Daily Archives: July 25, 2022

Since 2015 I have been traveling America and speaking globally in an attempt to bring people of different faiths closer together. My particular area of focus is explaining the common stereotypes that non-Muslims hold towards Muslims and the religion of Islam. In hundreds of conversations on the topic, I have listened to questions from Christians, atheists, Hindus, Jews, and agnostics. The most apparent conclusion from years of trying to help people understand one another is that the people that most often speak for a religion are not the ones who should be. The result of so many extremists speaking loudly about their religion is that all religions are losing favor.

One of the questions I receive is about the speed ofgrowth of Islam. In response, I discuss the most recentpolling data that shows that by the second half of the 21st century, Islam will become the largest religion. I explain that most religions birth rates primarily account for their size decline. As Judaism in America will soon lose its spot as the largest non-Christian population to Islam, many people ask me what I think of all the pending changes.

I answer by first pointing out thatwhile Islam will soon overcome Christianity as the largest religion in the world, the issue they should focus on is something else. The faith group that is growing at an alarming rate in comparison to Islam or Christianity is the group of people who want nothing to do with faith. I spend my days thinking about why thefaithless are growing so quickly. I come from a long line of New England preachers dating back to the 1800s, and I often talked to my grandfather about this.

Atheism is growing globally for many reasons, some political, some personal, and some we will never know. One thing that people of faith can work to remove from the equation is extremism. When I talk to people who have left religion or never joined one, they often explain that most religions dont seem to be focused on their core goals. They complain most often about the extreme voices inside religions that spend most of their energy condemning others, even killing others, instead of helping others.

You dont have to look very far in the modern world to find extremists in any religion. There are so-called Christians who tout racial supremacy, use violence to gain political power and demand that women be subservient babymakers who stay in the home. There are also Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, and Jewish sects and persons who do very similar things. At this moment, the Haqqani-Taliban regime has taken control of Afghanistan and instituted the most extreme misogynistic laws in the world. They are killing women who do not follow their rules.

When most religious leaders and laymen are confronted with the issue of extremists in their religion, they quickly try to pivot and point out even worse behavior in other religions or sectsthat is not a solution. Today, twenty million women in Afghanistan are asking the Muslim world to denounce the regime destroying their lives and to stop the injustice. Yet no Muslim leader is stepping forward to stop the insanity. That is just one example of the cowardice that is destroying religion.

Every time religious believers fail to stop and silence the extremists in their religion, atheism grows. It is that simple. Young people dont want to join a religion that claims to stand for forgiveness and justice if all they hear and see are calls for revenge, violence, and injustice. As a religion teacher, I have studied the teachings of many faiths.I know that forgiveness and being helpful to your fellow man are key parts of most religions. The failure of other religious leaders to step up and stamp out violence and hatred in the name of religion might be the worst sin of all.

Right now, I do not see any remedy to this problem on the horizon. Religious groups spend a lot of money holding global interfaith and internal events that condemn violence and hatred. However, they are only being listened to by the other folks at the conferences. Religious leaders can make the most difference at the ground level in churches, mosques, Rotary and Kiwanis clubs, schools, and even living rooms. But no one funds the efforts of people at the grassroots level that are helping people unlearn the hatred they have for other religions.

I wish I could wave a magic wand that would stop the decline of religion and refocus religious groups on helping others and being a force of good that stamps out the evil voices. But no one can do that. This wont resolve itself unless religious people demand that those who are tearing down their religion stop. So please dont ask me what I think about the growing atheism movement or Islamic religion. Do something to improve the religion you are in, instead of demanding other religions straighten themselves out. Do not blame atheism or other religions for the decline in your house of worship; blame yourself.

Jason Criss Howk is an interfaith leader who helps people understand Islam and Muslim cultures. He is a professor of Islamic Studies at the US Air Force Special Operations School and is the author ofThe Quran: A Chronological Modern English Interpretation. His award-winning Quran has been studied by Islamic and Quranic scholars from Duke to Johns Hopkins, and Iran to Indonesia. Jason is a retired US Army officer and spent half of his uniformed service as a South Asia and Arab regional specialist. He holds an MA in South Asia and Middle East studies from NPS and is a Malone Fellow in Arab and Islamic studies.

