Brother Guy Consolmagno: God's Mechanics

Very interesting talk about Religion and Science. Worth watching, from fora.tv. This is someone who actually is both religious and understands science. For example "science is not about knowing, it's about describing".

With wry humor, Brother Guy Consolmagno shows how he not only believes in God but gives religion an honored place alongside science in his life. His book God's Mechanics: How Scientists and Engineers Make Sense of Religion offers an engaging look at how - and why - scientists and those with technological leanings can hold profound, "unprovable" religious beliefs while working in highly empirical fields.

Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno is a Jesuit brother with advanced degrees from MIT and the University of Arizona. A highly respected planetary scientist whose research focuses on meteorites, asteroids, and dwarf planets, Consolmagno is the author or co-author of numerous books and publications, including Brother Astronomer and Turn Left at Orion. He even has an asteroid named in his honor (4597 Consolmagno, known to its friends as "Little Guy").

He has served as chair of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society and is a past president of Commission 16 (Planets and Moons) of the International Astronomical

Former Pastor Eats, Works, Lives, Even Votes as He Believes Jesus Would

After reading the book "A Year of Living Biblically," by A.J. Jacobs, former pastor Ed Dobson decided to devote a year trying to live as Jesus did, based on what is written about him in the Bible and other historical documents.

"I read that book a little over a year ago, and I thought, well, if a secular Jew could do this, certainly a follower of Jesus could," Dobson said today on "Good Morning America Weekend."

Dobson, the vice president of spiritual formation at Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Mich., said he did not shave, ate kosher, observed the Sabbath and read through the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John every week.

He even had a couple of beers along the way. "I would often go down to the bar, sit up at the counter, drink a beer and talk about God, which Jesus was accused of being a glutton and a drunkard," he said.

Personally I think this is a little bit silly. While I applaud the effort, he's not reliving anything but what he thinks or was told Jesus did. On top of that, he was reading from gospels written many years after Jesus was dead, which Jesus is absolutely guaranteed to NOT have done, so his experiment goes completely askew.

While it's a valiant effort, it seems misguided to me... but then again, what do I know?

Read more or watch the video at ABC News.

Religion Trump Cards

Some funnies for today...

More cards at the New Humanist

Great Article on President Elect Obama's Faith

I'm a big believer in tolerance. I think that religion at it's best comes with a big dose of doubt. I'm suspicious of too much certainty in the pursuit of understanding just because I think people are limited in their understanding.

I think that, particularly as somebody who's now in the public realm and is a student of what brings people together and what drives them apart, there's an enormous amount of damage done around the world in the name of religion and certainty.

It's interesting particularly now after this election, comes with it a lot of celebrity. And I always think of politics as having two sides. There's a vanity aspect to politics, and then there's a substantive part of politics. Now you need some sizzle with the steak to be effective, but I think it's easy to get swept up in the vanity side of it, the desire to be liked and recognized and important. It's important for me throughout the day to measure and to take stock and to say, now, am I doing this because I think it's advantageous to me politically, or because I think it's the right thing to do? Am I doing this to get my name in the papers or am I doing this because it's necessary to accomplish my motives.
...
When I'm talking to a group and I'm saying something truthful, I can feel a power that comes out of those statements that is different than when I'm just being glib or clever.

FALSANI:
What's that power? Is it the holy spirit? God?

OBAMA:
Well, I think it's the power of the recognition of God, or the recognition of a larger truth that is being shared between me and an audience.

That's something you learn watching ministers, quite a bit. What they call the Holy Spirit. They want the Holy Spirit to come down before they're preaching, right? Not to try to intellectualize it but what I see is there are moments that happen within a sermon where the minister gets out of his ego and is speaking from a deeper source. And it's powerful.

There are also times when you can see the ego getting in the way. Where the minister is performing and clearly straining for applause or an Amen. And those are distinct moments. I think those former moments are sacred.
...
As I said before, in my own public policy, I'm very suspicious of religious certainty expressing itself in politics.

Now, that's different form a belief that values have to inform our public policy. I think it's perfectly consistent to say that I want my government to be operating for all faiths and all peoples, including atheists and agnostics, while also insisting that there are values tha tinform my politics that are appropriate to talk about.

A standard line in my stump speech during this campaign is that my politics are informed by a belief that we're all connected. That if there's a child on the South Side of Chicago that can't read, that makes a difference in my life even if it's not my own child. If there's a senior citizen in downstate Illinois that's struggling to pay for their medicine and having to chose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer even if it's not my grandparent. And if there's an Arab American family that's being rounded up by John Ashcroft without the benefit of due process, that threatens my civil liberties.

I can give religious expression to that. I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper, we are all children of God. Or I can express it in secular terms. But the basic premise remains the same. I think sometimes Democrats have made the mistake of shying away from a conversation about values for fear that they sacrifice the important value of tolerance. And I don't think those two things are mutually exclusive.
...
This is something that I'm sure I'd have serious debates with my fellow Christians about. I think that the difficult thing about any religion, including Christianity, is that at some level there is a call to evangelize and prostelytize. There's the belief, certainly in some quarters, that people haven't embraced Jesus Christ as their personal savior that they're going to hell.

