmation, praying arcs away from self by relying on God's promises," he adds.

Like Facebook and MySpace, Twitter is a social interconnector that lets "followers" maintain contact with acquaintances. Reportedly the free service played a role in the uprising in Iran this year and the Mumbai massacre of 2008.

Tweeting makes a home in some churches. Micro-blogging raises the bandwidth in several Nashville, Seattle, Charlotte and New York City churches with tweeting during sermons. One man solicits prayers to God on Twitter and then prints, rolls and inserts them in Jerusalem's Western Wall.

Labels: Charlotte White, God, John Groh, prayer, social networking, spirituality, Twitter

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Church survey results

Church survey results

Sunday, 06 Sep 2009
Robert Hornacek

Every Sunday, many people gather at church services. But some churches are trying to focus on the people who are not coming to church.

"We want to help connect people to God," said pastor Mark Schmechel from Journey Community Church in De Pere. Schmechel is one of about two dozen pastors in the Green Bay area who will soon be using the results of an on-line survey to try to reach more souls.

"We just want to offer people the hope that we believe as a Christian church," Schmechel said.

The survey was put together by the Green Bay Pastors Network. More than 2,000 people responded to the survey this spring. While the results are still be finalized, some have been released, including some responses from people about their frustrations with local churches.

Please click on "external source" for the complete article, and to see the preliminary results of the survey

Labels: church, God, on-line survey, Robert Hornacek

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Thursday, September 03, 2009

Outside faith, a rising tide of 'nones'

Outside faith, a rising tide of 'nones'
by Jay Tokasz
NEWS STAFF REPORTER
Updated: September 03, 2009

A few years ago, Tyler Manley would have considered himself a Presbyterian.

If asked about his religion today, he will confess he doesn't have one. Nor does he believe in God.

The United States remains one of the most religious countries in the world, but Manley is part of one of the steadiest trends in the national landscape of faith … the growing number of Americans who profess no religious affiliation.

Social scientists often call them the "nones" … a broad category that includes atheists and agnostics, as well as those who believe in a higher power but don't cite a particular faith.

Studies indicate they make up as much as 16 percent of the U.S. population, and researchers expect that the numbers will continue to grow.

"You're just getting a lot of people drifting away," said Barry A. Kosmin, research professor in the Public Policy & Law Program at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.

For Manley, who studies philosophy at the University at Buffalo, the drifting was the result of understanding that "human conscience comes before religion."

"It's important that you critically examine your own beliefs," he said.

Kosmin's latest American Religious Identification Survey, published in March, estimated the population of U.S. "nones" at 34 million … roughly 15 percent of the total … up from 29 million in 2001 and 14 million in 1990.

"It was quite amazing. It went up in every state," Kosmin said. Fourteen percent of New Yorkers did not associate with a religion, up from 7 percent in 1990.

A survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that 16 percent of U.S. adults had no religious affiliation. Data from the General Social Surveys indicates that 16.4 percent of Americans are nonreligious, up from 5.1 percent in 1972.

Researchers once observed a familiar pattern of religious disaffiliation among young adults, who then would reaffiliate later on, said Darren E. Sherkat, a sociologist at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.

But that pattern is breaking down, said Sherkat, who analyzes data from the General Social Surveys.

"We're seeing greater stability of non-affiliation, and we're also seeing greater numbers of parents raising their children without affiliation, which was really quite rare in earlier generations," he said.

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Labels: agnostic, belief, God, Jay Tokasz, Nones, religion

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Seeing the Future: Can Religion Evolve and Survive in a Changing World?

By Peter Savastano
September 2, 2009

Since the fall of Secularization Theory, which claimed that belief in God would slowly recede in the face of science and technology, we still must ask: Is there a future for formal, organized, institutionalized religion as we presently recognize it in rapidly globalizing, postindustrial and postmodern world? Here’s what religion will have to do for humans to survive and flourish.

One of the last books the Catholic mystic, social activist, poet, and Trappist monk Thomas Merton read just before his tragic death in Bangkok, Thailand on December 10, 1968, was Final Integration in the Adult Personality (1965, E.J. Brill). Written by the Iranian-born psychologist A. Reza Arasteh, the central premise of the book is that in order for a person to reach final integration of the adult personality, she or he must grow beyond their native culture and religious tradition.

In a subsequent book published twelve years after Merton’s death, Growth to Selfhood (1980, Routledge), Arasteh further develops this central idea making the paradoxical argument: that the means by which one outgrows or moves beyond the limiting worldview of one’s native religious tradition is through the practice of the religious tradition itself.

Two questions I have spent a lot of time thinking about over the last number of years is what form, structure, and expression the phenomenon we call "religion" will take in the future (that is, if "religion" is then still labeled as such); or, conversely, is there a future for religion (specifically formal, organized, institutionalized religion as we presently recognize it) in a rapidly globalizing, postindustrial and postmodern world?

Back in the 1960s, sociologists predicted that the advancement of science and technology would usher in a secular worldview and that religion would eventually fade into the past. Or if it did manage to survive, they imagined, religion would become the purview of a small segment of the population that, kicking and screaming, has refused to enter into the contemporary world.

Of course, we now know that the sociologists were wrong. Religion, it seems, is here to stay. Rather than fade into oblivion or become a private matter, religion is front and center in the new millennium, especially since the tragic events of September 11, 2001.

Still, while it isn’t going away any time soon, it is also true that if we humans are going to collectively survive and flourish living in the information age of a globalized world, our understanding and practice of religion will have to change. While we can’t know for certain what shape or form religion will take in the future, I am willing to speculate. Fortunately, there are some trends and patterns that support my speculations so they are not simply spun out of thin air.

If the recent surveys, Faith in Flux: Changes in Religious Affiliation in the U.S." (2009), and the "2008 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS)," are any indication, the process Arasteh described in his two books may be an experience common to a growing number of Americans. As the surveys suggest, this process of growing beyond one’s inherited religious tradition has become far more prevalent, sometimes spanning generations. Referred to as the Nones," these are people who identify themselves as unaffiliated with any kind of organized religion and are happy to be so. However, this does not mean that Nones have no interest in spirituality, prayer, meditation, or ritual; all areas traditionally associated with "religion."