Image: Reuters.

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Why the World's Religions Are Dying a Slow Death - The National Interest Online

Fewer than half of the Netherlands now believe in God but for those finding atheism later in life after a strict religious upbringing, it is not an easy path.

I was 21 when I became involved in a struggle with the church authority, Zeelander Inge Bosscha (45) told Dutch News. I was in an abusive relationship and wanted a divorce. They said that God did not allow this.

Unanswered questions

Inge, the eldest of 10 children, was raised within the Reformed Liberated Church at the western end of the Netherlands Bible belt, which stretches from Zeeland to Overijssel. The event, she says, raised old questions that I had never been able to answer satisfactorily. I pushed those thoughts away, she says. I feared that I would not be a good Christian if I doubted so deeply the foundations of the faith.

But when Inge went through with the divorce, she was ostracised by her community and the church refused to let her baptise her baby. Her reconciliation with the congregation a year on could not shake her inner conflict. Something had been set in motion in my mind, she says. Two years later, she left. Today, Inge helps others atheists and agnostics to rebuild their lives after leaving their faith via her support platform dogmavrij.nl.

According to a 2022 report by the SCP, the governments socio-cultural think-tank, Inge is one of around nine million people in the Netherlands, just over half of the population, who now say they are atheist or agnostic. This figure has almost doubled since 1998, making the Netherlands one of the most secular countries in Europe. By contrast, just one in ten Americans describe themselves as atheist or agnostic.

Mourning

Despite the swing away from religion, the choice to live as a non-believer is not always easy here for those raised in a religious community. Inge says she experienced an intense mourning for everything that I once thought was normal and good, but turned out not to be at least, not always and not for me.

Becoming independent was also a challenge. My self-thinking and problem-solving abilities were poorly developed, she explains. [Before], all I had to do before was pray and hope in God.

The crisis had a profound effect on Inges mental and physical health. In the final years of the release process, I started to get more and more ill. I suffered from chronic pain and fatigue I thought I was hypersensitive or maybe crazy, she says.

Since 2015, Inge has been sharing her experiences and has received thousands of reactions from people who recognised themselves in her story. It was a huge relief, but also a shock, to see that there are so many others who have had similar experiences, she says.

Isolation

Maarten Freriks is the director of Secular Underground Network, a project which helps people from all over the world who are isolated or persecuted because of their beliefs. Freedom of thought is very well protected in the Netherlands, he told Dutch News.

For this reason, the extreme loneliness of people whose beliefs force them to flee their community or country, he says, can be hard to understand.

They are often really excluded from everyone around them, Freriks explains. Usually, when I start a new case, I say, lets make a map of your network because we have to mobilise everyone around you to help you get a job, get funding, get a place to stay and thats usually very, very limited They dont have their social network any more, they dont have their family any more. The family even sometimes try to kill them.

Asylum

Securing residency rights in the Netherlands for persecuted atheist migrants is often harder than for those who claim asylum on the basis of a religious conversion. Yet for atheist refugees such as Mehrzad (38), who was on his final warning after serving two prison sentences for refusing to follow Islam, relocating to the Netherlands away from all his friends and family in Iran was the difference between life and death.

According to the book of law in Iran, there is only one punishment for atheists and that is execution and Im not sure if European governments know this clearly, he told Dutch News.

Intellectually, he explains, he was unable to accept the scientific errors and outdated claims which cannot be true that he found in religious books. Reflecting freely your own thoughts and ideas, he says, should be a universal right and not limited to the Netherlands or Europe.

As he moved away from religion, Mehrzad, like Inge, noted a difference reflected in my approach towards problems. Instead of relying on God, you have to rely on yourself, he says. And though in the Netherlands he enjoys a level of safety, leaving everything behind was very hard and it still is.

Death threats

Lale Gl (24), who grew up in a strict Sunni Muslim household in Amsterdam which followed the Turkish political and religious Mill Gr movement, was cut off from her family and received multiple death threats after she published her bestselling novel Ik ga leven (Im going to live) in 2021. Based on her own journey from orthodoxy to atheism, the story details the protagonists struggle with her strict upbringing and the painful process of breaking free.

