Greg Laden's Blog

I'm not a fan of Armstrong's scholarship -- in fact I have come to be very skeptical of it because she has an agenda that flows through all of her books. That agenda is to emphasize the liberal-humanist aspects of the particular faith in question, arguing that that is the "true" characteristic of that religion, and the nastier bits are a corruption. If she had a blog, it would be called "Framing Religion". If, as she says, "religion has been hijacked", I would ask her, when has it not been so? Lately, her goal has been to buffer religion from the onslaught of the uppity atheists, and from Dawkins in particular. I'm afraid she is just another apologist.

Posted by: Richard | April 2, 2008 5:34 PM

If the analog of religion as a tree, and politics as the wind, the natural phenomenon as the foundation of civilization; when the wind blows hard, the big tree waves tremendously. Chinese proverb says that is a common phenomenon. The big tree maybe would have died and has been born again like Hinduism to Buddhism, Judaism to Christianity; nevertheless many small trees had stayed or perished without much notice.

Religion as a tree has seed and soil to grow up. In the future, religions are diversifying and evolving based on soil types. Wind as challenge is to make religion growing stronger; the transplanted trees look tall but very vulnerable- such as the evangelical Christianity in developing countries in Asia.

Atheism dislike trees, therefore they plant grasses. It is OK. Some vicious atheists deny the need to have plants on this earth; they cut everything, but never plant something, eventually the place convert into desert- an obsolete civilization.

Anticipate the coming of recovery of religions with diversity, no kidding!

Posted by: paiwan | April 3, 2008 1:16 AM

The development of civilization is directing at that all religions will be judged under the same measures. The past religious programs and performances would be public treasure of human beings. This treasure includes the mistake and the path; all would be the symbol and a path for us to create.

For instance, "Thy Kingdom come!" is the symbol that nothing is perfect now, nevertheless we put the hope that all the human beings can cry directly to the founding Spirit who is ahead of us to inspire us to go forwards to receive the perfect realization together.

So, my point is instead of going atheism, we need to have the courage to experiment and syntherize; sort of the encouragement to respect the religious experiences here and now.

The respect includes doing unto others and kind and humble, of course.

Posted by: paiwan | April 3, 2008 6:18 AM

FO: Thanks for the comment.
First, I would like to state that I didn't use evil this term. We assume that people both from religious and atheist stances have decent and vicious performances.

In fact, I stated that the same measures would judge all religions, perhaps applied to atheists as well.

My stance perhaps had many years as an agnostic, and now I believe that all religions should serve the humanity and are entitled to have the common ground. For instance, the monks in Burma have demonstrated a living faith last December by showing their courage of suffering for Burmese people in spite of the threat of being killed.

If I could use the analog of family planning (birth control) to describe the situation of religious impact and development; birth control is effective in developed communities, not so well in less educated communities. Atheism movement now prevails in democratic communities but not in coercively religious communities. Even Catholic has surveyed and reported that the population of Catholic is behind Muslim's.

I thought that everyone has different journey in developing individual spiritual growth, I admitted that decent atheism is one of the paths.

The case of Burmese monks has inspired many people which include me to look at the positive side of spontaneous religious contribution, especially in the places where people have encountered despair. They deserve the encouragements from global communities; the latest example perhaps could extend to Tibet.

I look forwards to the reconciliation development and ever more convergent coherency between science and religion groups, especially the debate of creation and evolution in the United States. Hopefully the outcome would bring the best benefits for the majority. I guess that this was K.Armstrong's intention also.

Posted by: paiwan | April 3, 2008 9:02 AM