This is just a small portion of a two-page article exploring the subject of the future of "religion." Please click on "external source" to access the entire article.

Labels: A. Reza Arasteh, ARIS, faith, God, Peter Savastano, religion, sociology

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Friday, August 14, 2009

Buddhism strengthens ties to church

By Electa Draper
The Denver Post
Posted: 08/09/2009 01:00:00 AM MDT

What in the recent past seemed exotic and foreign is now almost routinely folded into "the fold."

Buddhism is not only accepted as a mainstream American religion, it is a path increasingly trod by faithful Christians and Jews who infuse Eastern spiritual insights and practices such as meditation into their own religions.

When John Weber became a Buddhist at age 19, his devout Methodist parents were not particularly pleased.

In recent years, however, they've invited their son, a religious studies expert with Boulder's Naropa University, to speak at their church about Buddhism.

"That never would have happened before," Weber said. "They would have been embarrassed."

The Pew Forum's Religious Landscape Survey in 2007 found that seven in 10 Americans who have a religion believe there is more than one path to salvation. A growing number of people are contemplating more than one each.

And they are contemplating contemplation itself.

There are Jubus — Jews who bring Buddhism into their practice of Judaism — and Bujus, who are Buddhists with Jewish parents. Then there are UUbus, or Unitarian Universalist Buddhists, and Ebus, or Episcopalian Buddhists. There are Zen Catholics.

"There is a definite trend and movement that will not be reversed," said Ruben Habito, a laicized Jesuit priest, Zen master and professor of world religions at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. "We are in a new spiritual age, an inter-religious age."

Search can lead back home

People are hungry for a deeper spiritual experience — meditation, mindfulness, personal transformation, deep insight, union with God or the universe.

Habito, who calls himself a Zen Catholic, is one of the experts who say the search is a little like Dorothy and her ruby slippers. The quest for meaning ultimately leads some, like Dorothy, to their own backyards.

Judaism, Catholicism and Islam have rich traditions in contemplative practices, yet these had all but disappeared from everyday congregational life.

For many Christians cut off from the past, or alienated from the faith of their upbringing, Buddhism has served as the bridge to ancient wisdom.

"The problem is the contemplative tradition in the Christian Church has had its ups and downs over the centuries," said Father Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk and leader in the Centering Prayer movement, a modern revival of Christian contemplative practice.

"We sensed that the Eastern religions, with their highly developed spirituality, had something we didn't have," Keating said. "In the last generation, 10 to 20 years, some didn't even think there was a Christian spirituality, just rules — do's and don'ts and dogma they didn't find spiritually nourishing. It's important to recover the mystical aspects of the gospel."

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Labels: Buddhism, Christian, Electa Draper, God, interfaith, meditation, religion, spirituality

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Friday, August 07, 2009

God on the brain at Penn’s Neuroscience Boot Camp

August 5th, 2009
Tom Heneghan

Neurotheology - the study of the link between belief and the brain - is a topic I’ve hesitated to write about for several years. There are all kinds of theories out there about how progress in neuroscience is changing our understanding of religion, spirituality and mystical experience. Some say the research proves religion is a natural product of the way the brain works, others that God made the brain that way to help us believe. I knew so little about the science behind these ideas that I felt I had to learn more about the brain first before I could comment.

If that was an excuse for procrastination, I don’t have it anymore. For all this week and half the next, I’m attending a "Neuroscience Boot Camp" at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. This innovative program, run by Penn’s Center for Cognitive Neuroscience Director Martha Farah (photo below), aims to explain the latest research in neuroscience to 34 non-experts from fields such as law, business, philosophy and religious studies (as well as to a few journalists). The focus is not only on religion, but faith and issues related to it are certainly part of the discussion.

After only two of 8-1/2 days of lectures, one takeaway message is already clear. You can forget about the "God spot" that headline writers love to highlight (as in "'God spot' is found in Brain" or "Scientists Locate 'God Spot' in Human Brain"). There is no one place in the brain responsible for religion, just as there is no single location in the brain for love or language or identity. Most popular articles these days actually say that, but the headline writers continue to speak of a single spot.

"There isn’t a separate religious area of the brain, from what we can tell from the data," said Dr. Andrew Newberg, an associate professor of radiology and psychiatry at the Penn university hospital and author of several books on neuroscience and religion. "It’s not like there’s a little spiritual spot that lights up every time somebody thinks of God. When you look at religious and spiritual experiences, they are incredibly rich and diverse. Sometimes people find them on the emotional level, sometimes on an ideological level, sometimes they perceive a oneness, sometimes they perceive a person. It depends a lot on what the actual experience is."

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Labels: belief, brain, God, neuroscience, neurotheology, religion, spirituality, Tom Heneghan

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How 'hands-on' is God?

By Lynn Arave
Deseret News
Tuesday, Aug. 04, 2009

Does he or doesn't he?

And if so, how much? And why? And where?

Does God send the tsunamis? Help folks find lost keys? Clear up the skies for a wedding reception?

The amount and degree of God's intervention in the world may be the oldest theological debate. And today, more than ever, people wonder -- and worry -- about the answers.

On one end are those who believe in "God the watch maker" -- that Deity created the world, wound it up and now simply watches it run.

At the other end are people who believe the fingerprints of God are on every human action and endeavor. He rules through predestination.

Most believers stake out territory somewhere in between.

Historically, God has been seen as intervening significantly in the affairs of men. There was the Great Flood and the Tower of Babel in the Book of Genesis. In the New Testament, Jesus Christ is said to have taken on the sins of the world -- perhaps the most breath-taking belief in God's intervention the world has known.

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Labels: faith, God, intervention, Lynn Arave, miracles, Quakers

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PBS to air three religious documentaries in 2010

August 03, 2009

PBS will air three detailed documentaries on religion in 2010, two of which will deal directly with Christianity.