FALSANI:
You don't believe that?

OBAMA:
I find it hard to believe that my God would consign four-fifths of the world to hell.

I can't imagine that my God would allow some little Hindu kid in India who never interacts with the Christian faith to somehow burn for all eternity.

That's just not part of my religious makeup.

It is truly wonderful that this man was elected president.

Read at BeliefNet.

Man guilty of making boys flog themselves with blades in Muslim rite

A Muslim man was found guilty of child cruelty today in a British legal first after forcing two boys to beat themselves during a centuries-old Shia religious ceremony.

The jury at Manchester crown court found Syed Mustafa Zaidi, 44, guilty of two counts of child cruelty.

The boys, aged 13 and 15, were forced to beat themselves with a zanjeer zani, a wooden implement with chains and blades attached, during a ceremony to commemorate the death and martyrdom of a seventh-century Shia Muslim leader.

Zaidi, of Station Road, Eccles, Salford, also flogged himself during the ceremony at a community centre in Levenshulme, Manchester, on January 19.

Some countries have banned self-flagellation with the zanjeer zani. It has been substituted by men beating their bare chests. In Indonesia and some other countries, young children are formally encouraged to use a smaller version of the implement.

A 14-year-old boy, who was 13 at the time, said Zaidi told them both: "Start doing it, start doing it".

The boy told the jury: "We said 'We don't want to do it'."

"He kept pressuring him, make him do the knife thing, pulling him, trying to get his T-shirt off, pulling and pushing him. He was saying 'just do it, just do it'."

The boys had multiple lacerations to their backs, mainly superficial, with several deeper cuts.

Zaidi is to be sentenced on September 24.

From the Guardian

I'd say if the adult wants to flog himself (pun intended), go ahead. But he can't expect another country to abide by such radical rites.

I call this self-flagellation BS part of religion, but forcing others to do it... much worse.

Arpie

Mark Twain on Religion

“In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.” —- Mark Twain

A religion that comes of thought, and study, and deliberate conviction, sticks best. The revitalized convert who is scared in the direction of heaven because he sees hell yawn suddenly behind him, not only regains confidence when his scare is over, but is ashamed of himself for being scared, and often becomes more hopelessly and malignantly wicked than he was before.—- Mark Twain

We blindly follow our beliefs because we fear the consequences as preached by religious leaders . We are brainwashed in a way that limits our ability to think, study and form a deliberate conviction based on our ideals. Some form of religion and religious beliefs are vital for our own personal growth and character building, but we should never allow dumbfounded reasoning or scare tactics to guide our religious beliefs or to form a stereotypical view of others who don’t conform to our own. A religion should show us the pathway to happiness by practicing moral values and compassion for all Mankind.

We all live in the protection of certain cowardices which we call our principles. —- Mark Twain

When our actions are not congruent with our own beliefs, we take refuge under the hood of our principles to justify our act of cowardice. If we avoid expressing our views of fairness and justice for any just cause that we feel deeply about, if we ignore our own inner voice to bring about the change that can transform our world for the better — we are doomed to forever fail to do what’s right . We use this word ‘principle’ at work and at home to avoid engaging ourselves in those actions that jeopardize our imaginary sense of security.

All of us have formed a stonewall of theories to justify our mental views of other people. When we don’t like something and when we struggle to rationalize our dislike, we wrap ourselves in the comfortable, secure blanket called ‘our principles‘. How can we grow ourselves if we are not truthful to our own inner-self? How can we make our world a better place to live if we wrap our views in a colorful yet fake stereotype formed on baseless reasoning? Try to abandon those fake theories that you have formed and embrace awareness by witnessing every thought that guides your every action. You’ll be amazed at the power of clarity that you will feel when you devote your life to bring about a profound change.

You cannot have a theory without principles. Principles is another name for prejudices. —— Mark Twain

All of us have formed a stonewall of theories to justify our mental views of other people. When we don’t like something and when we struggle to rationalize our dislike, we wrap ourselves in the comfortable, secure blanket called ‘our principles‘. How can we grow ourselves if we are not truthful to our own inner-self? How can we make our world a better place to live if we wrap our views in a colorful yet fake stereotype formed on baseless reasoning? Try to abandon those fake theories that you have formed and embrace awareness by witnessing every thought that guides your every action. You’ll be amazed at the power of clarity that you will feel when you devote your life to bring about a profound change.

Happy is he who forgets (ignores?) what cannot be changed. —- Mark Twain

The perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy is to proportion our wants to our possessions, our ambitions to our capacities, we will then be a happy and a virtuous people. —- Mark Twain

Happiness is a Swedish sunset–it is there for all, but most of us look the other way and lose it. —- Mark Twain

Gotta love good ole' Sam Clemens. Read more at SuccessSoul