Speaking to NPO Start in March, Gl described how her loss of faith devastated her understanding of the world. Everything that you thought you knew just disappeared, she said. Its not the truth for you any more. And then I had to work out what my truth was, what my norms and values were, and thats hard.

Far from seeking to recruit fellow atheists, Gl speaks openly about the challenges of being part of the slim majority of non-adherents in the Netherlands.

Being an atheist is not attractive, its not something Id recommend, she said. I think its fine that most people in the world are believers. Atheists believe in nothing, they have nothing to look forward to. Youre going to die and thats it. Bad people wont be punished and good people wont be rewarded Its no fairy tale.

The Secular Underground Network is seeking volunteers. Find out more here.

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Atheism still not always easy in the Netherlands - DutchNews.nl - DutchNews.nl

CLINTON Titles dont come any drier would grimmer be more accurate? than Images of Atheism: The Soviet Assault on Religion. Yet the show, which runs through Oct. 2 at the Museum of Russian Icons, is visually lively, even playful. Cuteness-wise, the smiling cosmonaut saluting viewers in Vladimir Menshchikovs 1975 propaganda poster There Is No God verges on Disney-adorable.

Karl Marx famously declared that Religion is the opium of the people. Right there you had the theoretical underpinnings of the Bolsheviks opposition to religion. They were Godless Communists for a reason. Furthermore, the Russian Orthodox Church had been a pillar of the czarist state. Religion posed a political threat as both belief system and institutional force. So it makes sense, however bewildering such a name may sound, that there was a Godless Five-Year Plan to go along with the economic ones. The newly installed rulers of the newly installed Soviet Union considered religion anathema twice over.

What those rulers didnt consider anathema at least not initially was artistic innovation. During the 20s and spilling over somewhat into the 30s, Soviet visual culture witnessed an unrivaled degree of artistic ferment and innovation in film, photography, painting, and applied design.

A revolution in the arts matched the one going on in society, and that cultural revolutions energy and experimentation are very much evident in the anti-religious propaganda from those years. Mikhail Mikhailovich Cheremnykhs Blacksmith, Beat the Bells into Ballbearings, from his Anti-Religious Alphabet (1932), is textbook Constructivism, with its use of photomontage, solid color, creative typography, interplay of angles and curves, and lets not forget that exhortatory title.

The Anti-Religious Alphabet is the shows centerpiece. Designed by Cheremnykh for classroom use, its a set of 27 letter cards (Cyrillic has more letters than Roman does). The cards served the dual purpose of helping young pupils learn their letters and disdain religion. Theyre agit-prop for kids. The titles make the propaganda aspect plain. Fords Factories Are Fascist Forts. Sacred Stories Are So Silly! Vile and Virulent Is the Vipers Venom (the viper in question being Pope Pius XI). The top-hatted capitalist seen in Believing Is Bad for You, Badder than Booze bears an alarming resemblance to Mr. Monopoly.

Most items in the show are from the 20s and 30s, with just a half dozen from the 70s and 80s. The former are far more vivid and imaginative. The Brezhnev era was no less sclerotic artistically than socially. An exception is that cosmonaut poster. The work of an artists collective known as the Fighting Pencil, it was inspired by a remark from cosmonaut Gherman Titov. Sometimes people are saying that God is out there, he remarked of outer space. I saw neither angels nor God. Notice how the steeples at the bottom of the poster include a mosque. The Soviets were ecumenical in their atheism.

In addition to the posters, the show includes such amusing ephemera as playing cards with anti-religious images and an ashtray in the shape of an Orthodox priest. The most striking thing about Images of Atheism isnt anything in the show, per se. Its the juxtaposition with the contents of the other galleries, which are just what one might expect in a museum devoted to, yes, Russian Icons.

IMAGES OF ATHEISM: The Soviet Assault on Religion

Museum of Russian Icons, 263 Union St., Clinton, through Oct. 2. 978-598-5000, http://www.museumofrussianicons.org

Mark Feeney can be reached at mark.feeney@globe.com.

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Believing Is Bad for You: At the Museum of Russian Icons, Images of Atheism - The Boston Globe

This Zen kan is attributed to Master Linji Yixuan. It is over 1000 years old. Amonk deep in meditation experienced what he thought was enlightenment the awakening, the Buddha-mind and reported this to his master.