"God in America" will air in fall 2010. It will be a six-hour documentary done by the same team which produces PBS’ "Frontline" and "American Experience" news magazines. The series will start with Christopher Columbus’ voyages and go through the 2008 presidential election, showing the links between democracy and religion, exploring religious liberty and examining the role of religion in social reforms.

"The Calling" will air at a yet undetermined time in 2010. It is a four-hour documentary following eight people transitioning into the clergy in Catholicism, Evangelical Christianity, Judaism and Islam. It will follow them through seminaries and religious instruction and explore their faith journeys.

"The Buddha" is a two-hour documentary slated for spring 2010 which will chronicle the history of Buddhism and it growing popularity in the United States.

Please click on "external source" to access the complete article, including a link to the PBS website for even more information.

Labels: 2010, Buddhism, faith, God, PBS, religion, television

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Friday, July 24, 2009

Survey: 1 in 3 Scientists Believe in God

By Michelle A. Vu
Christian Post Reporter
Thu, Jul. 16 2009

About one out of every three scientists in the United States professed believing in God, a recent survey found.

That figure is strikingly lower than the proportion of the general American public that say they believe in God (83 percent), according to the report by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

However, a Christian biochemist after examining the report said the comparably small number of scientists who believe in God is nothing to be alarmed over.

Dr. Fazale Rana, vice president of research and apologetics at Reasons to Believe ministry, said the percentage of American scientists who believe in God has remained constant for more than three-quarters of a century.

In the early 1920s, he explained, there was a similar survey conducted that found a similar proportion of scientists who believe in God.

"I see a lot of reason to be very encouraged by these results," said Rana, who has a Ph.D. in chemistry with an emphasis in biochemistry and was a senior scientist in product development for Procter & Gamble, to The Christian Post on Wednesday.

"The take home message is that if science and religion are incompatible then there is no way we would still see 30-40 percent of scientists acknowledge there is a God or higher power behind everything," he contended.

Besides asking about belief in God, the survey also asked the public and scientists about their belief in a higher power. Eighteen percent of scientists said they believe in a higher power or universal spirit, while 12 percent of the public said so.

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Labels: belief, God, Michelle A. Vu, scientists, survey

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Thursday, July 16, 2009

Pitt survey indicates spiritual wellness aids in cancer fight

By Allison M. Heinrichs
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, July 9, 2009

Feeling angry with or abandoned by God increases depression in women with breast cancer, according to a survey by Pittsburgh doctors, which advises clinicians to ask patients questions about their religion and guide them to use spirituality to cope.

The yearlong survey of 284 patients explored the relationship between "religious coping" and well-being. The results, published in the Journal of Palliative Medicine, indicate that doctors should listen for "red flag" comments such as, "Why is God punishing me?"

"That's a sign for clinicians that these patients are feeling abandoned," said Dr. Randy Hebert, medical director of Forbes Hospice and lead author of the report.

Please click on "external source" for the complete article

Labels: Allison M. Heinrichs, cancer, God, religion, spirituality, well-being

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Thursday, July 09, 2009

Pope calls for 'God-centered' global economy

THIRD ENCYCLICAL

ON A MORAL ECONOMY

Select excerpts from Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth), Pope Benedict XVI's new encyclical on the economy and Catholic social teachings:

• "The dignity of the individual and the demands of justice require, particularly today, that economic choices do not cause disparities in wealth to increase in an excessive and morally unacceptable manner ..."

• "We should not be (globalization's) victims, but rather its protagonists, acting in the light of reason, guided by charity and truth."

• "... Ideological rejection of God and an atheism of indifference, oblivious to the Creator and at risk of becoming equally oblivious to human values, constitute some of the chief obstacles to development today. A humanism which excludes God is an inhuman humanism. Only a humanism open to the Absolute can guide us in the promotion and building of forms of social and civic life -- structures, institutions, culture and ethos -- without exposing us to the risk of becoming ensnared by the fashions of the moment."

• Humankind should ask for God's grace ... "to receive the daily bread that we need, to be understanding and generous towards our debtors, not to be tempted beyond our limits, and to be delivered from evil."

• "Profit is useful if it serves as a means towards an end that provides a sense both of how to produce it and how to make good use of it. Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty."

By Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY

Pope Benedict XVI today called for reforming the United Nations and establishing a "true world political authority" with "real teeth" to manage the global economy with God-centered ethics.

In his third encyclical, a major teaching, released as the G-8 summit begins in Italy, the pope says such an authority is urgently needed to end the current worldwide financial crisis. It should "revive" damaged economies, reach toward "disarmament, food security and peace," protect the environment and "regulate migration."

Benedict writes, "The market is not, and must not become, the place where the strong subdue the weak."

The encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth) is a theologically dense explication of Catholic social teaching that draws heavily from earlier popes, particularly PaulVI's critique of capitalism 42 years ago. And echoing his predecessor John Paul II, Benedict says, "every economic decision has a moral consequence."

This is a really great article about the Pope's latest encyclical. It is well worth the read...Jesusonian ideals!!! Please click on "external source" for the entire piece.

Labels: Cathy Lynn Grossman, Charity in Truth, ethics, God, Pope Benedict XVI, United Nations

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Appalachian Trail becomes spiritual journey

Jul 6, 2009 | by Adam Miller

DAMASCUS, Va. (BP)--In about three months, several hundred hikers will summit a northern Maine mountain called Katahdin, a 5,000-foot-high peak just south of the border with Canada. Many of them will have completed an arduous 2,175-mile journey and fulfilled a dream.

Those who complete the millions of footsteps from Springer Mountain, Ga., to Mount Katahdin are forever changed with stories to tell well into retirement: encounters with bears, demanding 30-mile days, odd new acquaintances, lifelong friends.

And some might tell the story of First Baptist Church in Damascus, Va., where Southern Baptists washed their feet and provided hot showers, medical care, Internet access and a good conversation about God.

"It started as a hotdog cookout," says pastor Wayne Guynn, who credits Linda and Jeff Austin with taking over the ministry and ramping it up.

