TED | Talks | Karen Armstrong: 2008 TED Prize wish: Charter for Compassion (video)
Technorati Tags: Karen Armstrong,The Golden Rule
Friday, March 21, 2008
Pope Benedict XVI and Captain Robert Fitzroy of The Beagle
My thanks go to Captain Fitzroy for helping me to understand the mentality of the religiously certain. That insight has also helped me to understand and even to appreciate why my publisher, Harper-Collins, has decided to promote the upcoming release of the paperback version of my book Jesus for the Non-Religious as an alternative to the Pope's book Jesus of Nazareth. "The Pope," says the promotional blurb on the new paperback's cover, "describes the ancient traditional Jesus. John Shelby Spong brings us a Jesus by whom modern people can be inspired." I hope they are correct.
Bishop Shelby Spong has no truth that he has to deny in his defense of his faith. Spong can meet the requirements of the modern world and bring a faith to the believer that does not demand incredible leaps of reason. The Pope's new book can not make that claim. He teaches the old beliefs and has nothing to say to those who know the facts of our world today.
Tags: Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger, Bishop Shelby Spong
Powered by Qumana
Bishop Spong Speaks on Heresy
Embracing new truth in the midst of a dying tradition that is either unable or unwilling to hear or to comprehend that new truth, is the only hope Christians have for a Christian future. I do not know of a single biblical scholar of world rank today who treats the Virgin Birth as either history or biology. Does that make those of us who agree with this almost universal scholarly consensus heretics? I do not know of a single biblical scholar of world rank today who thinks the story of the resurrection of Jesus is about the physical resuscitation of his three-day dead body. Does that make those of us who have read and been convinced by this consensus heretics? Such charges of heresy are little more than the frightened responses of the religiously insecure who can not seem to comprehend that the gospels did not drop from heaven fully written. They were composed some 40-70 years after the crucifixion of Jesus and in a language neither Jesus nor his disciples spoke. The heresy hunters do not understand that the creeds were hammered out in a Church convention in the fourth century and that neither Paul nor the disciples of Jesus would have recognized the concepts in which that debate was carried out. Christian truth is not contained in static propositional statements. It is ever changing and constantly evolving because it is always an attempt to place a timeless experience into the time limited vocabulary of the speaker's generation.
Bishop Spong puts the burden of preaching incorrect ideas on traditional teachers of the Bible in this essay. He does not let them off the hook while they are preaching non-sense.
Tags: Spong, Jesus for the Non-Religious
Powered by Qumana
Monday, March 17, 2008
Facing up to debt contagion - Opinion - USATODAY.com#more
Facing the possibility of a serious financial meltdown, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke jumped in over the weekend to help engineer J.P. Morgan Chase's fire sale purchase of Bear Stearns & Co., a Wall Street investment bank battered by its heavy involvement in mortgage-backed debt, while the troubled firm rushed to sell itself to a more stable suitor.
This action came on top of a broader assistance package unveiled Tuesday that included the Fed taking $200 billion in toxic mortgage-backed securities off the books of major firms in return for U.S. Treasuries — a terrible trade-off for taxpayers but apparently necessary to keep the financial system functioning.
Both moves are extraordinary and a measure of just how worried the Fed is that the nation's steadily worsening debt crisis will spin out of control.
When will this government ever run out of money or places to borrow from? It is unreal that we, the taxpayers, will end up paying for the losses of these banks and their chief execs will get richer yet. That is what seems to be happening though.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
The 'Blog' Turns 10 - Switched: Gadgets, Tech, Digital Stuff for the Rest of Us
Happy belated birthday, blogosphere! In case you didn't know, December 17 was the 10th anniversary of the term 'Weblog,' which was shortened to 'blog' at some point. The term started with a man, Jorn Barger, who used the phrase to describe his Web page where he posted links of interesting things he found around the Internet.
Back in 1997, blogging was hardly the phenomenon it is today. Some of the most conservative estimates put the number of true 'weblogs' at that time in the lower double digits. These days no one can really say how many blogs are out there. Technorati, a blog tracking service, estimates that 120,000 new blogs pop up every day. In April the site was tracking just over 72 million blogs.
The blog has morphed from its early days as a way of sharing cool finds (like Digg minus the voting), to the primary form of information dispersal on the Web. Blogging has become the format of choice in the fast-paced world of tech (like Switched.com) and politics, and has empowered a generation of new journalists. Now the New York Times has blogs, the Daily Kos is one of the most important forces in the Democratic party, and even CNN has the YouTube-esque iReport citizen journalism program. Like it or not, in less than 10 years time, blogs have completely altered the face of media.
The 'Blog' Turns 10 - Switched: Gadgets, Tech, Digital Stuff for the Rest of Us
Monday, March 10, 2008
Vatican lists "new sins," including pollution
VATICAN CITY, Mar. 10, 2008 (Reuters) — Thou shall not pollute the Earth. Thou shall beware genetic manipulation. Modern times bring with them modern sins. So the Vatican has told the faithful that they should be aware of "new" sins such as causing environmental blight.
The guidance came at the weekend when Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti, the Vatican's number two man in the sometimes murky area of sins and penance, spoke of modern evils.
Asked what he believed were today's "new sins," he told the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano that the greatest danger zone for the modern soul was the largely uncharted world of bioethics.
This is a perfect example of the authoritarian methods of the Church. While the Church Fathers may have very good points, why make this into a sin? A sin says who? Some group of old men with unknown training and believes who predictably parrot the views of the Church. Views that lead to the creation of sins that will no longer be sins when the full light of understanding is shown upon them. Of course the sins of the Church in its error will be rarely mentioned. Its far better to leave these things in the realm of normal human understanding than to enlist the punishment of God on your side of the argument.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)