The master explained to the monk that this is nothing special at all, and can even hinder his real progress. The master then instructs: If you see the Buddha, kill him.

Even though you will find Buddhism listed as a religion all over the internet,theinternet is rarely correct or accurate. So we get to the matter of definition andmeaning, and nuance. There are no gods of any type in Buddhism. No beliefs. In a God or a belief that there is no God. Atheism is not scientific. And anti-theism or hostility to all religions is the source and cause of all religious wars: Bigotry. It is the absence of belief in anything other than the truth and living a life without fear of anything like Hell, or Heaven.The Sanskrit term is Dharma. All dharmas are forms of emptiness. Your truth may be No Truth. Or even Many Truths, and thats how Hemingway put it, or rather his editors did, in the posthumously publishedIslands in the Stream. I read it was a compilation of three unpublished texts cobbled together,anexcellent work. All gods are false, even your antigod or null god. Thats the teaching of Buddhism. Atheism itself is based on a belief that no one can prove nor disprove. Period. Its a grift like anything else. And Buddhists are far more serene than any Anti-theist.

The World's Newest Major Religion: No Religion

As secularism grows, atheists and agnostics are trying to expand and diversify their ranks.

Atheism is faith in the belief that there is no God (or gods). In fact, it is considered one of the fastest-growing religions. No Religion, according to an article in The National Geographic. Atheism is not Anti-theism, a term Chris Hitchens coined and self-identified as, an anti-theist. And probably Richard Dawkins as well is hostile to all religions. That hostility towards religion, or the beliefs of others, is another word for bigotry.

No one is immune from behaving in abigoted manner.Bigotry is the cause of all religious wars. End of story. I have respect for Hitchens, in spite of his peculiar idiosyncrasies, or maybe even because of them. Dawkins is allegedly a scientist, so he should know better. Hitch was just a journalist, much like Hemingway. I would have been interested in discussing Marx with Hitchens. He retained his identification as a Marxist, but largely realized as he got older that this meme explains the difference between the genius of Marx and Historical Materialism vs. the complete imbecility of Marxism as an ideology. And for many reasons not even related to the banning of free thought and/orbelief.

To paraphrase Dr. Victoria Harrison from the University of Glasgow in her 2006 paperThe Pragmatics of Defining Religion in a Multi-Cultural World, she states that as Theravada Buddhism is atheistic, it would otherwise have to be classified as non-religious. This fact alone puts Atheism in the category of a religion. But dont despair, even some Christians claim Christianity is not a religion, but a relationship with God. A parallax view.

12 Step Programs, like the prototype, Alcoholics Anonymous, are often considered nondenominational religion, because of the faith in a Higher Powerfor your salvation. In the study of addiction, we know that AA is not evidenced based. It cant be evidence-based and still remainanonymous. I doubt the majority of the public realizes this simple fact. It was never useful to me, but I would recommend it to clients. We all did itout of desperation because we still rely on outmoded models of addictionthat make the notion of a cure quaint. Originally, it was the moral failing model. You are weak and amoral. This led to AA. We have slowly moved to the medical or disease model of addiction. This is because we as a society are still ignorant, and by we, I mean science.Some have found help in AAand there are a number of reasons for this unrelated to its efficacy which can never be testedbased on actual evidence which can never be collected. Anecdotally, we use it out of desperation.In the field, you will even find 12 Step Groups for people who are addicted to 12 Step Groups. Or Porn, Sex, Drugs, even shopping, (or what we call retail therapy),but never addictions to money, or greed. Food, Power, however

If I refer to the 7 Heavenly Virtues or the 7 Deadly Sins, it does not make me a Christian or even a Catholic. The Catholics even still include Liberality as one of the Heavenly Virtues. Many others have substituted Charity for Liberality. They are not the same thing. And I often suspect thats intentional. See? Even the Catholics arent all bad. But that depends on how you define bad. This is the original Padre with a machine gun:Father Camilo Torres Restrepo. MaybeThomas Merton is more your style, no machine gun. Both are often considered bad Catholics by the Church.

I cant really say the same about Scientologists. All bad. And a joke only a few people get.