Now, Guynn says, they partner with churches in Alabama and Georgia and with the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia to simply make life more pleasant for hikers who come to the annual event known as Trail Days, which ran May 15-17 this year. In the process, they get to love hikers and tell them about Christ.

Nice kind of outreach - wonder if there are any Urantians in those churches? To read all about it, please click on "external source" for the whole article. Good reading, and a sweet idea.

Labels: Adam Miller, Appalacian Trail, God, hiking, Jesus, service, Trail Days

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Monday, July 06, 2009

Majority think it is possible to believe in God and Darwin

Most people feel it is possible to believe in God and evolution, according to a survey.

01 Jul 2009

The poll carried out by the British Council found that 54 per cent thought that science and religion are compatible.

Only 19 per cent of those questioned said it is impossible to believe in a God while also holding the view that life on earth evolved as a result of natural selection. This is the theory proposed by Charles Darwin exactly 150 years ago in his groundbreaking book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.

The study, which surveyed the opinions of more than 10,000 people across 10 countries worldwide including Great Britain, also uncovered wide regional variations in the acceptance of evolutionary theory.

Please click on "external source" for the complete results from the survey

Labels: Charles Darwin, evolution, God, Great Britain, religion, science

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Book Review: Does quantum mechanics show a connection between the human mind and the cosmos?

'Quantum Gods' analyzes purported link between physics and cosmic consciousness

Does quantum mechanics show a connection between the human mind and the cosmos? Are our brains tuned into a "cosmic consciousness" that pervades the universe enabling us to make our own reality? Do quantum mechanics and chaos theory provide a place for God to act in the world without violating natural laws?

Many popular books and films make such claims and argue that key developments in twentieth-century physics, such as the uncertainty principle and the butterfly effect, support the notion that God or a universal mind acts upon material reality. Physicist Victor J. Stenger, author of New York Times bestseller God: The Failed Hypothesis, examines these contentions in QUANTUM GODS: CREATION, CHAOS AND THE SEARCH FOR COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS (Prometheus Books, $26.98), a carefully reasoned and incisive analysis of popular theories that seek to link spirituality to physics.

"The public understanding of modern physics is seriously out of whack, thanks largely to pop junk like The Secret and What the BLEEP Do We Know? [that] promote a bogus version of quantum mechanics—the belief that 'you create your own reality' by controlling the laws of physics with your mind…," said Geoff Gilpin, author of The Maharishi Effect: A Personal Journey Through the Movement That Transformed American Spirituality. "The world has needed a book like this for a long time. If you care about scientific literacy, Quantum Gods is not optional."

Throughout the book Stenger alternates his discussions of popular spirituality with a survey of what the findings of twentieth-century physics actually mean. Thus he offers the reader a useful synopsis of contemporary religious ideas as well as basic but sophisticated physics presented in layperson's terms.

Please click on "external source" for the complete article

Labels: God, quantum physics, spirituality, Victor J. Stenger

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Friday, June 26, 2009

Two-thirds of [English] teenagers don't believe in God... and think reality TV is more important

Mail Foreign Service
22nd June 2009

Nearly two-thirds of teenagers don't believe in God and think that reality television is far more important than religion, new research has revealed.

The survey showed that 66 per cent of teens do not believe a deity exists while 50 per cent have never prayed and 16 per cent have never been to church.

Teenagers rated family, friends, money, music and even reality TV shows above faith.
Children from a London school take part in a service at Westminster Abbey: The numbers of teenagers who believe in God has dwindled

Children from a London school take part in a service at Westminster Abbey: The numbers of teenagers who believe in God has dwindled

Other statistics which emerged from the report included:

* 59 per cent of children believed religion has had a negative influence on the world
* 60 per cent only go to church for a wedding or christening
* Only 30 per cent of teenagers think there is an afterlife...
* ... while 10 per cent believe in reincarnation
* 47 per cent said organised religion had no place in the world
* 60 per cent don't believe Religious Studies should be compulsory in schools
* However, 91 per cent agreed they should treat others the way they wished to be treated themselves

Please click on "external source" for the complete article...the one bright spot - the overwhelming percentage of these teens do believe in some form of the "Golden Rule..."

Labels: church, God, prayer, Reality TV, religion, teenagers

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Friday, June 19, 2009

Christian Belief Through the Lens of Cognitive Science: Part 4 of 6

by Valerie Tarico

Tue Jun 16, 2009 at 10:45:05 AM PDT

The Iranian election. Muslim charities. "God hates fags" at Garfield High. Imprecatory prayers for the death of Obama. Papal dialogue with First Nations. To understand the politics of our world you have to understand religion. It's gotten to the point that cognitive science has a lot to say.

IV: The Born-Again Experience

Valerie Tarico's diary :: ::

I prayed harder and just then I felt like everything I was saying was being sucked into a vacuum. When I stood up, I felt like thin air; I had to brace myself. I felt this energy, it was a kind of an ecstasy." --Cathy "Something began to flow in me—a kind of energy . . . Then came the strange sensation that water was not only running down my cheeks, but surging through my body as well, cleansing and cooling as it went." --Colson "It was a beautiful feeling of well-being, warmth and loving . . . I went home and all night long these warm feelings kept coming up in my body." --Jean "I felt something real warm overwhelming me. It was in just a moment, yet it was like an eternity. . . . a joy, such a joy hit me with such a tremendous force that I jumped . . . and ran." --Helen. (From Conway & Siegelman, Snapping, pp 24, 32, 12, 31)

For many Christians, being born again is unlike anything they have ever known. A sense of personal conviction, yielding or release followed by indescribable peace and joy – this is the stuff of spiritual transformation. Once experienced it is unforgettable, and many people can recall small details years later. In the aftermath of such a moment, an alcoholic may stop drinking or a criminal fugitive may hand himself in to the authorities. A housewife may sail through her tasks for weeks, flooded by a sense of God’s love flowing through her to her children. A normally introverted programmer may begin inviting his co-workers to church.

This experience, more than any other, creates a sense of certainty about Christian belief and so makes belief impervious to rational argumentation. A believer knows what he or she has experienced and seen. Even converts who don’t feel radically transformed after praying "the sinner’s prayer" may feel overwhelmed by God’s presence during subsequent prayer or worship. Evangelical and Pentecostal forms of Christianity that are gaining ground around the world particularly emphasize emotional peaks such as faith healing or speaking in tongues. Worshipers may get caught up in exuberant singing, shouting, dancing and tears of joy.

What most Christians don’t know is that these experiences are not unique to Christianity. In fact, the quotations that you just read come from two born again Christians, a Moonie, and an encounter group participant. Their words are similar, because the born again experience doesn’t require a specific set of beliefs. It requires a specific social/emotional process, and the dogmas or explanations are secondary.

To access this whole series of articles, and the rest of this article, please click on "external source."

Labels: born again, Christianity, conversion, God, Snapping, Valerie Tarico

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Brain waves or beatific vision?

Tue, Jun. 16, 2009

Mystical experiences under the microscope
By David O'Reilly

Inquirer Staff Writer

As mystical experiences go, Barbara Bradley Hagerty's transcendent moment was not the kind that launches a new world religion. Still, it changed her forever.

The day was June 10, 1995. Hagerty, religion reporter for National Public Radio, was interviewing a terminally ill melanoma patient, Kathy, whose sunny outlook and trust in Jesus seemed to have prolonged her life, inexplicably, for years.

Then, as they talked, "I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand on end," Hagerty writes in her new book, Fingerprints of God, a survey of modern scientific investigation into religious experience.

"The air grew warmer and heavier, as if someone had moved into the circle [of lamplight] and was breathing on us. I glanced at Kathy." She, too, felt something and had "fallen silent in mid-sentence."

"I felt an unseen caress, engulfed by a presence I could feel but not touch," Hagerty continues. "I was paralyzed. . . . After a minute, although it seemed longer, the presence melted away."

What was it she sensed? Jesus? An angelic being? Or, as one researcher later suggested, had the temporal lobe of her brain been briefly hyperstimulated? This, he told her, likely induced the illusion of an unseen presence.

Whatever it was, it proved the "continental divide in my life," Hagerty said during a recent interview. "I decided I should investigate, the way we journalists do."

Her investigation grew into Fingerprints of God, a lucid overview of an essential question: Is mystical experience truly a glimpse of the divine, the eternal, the absolute? Or are the seemingly transformative moments known variously as "enlightenment" or "beatific vision" or cosmic bliss merely swells and quells in brain activity, signifying nothing beyond ourselves?

Please click on "external source" for the complete article.

Labels: Barbara Bradley Hagerty, brain, David O'Reilly, God, religion, science, transcendence

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This is your brain on religion - OpEd

Faith can bring out the best in people (love, generosity, compassion) — and the worst (fear, hatred, violence). Whether people are the former or the latter depends on how they view the God they worship.

By Andrew Newberg

When I was in high school, I dated a girl whose family regarded themselves as "born-again" Christians. It was my first encounter with devoutly religious people who strongly disagreed with my perspective on faith. They were always pleasant to me, but they were quite clear that in their view I had deeply sinned by not turning to Jesus. Oh, and because of this, I was going to hell.

It's tough enough being a teenager, but this was too much. The family's judgment disturbed me on two levels. First, I didn't like the thought of going to hell, but at the same time, their beliefs also challenged me to evaluate my own beliefs vigorously.

Distress and anxiety followed, and I realized that this was the first time that I had ever experienced such strong negative feelings about religion. And 30 years later, this episode still resonates as I conduct extensive research on religious practices and beliefs and their impact on the human person.

The research that I have come across, if not definitive, seems clear: Religion and spiritual practices generally have a positive effect on one's physical, emotional and neurological health. People who engage in religious activities tend to cope better with emotional problems, have fewer addictions and better overall health. They might even live longer than those who lead more secular lives. Indeed, many studies document that religious and spiritual individuals find more meaning in life.

Our studies at Penn's Center for Spirituality and the Mind (in conjunction with colleague Mark Waldman) of the effects of different spiritual practices, such as meditation and prayer, also reveal significant improvements in memory, cognition and compassion while simultaneously reducing anxiety, depression, irritability and stress (even when done in a non-theological context). One might come to the conclusion, then, that being religious or spiritual is a good thing. Perhaps God is great.

But not so fast. We also discovered that religion's influence on people depends very much on how they view their God.

Please click on "external source" for the complete article

Labels: Andrew Newberg, God, mind, religion, spirituality

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Saturday, June 13, 2009

OBITUARIES: Thomas Berry dies at 94; cultural historian became a leading thinker on religion and the environment

Thomas Berry saw Earth’s ecological crisis as essentially a crisis of the spirit.
Described as an 'eco-theologian,' he was an early advocate of the notion that Earth's ecological crisis was basically a crisis of the spirit.

By Jon Thurber
June 13, 2009

Thomas Berry, a cultural historian and specialist in Asian religions who in his later life became a leading thinker on religion and the environment, has died. He was 94.

Berry died June 1 at the Well-Spring Retirement Community in Greensboro, N.C., according to an announcement on his website. The cause of death was not reported, but Berry was known to have been in failing health in recent years after suffering two strokes.

Described by Newsweek magazine in the late 1980s as "the most provocative figure among the new breed of eco-theologians," Berry was an early advocate of the notion that Earth's ecological crisis was basically a crisis of the spirit.

"Thomas Berry contributed to the realization in our times that environmental issues are more than science or policy. They are also issues of the spirit," said Mary Evelyn Tucker, who with her husband, John Grim, heads the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology and directs the Thomas Berry Foundation. "How well we respond to the planetary challenges that face us now will be determined by our ability to form an Earth community with a common future for all species."

Calling the universe God's "primary revelation," Berry wrote in his book "The Dream of the Earth" that "the natural world is the larger sacred community to which we all belong." In his view, Earth's natural elements -- trees, forests, mountains -- had as much right to exist as humans. "We bear the universe in our being even as the universe bears us in its being."

Please click on "external source" for the complete article.