Bigotry is defined as an obstinate or unreasonable attachment to a belief, opinion, or faction; in particular, prejudice against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group. As with most words we use each day, relatively few of us really have a clear and present definition of the terms we toss around. It is always easier to recognize the bigotry ofothers than our own, especially when you are the target of that bigotry.

For myself, I have always preferred Ambrose Bierces definition of a bigot.

One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.

At the root of every conflict, you will find bigotry. Think about it. In fact, truly religious wars are very rare. About 7 %, but 10% are the deadliest. In military science, this is known as a force multiplier. Twitter and Facebook are force multipliers, all so-called social networking platforms are, for disinformation and propaganda. Holy Wars are a morale multiplier also. Zealotry. The desire to eliminate all false beliefs but your own limited understanding of your own personal false beliefs is differentfrom this lunatic how? Please tell me, I want to know.And the Romans tried this. Look around, there are millions of them now so it was as effective as Feynmans Cargo Cult Science.Its not even scientific.

Psychological scientists are exploring the causes and effects of atheismand finding that believers and nonbelievers may have more in common than they realize

Wars, and conflicts, are still caused by the same thing they have always been caused by, as Marx understood: Class Conflict, but whip up any zealots or fanatics and there are your front line Storm Troopers, like the SA, the forerunners to the SS.

According to scholars such as Jeffrey Burton Russell, conflicts may not be rooted strictly in religion and instead may be a cover for the underlying secular power, ethnic, social, political, and economic reasons for conflict.[1] Other scholars have argued that what is termed "religious wars" is a largely "Western dichotomy" and a modern invention from the past few centuries, arguing that all wars that are classed as "religious" have secular (economic or political) ramifications.[2][3][4] In several conflicts including the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, the Syrian civil war, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, religious elements are overtly present, but variously described as fundamentalism or religious extremismdepending upon the observer's sympathies. However, studies on these cases often conclude that ethnic animosities drive much of the conflicts.[5]

According to the Encyclopedia of Wars, out of all 1,763 known/recorded historical conflicts, 121, or 6.87%, had religion as their primary cause.[6] Matthew White's The Great Big Book of Horrible Things gives religion as the primary cause of 11 of the world's 100 deadliest atrocities.[7][8]

And The founder of American Atheists started out with a noble endeavor that quickly became a grift. And she toyed with holocaust deniers. Another belief she couldnt abide. So considering the way she lived her life, and how she died, Id be hesitant to adopt her as anything more than another crackpot.

Atheists are not the ones youd expect to be engaged in wars about something they claim does not exist. None of the beliefs in our heads exist.

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If You Meet the Buddha on the Road... Kill Him. - Daily Kos

Tradition and Apocalypse:An Essay on the Future of Christian Beliefby david bentley hartbaker academic, 208 pages, $24.99

David Bentley Hart was once the darling of postliberal theologians for his brilliant books on divine beauty and the illogic of atheism. But in his new book, Tradition and Apocalypse, he argues that the Christian tradition is bankrupt.UsingNewmansEssay on Development of Doctrineas a foil, he insists that the rational unity of the Christian tradition cannot be known with any certitude, and what we take to be apostolic is little more than the result of political compromise, rhetorical evasion, and institutional expediency. Put simply, creedal Christianity radically contradicts Jesus and the apostles, whoaccording to Harttaught anarchist communism, pacifism, and the rejection of all political authority.

The Churchs institutional form through history, Hart insists, has been often almost comically corrupt and divisive.It would cause Hart not a moments distress to walk away from . . . Christian beliefs and institutions if he were to find them false or incoherent, and he is more than willing to conclude that Christian traditions intrinsic unity . . . is an illusionor even perhaps a lie.Against traditional accounts, he sees Christianity as containing an inner force of dissolution that incubates movements of unbelief and nihilism, but tends to begin again in the formless realm of spirit rather than flesh, spirit not letter.Small wonder that Hart praises the Churchs early gnostic enemies and complains that they were misunderstood.

Christians must beware of thinking they see any rational unity to Christian tradition, for the living tradition is essentially apocalyptic: an originating disruption of the historical past remembered in light of God's final disruption of the historical (and cosmic) future.The past is ever dissolving, by Harts account, and the future apocalypse will surprise us with an altered theological understanding that is both radical and irrevocable.