Labels: eco-theology, environmentalism, God, Jon Thurber, religion, the universe, Thomas Berry

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Friday, May 22, 2009

Book Review: " Fingerprints of God"

NPR reporter Barbara Bradley Hagerty uses journalism’s tools to explore the intersection of spirituality and science.
By Gregory M. Lamb | May 19, 2009 edition

Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality By Barbara Bradley Hagerty Riverheard Books 323 pp., $33.50

Using the reporting and explanatory skills of a talented veteran journalist, Barbara Bradley Hagerty has written a compelling account of her quest to answer an age-old question: Is this all there is?

The result is Fingerprints of God, a book that sails the roiling waters between religion and science and is unlikely to make quick friends among either evangelical Christians or those in the scientific community who conclude that God cannot exist. But for readers who consider themselves to be spiritual seekers, Hagerty treads some fascinating territory.

Rather than dismissing science as the enemy of spirituality, she engages with it, seeking out scientific pioneers, the outliers who are doing intriguing work on the nature of the brain and consciousness. She also talks with ordinary people who’ve had extraordinary personal encounters, such as near-death or out-of-body experiences, that have changed their views of themselves, reality, and on the existence of an afterlife.

Hagerty, the religion correspondent for National Public Radio, comes to a less-than-startling conclusion: Science can neither prove nor disprove these great questions. But she also sees hints of a “paradigm shift” in science now under way – akin, perhaps, to the early 20th century when the work of Einstein and others took a quantum leap away from a universe based solely on 18th-century Newtonian physics.

“Hard science does not mean petrified science,” Hagerty posits. “The paradigm to exclude a divine intelligence, or ‘Other,’ or ‘God,’ to reduce all things to matter, has reigned triumphant for some four hundred years, since the dawn of the Age of Reason,” she continues. “Today, a small yet growing number of scientists are trying to chip away at the paradigm, suspecting that its feet are made of clay.”

Please click on "external source" for complete article.

Labels: Barbara Bradley Hagerty, God, Gregory M. Lamb, religion, science, spirituality

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'God Is Back' tracks a religious surge in an age of science

By Hanna Rosin

New York Times
Posted: 05/14/2009

Not that long ago, great minds predicted a future with little or no religion.

Science would make us highly skeptical of miracles. Psychiatry would direct all of our awe and wonder inward. Changing roles for women would weaken the patriarchal structure that props up clerics. Whatever script for modernity one followed, it had God playing a bit role.

It didn't happen that way. Modernity arrived and improvised new starring roles for God. The Americans led the way by becoming both "the quintessentially modern country" and a very devout one, write John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge in their new book, "God Is Back," and most of the world has followed that model.

In rich countries and poorer ones, democratic and undemocratic, primarily Islamic and primarily Christian — everywhere, basically, except Europe — devotion to God is robust.

This is a review of the book "God is Back." Please click on "external source" for the complete article.

Labels: Adrian Wooldridge, God, Hanna Rosin, John Micklethwait, religion

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Friday, May 08, 2009

Francis Collins: A Scientific Basis for God

May 04, 2009 04:32 PM ET |
Dan Gilgoff | Permanent Link | Print

By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country

Is there a scientific basis for the existence of God? Many believers think so, even as they often dismiss science because they think it's incompatible with their religious beliefs. A recent Gallup Poll, for instance, found that 45 percent of Americans reject evolution, believing that human beings were created more or less in our present form within the past 10,000 years. Despite objections from scientists, many believers argue that there's scientific evidence
for such "Young Earth" creationism.

Francis Collins, director of the human genome project, is an atheist turned Christian who sees a scientific basis for God that not only embraces modern science
but actually relies on it. Collins has just launched a new website and a foundation called biologos, which "emphasizes the compatibility of Christian faith with what science has discovered about the origins of the universe and life."

Unless Christians—evangelicals, in particular—learn to integrate modern science with their religious faith, Collins believes, they are either stuck clinging to untruths about scientific ideas like evolution or, once they do accept evolution, are in danger of having to abandon their faith out of the mistaken belief that evolution and Christianity are incompatible.

Collins was raised without religion. He began questioning his atheism during medical school, when he witnessed patients who were near death but who were deeply comforted by their religious faith. Collins became a Christian in his 20s. "I believe in the literal rising of the body of Christ," he says today. "It's the cornerstone of my Christian faith."

In this very interesting article, Francis Collins' talking points for God's existence are enumerated...please click on "external link" for the complete article.

Labels: atheism, Dan Gilgoff, Francis Collins, God, human genome project, science

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Monday, April 27, 2009

RD10Q: Thinking About God Makes Your Brain Bigger

RD10Q: Thinking About God Makes Your Brain Bigger
By Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman
April 24, 2009

A new book argues that spiritual practices, be they secular or religious, are inherently good for you. Meditation and prayer—be it about God, or evolution, or peace, or the Big Bang—will actually change your brain.

Ten Questions for Andrew Newberg and Mark Waldman on How God Changes Your Brain, (Ballantine, 2009).

What inspired the two of you to write How God Changes Your Brain? What sparked your interest?

Our newest brain-scan research showed that different forms of meditation and spiritual practice can actually improve memory, and it may even slow down the aging process itself. We had also gathered enough data to draw a more comprehensive picture of how spiritual practices affect and change different parts of the brain, and we wanted to share this new perspective with the general public. We also wanted to present evidence showing how the religious landscape of America is moving from traditional values to a more spiritual and science-based vision of the universe.

What’s the most important take-home message for readers?

Spiritual practices, secular or religious, are inherently good for your body, and especially your brain. Meditation and prayer—be it about God, or evolution, or peace, or the Big Bang—will strengthen important circuits in your brain, making you more socially aware and alert while reducing anxiety, depression, and neurological stress. And meditation can be adapted in endless ways. You can use it to become more motivated to succeed in business. You can apply it to communication to reduce relationship conflicts. You can do a sixty-second meditation involving yawning to quickly relax your body and mind. Indeed, you can use the same technique to bring a roomful of children, students, or CEOs to attention with their brains becoming acutely attuned to each other: a fancy way of saying that yawning can actually evoke social empathy with many living species on this planet.