As part of his polemic against creedal Christianity, Hart argues that Arius, the fourth-century heretic, was a much more faithful representative of the oldest and most respectable school of Trinitarian speculation than were the partisans of the eventual Nicene settlement. The Arian claim that the Son was a creature was not especially exotic.Nicaeas settlement onhomoousioslacked biblical attestation, and the Arians were very plausibly . . . more faithful to scripture than their Nicene opponents. In the end, Nicene Christology was only one among many possible conceptions of the meaning of the Gospel.

Along the same revisionist lines, Hart insists that the apostle Paul's account of salvation is closer to the gnostic Valentinus's understanding of salvation than to much of the Thomist tradition or to Calvins doctrine of substitutionary atonement.Marcion, who repudiated the Old Testament, practiced a faith more consistent with Pauls beliefs than did Luther.

Hart repeatedly denounces the doctrine of eternal damnation of those condemned to hell.Those who accept itwhich means the vast majority of Christians who have ever livedinvite psychosis and the destruction of their moral intelligence.Their misunderstanding of eschatology matches their nave assumptions about the rational coherence in Christian tradition, which it is the gravamen of Tradition and Apocalypse to show is an illusion.

Following in that modern tradition of scholars who imagine that they have discovered the true meaning of the Bible for the first time, Hart tells us that Christians have failed to see that the original tale of thenarrative of Eden has nothing to do with a fall, original sin, or diabolical interference.It was originally the story of a chief god Yahweh who lied to his two pitiable serfs to keep them ignorant of better things.The high god tried (maladroitly) to make the serpent a helpmeet to these serfs.The serpent truthfully told these peasants that Yahweh was exploiting them.They discovered after eating from the tree that the serpent was right, so Yahweh fled in panic to the council of lesser gods to warn them that Adam and Eve might now eat from the tree of life and displace them by also becoming immortal.This was why they had to be expelled from the garden.

A reader can only chuckle over this fanciful reading. Harts rendition of Genesis 3 betrays a surprising inability to distinguish between background Near Eastern myths and their subtle refutations by the biblical author. He frequently invokes reason, the historical-critical method, and historical scholarship for warrants. Again the informed reader smiles, knowing that historical scholarship changes from generation to generation, often producing wildly contradictory judgments, but always put forward with great confidence that the scholar-genius has finally settled the matter and put to rest the notions of the benighted fools who came before him.

Hart pursues other tendentious readings of Scripture that pretend to be informed by historical reasoning, often to support his claims that true Christianity is anarchic, socialist, and pacifist. Yet the role of the modern German theology professor is not enough for Hart.He makes a metaphysical leap to philosophical perennialism not unlike that of the American transcendentalists in the nineteenth century. Emerson, for example,posited an inner unity to all world religions and a final metaphysical oneness opposed to all dualism. Hart does the same. The distinction between God and the creation is illusory.Christians should learn this monism, Hart avers, from Hindu thinkers like Shankara, developer of Advaita Vedanta.Or we should go to Islamic Sufism, which sees the truth of metaphysical monism with unparalleled brilliance.

Why did Solomon turn to idolatry after God used him to lead Israel and after he had written some of the most profound parts of Scripture?Why did Gideon make a golden ephod that became an idolatrous snare to himself and all Israel after Yahweh had used him to deliver Israel? We will never have a definitive answer to these questions.But we can see a similar turn in an erstwhile orthodox theologian who now embraces a gnostic reading of Genesis and heterodox views of Christology, creation, and salvation.

Perhaps Harts turn toward heterodoxy goes back to his embrace of universal salvation. Not all universalists have come to heretical conclusions about other Christian dogmas.But in his magisterial analysis of the history of universalism (TheDevils Redemption), Michael McClymond shows that universalism begins with the ancient gnostics, and once embraced by Christians, tends to unravel every major Christian dogma.This powerful tendency helps us understandif not explainHarts fall into Hindu metaphysics and gnostic theology.

Gerald McDermott recently retired from Beeson Divinity School.

Editor's note: An earlier version of this article incorrectlyquoted the phrase narrative of Eden as true Eden story. We regret the error.

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Hart's Turn To Heterodoxy | Gerald McDermott - First Things