Please click on "external source" to access the entire interview with the authors.

Labels: Andrew Newberg, brain, God, How God Changes Your Brain, Mark Robert Waldman, science

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Major points of convergence within great spiritual traditions

Friday, April 24, 2009
By Rev. Ronald Rolheiser, OMI

When we look at all the major world religions, we see that they are more similar than dissimilar in how we understand the spiritual quest...we can draw out these major points of convergence:

---First, in all of them the aim of the spiritual quest is the same: union with God and union with everyone and everything else.

---Second, in all the great spiritual traditions the path to union is understood as coming through compassion.

---Third, in every great spiritual tradition, the route to compassion and union with God is paradoxical, requiring that somehow we have to lose ourselves to find ourselves, die to come to life, and give so as to receive.

---Fourth, every great spiritual tradition is clear that spiritual progress requires hard discipline and some painful renunciations, that the road-more-traveled won't get you home.

---Fifth, every great spiritual tradition tells us that the spiritual quest is a life-long journey with no short-cuts, no quick paths, no hidden secrets, and no appeal to privilege that can short-circuit the discipline and renunciation required.

All the great religious traditions agree: The road is narrow and hard and there are no short-cuts.

Please click on "external source" for the remainder of the similarities between religions, and an expanded understanding of these important points of religious convergence.

Labels: compassion, faith, God, Rev. Ronald Rolheiser, spirituality, unity, world religions

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Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Book Review: Perceptions of God will shape future of religion

By Ray Waddle • April 18, 2009

We've got God on the brain. The Master of the Universe comes as a storm of neurological impulses that can change the brain for better or for worse.

Thinking of God as All Compassionate can do you good. It makes you more empathetic and improves brain health. Extremist religion only increases anger, risking brain damage.

Such conclusions and more arise from the much-discussed research collected in a new book, How God Changes Your Brain, by neuroscientist Andrew Newberg and therapist Mark Robert Waldman.

Please click on "external source" for complete book review.

Labels: Andrew Newberg, God, Mark Robert Waldman, neuroscience, Ray Waddle

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Book Review: Solution to "The God Wars" Found in Award-Winning Book

WEBWIRE – Saturday, April 18, 2009

RETURN TO MEANING: THE AMERICAN PSYCHE IN SEARCH OF ITS SOUL redefines religious meaning and its importance for a Scientific Age. (http://www.andrewcort.com)

"Renaissance man” Andrew Cort (science and mathematics teacher, attorney, and doctor of chiropractic), has written an inspirational and scholarly book that “rescues philosophy from the mathematicians, sex from the hedonists, religion from empty sanctimony, and science from barren materialism,” says George Gilder, noted social commentator.

If there is a God, and God is all-powerful and good, why would God create such a painful and difficult world? Does religion have a credible answer? Morality, as secularists know, does not require a deity. Blind faith, as atheists know, often leads to hatred and violence. Taking scriptural stories as literal accounts of history, as scientists know, borders on the nonsensical. There has to be more.

Please click on "external source" for complete article, and a link to the author's website.

Labels: Dr. Andrew Cort, God, philosophy, religion, science, soul

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10 Minutes with … the Rev. John Polkinghorne

April 15, 2009
NEWS FEATURE
10 Minutes with … the Rev. John Polkinghorne
By Daniel Burke

(UNDATED) Christian thinkers have long employed insights from sociology, literature, and other fields to augment their ideas of how God works in the world.

Yet despite the world-changing insights of science, very few theologians have drawn on physics, biology or geology in the same way.

Renowned Anglican physicist-theologian John Polkinghorne wants to change all that. His new book, “Theology in the Context of Science,” examines what topics like space and time can teach us about God, and how a scientific style of inquiry can benefit theologians.

Polkinghorne, who was awarded the Templeton Prize in 2002 and knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his work reconciling science and faith, spoke about his new book from his home in England. Some answers have been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Theology and science are highly specialized, often complex disciplines. Is it feasible for someone to become fully versed in both?

A: I’m not saying that every theologian has to approach theology through the context of science any more than a liberation theologian would say that everyone has to live in base community in South America. I wrote the book to encourage theologians to take the context of science more seriously ... without having to master all of the technical details.

This is a transcript of an interview with renowned Anglican physicist-theologian John Polkinghorne, who was the winner of the Templeton Prize in 2002. It is a worthwhile read. Please click on "external source" for complete article.

Labels: Daniel Burke, God, Rev. John Polkinghorne, science, Templeton Prize, theologians

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God and the Multiverse

April 14, 2009, 6:14 am
God and the Multiverse

Please click on "external source" to access the original article in "Seed" magazine. Interesting juxtaposition with Urantia Book revelation.

Today’s idea: Multiverse?theory —?the idea that many universes lie beyond what we can observe — doesn’t really undermine the argument for God as creator as some Christian thinkers contend, scientists and theologians say.

Science and Religion | New “multiverse” theories challenge both humanity’s uniqueness and our central place in the cosmos, Nathan Schneider writes in Seed magazine — so it looks like they could join evolution as another battleground in the culture wars. Christian thinkers have criticized such ideas as “motivated by a refusal to accept evidence of God’s handiwork in the cosmos.”

But among scientists and theologians focused on multiverse theory, many believe that it simply expands the job description for God.

Labels: God, multiverse, religion, science, Seed

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Easter: Sign of Our Faith in Renewal

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Please click on "external source" for complete article.

Polls over the recent decades have consistently shown that nine in 10 Americans believe in the existence of God. A Harris Poll in 2003 indicated that roughly 84 percent professed a belief in miracles, the same number as those who believed in the survival of the soul after death. (Nearly 70 percent also believed in the devil and hell.)

A Pew Forum survey in 2007 indicated 78 percent saw the Bible as being the word of God, either literally (35 percent) or not (43 percent).

A current poll conducted by Newsweek found basic religious beliefs have varied little in decades. According to Newsweek, 78 percent still found prayer to be “an important part of daily life,” and 85 percent said religion was “very important” or “fairly important” in their lives.

No matter our specific spiritual doctrines, humans do exhibit a need to maintain hope and a faith in revival. We say that it’s only natural, and we see the basis for that belief in the continual renewal of the natural world around us.

Change is a constant.

Newsweek also reported its latest poll found that only 48 percent of those surveyed thought faith would “help answer all or most of the country’s current problems.” That’s down from 64 percent in 1994. Presumably, that means we tend to see fewer possibilities for specific spiritual beliefs solving the convoluted problem of toxic assets, bundled mortgage securities and such.

Labels: belief, Bible, faith, God, Newsweek magazine, spirituality

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Friday, April 10, 2009

After 4,000 Comments, Taking the Pulse on Modern Christianity

Kurt Soller

...Newsweek proclaimed "The Decline and Fall of Christian America" on its cover. The Washington Post/Newsweek "On Faith" blog featured a post that belittled the significance of Jesus' death and resurrection. The Discovery Channel aired a documentary that painted Jesus as little more than an opportunistic politician who caught a bad break in a trial."

Whether valid or not, it's portrayals like these that have you readers -- especially Christians -- up in arms. The majority were using our forum to share their beliefs on where Christianity is headed. And as Christians, there were some great first-hand accounts of life in an increasingly "post-Christian" society. "As an Evangelical Christian from Africa, I should say this article was long overdue... I have always been bothered by Political Evangelical Christianity in America and the spreading of the same Political Christian dose in Sub Saharan Africa," wrote commenter Katm. "Any thinking and discerning evangelical Christian should take the critique in this article as a positive." Many agreed, echoing an overarching idea that Christianity in America has long been too political, and that this post-Christian America may be well-warranted. "Raised as I was, I am very familiar with the teaching of Christianity, and I am painfully aware of the holes my parents conservatism left in my education," echoed one reader."But, my favorite bible verse is the one about man being created in the image of God. Isn't that another way of saying that God and man are the same? To me it's just that simple."

With the numbers of believers down in this year's American Religious Identification Survey -- the inspiration for our cover -- I was surprised by the commenting Christians who were open about why the left organized religion. "People are not abandoning Christianity so much as abandoning organized religion," offered commenter xargaw. "Many of us have found a deeper faith in our own searching and in our communities outside of the church where irrelevant doctrine and hypocrisy are hard to ignore. There is often more of God at work in volunteerism in your town and being a true friend to someone in need than in the church building. Many are striving to live as Jesus directed rather than simply warming a pew once a week." But why forget organized Christianity? Others were quick to explain: "Most Americans still believe in God. But the last several decades the most visible voices of Christianity have been those who preach judgment, hatred, anger and violence."

Getting even more specific, there seemed to be an overwhelming amount of blame placed on the previous administration and the effect it had on politicizing religion. "I watched with dismay as the religious right hijacked the political process and decisions that were previously individual became part of a movement to impose a group's religious views on all of us," wrote Bookfan. "Abortion, intelligent design, stem cell research, and gay marriage became the property of voters' sectors--rather than a personal moral decision." Even Christians agreed, many of whom were unwilling to refute Meacham's assertion that we've entered a new era when discussing how the church interacts with the state: "Although I was raised in the US and in the Christian faith, I have come to see it primarily as something very ugly and divisive," wrote the reader 'Meditating.' "Instead of concentrating on loving one another, the Old Testament Christians (yes, it's an oxymoron) seem to have taken over the religious dialogue of my faith and turned it into a weapon intended to wound anyone who disagrees with them. What moral person would want to identify themselves with a faith like that? I don't and I am now one of those people who would not want to be identified as a Christian. It seems no one injures the name of Christ like the Christian have done."

That's certainly a harsh response, and it's worth pointing out that many Christians who read the piece were justifiably worried that Meacham and the magazine were dismissing Christianity. That's not the case; since the cover's publication, Meacham has published a follow-up -- asserting that faith, regardless of how it interacts with politics and American society, will never disappear. "The Newsweek of my childhood would have included historical data on church affiliation/attendance in America over the last two centuries," wrote Bobsf_94117. And others agreed that they wish our article had provided more context into how we've been approaching this post-Christian status." With that, came myriad arguments explaining what the Founding Fathers intended, as Christians or non-Christians, when they wrote The Constitution. But obviously, constitutional interpretation -- even as it interacts with religion -- is a different, and very huge, topic. Another time? On that note, I won't address the hundreds of comments that went back and forth arguing whether Hitler was a Christian. Not relevant...

Of all the thousands of comments though, the story about declining Christian identification focused squarely -- and nicely -- on one topic: the purpose of Christianity in society. I'm obviously not the right person to answer that, but I was intrigued by the hundreds of readers who wished religion away in sum, despite it's long history in American society. "This can only be good for the United States," argued one commenter. "We have lost our competitiveness in Science and the quality of our Education has been declining thanks in part to religious minded people who have been corrupting both Science and Education with nonsensical concepts such as Intelligent Design." In a less-specific away, hundreds agreed: "I am pleased!," wrote commenter Thevail. "How wonderful that humans have chosen once again to think for themselves, rather than depending on "the big book of answers." Religion is supposed to inspire us to be better people, make us aspire to higher goals, make us think before we act. But the truth is that if Christianity is wounded..it's a self-inflicted wound." Immediately, a committed Christian took it a step futher: "Another sensational title by Newsweek; however, as Christianity goes, so does America....maybe, that's why this country is going into the toilet."

As I'm sure you realize, it's impossible to cull more than 4,000 thoughts on Christianity into a few concise paragraphs. But from all these viewpoints, we can glean a few things: Faith isn't headed away, but our country an impasse between what Christians want from their government, and how the rest of non-Christian America views Christianity. Whether you believe Christianity is impure, or that our Democracy itself is faulted, it's clear that both politics and religion are in a time of flux. When do you think it will settle? And how will both religion and democracy -- even in a post-Christian society -- intersect? Your comments below.

Please click on "external source" for a look at a collection of reader comments...

Labels: 2001 American Religious Identification Survey, believers, Christianity, faith, God, Kurt Soller, Newsweek magazine, organized religion, politics