Case for Christianity April 12, 2009

Today is Easter Sunday and I am typing this out and post it for the whole world to read. **May edit later for clarity and typos, keep your thoughts coming**

The title of this post is so hackneyed and at least one Christian apologist (who was ‘saved’ after his Atheism got a kick in the ass by Biblical truth) Lee Strobel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Strobel) has written a book with this title. I believe that an intellectually honest faith is a true and healthy faith. Generally there are two equally unpalatable camps regarding Christianity, one is of course of fundamentalist Christians who believe in the inerrancy of Bible and want schools to teach biblical Creationism and so on.

The other camp is full of bitter, mocking and fundamentalist atheists like Richard Dawkins. Unfortunately many literary figures have also tried their hand from time to time at Bible bashing for example Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer etc. It is easy to do so today than when writers like D.H. Lawrence did so and got banned everywhere. And in the case of what many consider father of the great American novel and great humorist Mark Twain, he considered it wise to keep his heretic and dissenting writings about Christianity in the closet. It was only recently that it was discovered how passionately Mark Twain rejected traditional Christian faith. (See this link for introduction of Twain’s views against organized religion:http://www.twainquotes.com/Religion.html )

Then there are lapsed Christians like former nun and now ‘secular’ writer Karen Armstrong(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Armstrong). Naturally she feels her years were robbed by Christianity and now by writing books that reveal the fallacies and contradictions in the Bible she is settling the scores in a way. And why shouldn’t she. She has every right to express her opinions and she is a very competent and engrossing researcher, scholar and writer. But then she also writes books on Islam, Koran and Mohammed and she gets into appeasement gear and takes sides and glosses over Muslim fundamentalism. This is hardly what can be remotely called intellectual honesty. This is deception, this is pandering. You punch holes in Christianity because Western world gives you the freedom to do so but you go soft on Islam because you fear backlash. That makes you- and others of your ilk- intellectually dishonest cowards.

Tolstoy’s Confession (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Confession) is a great resource about someone going through the crisis of faith and trying to find intellectually honest answers that agree with one’s conscience . It’s full text can be found for free on the internet from many sources including this one: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Confession. Another great Russian writer Dostoevsky dealt with issues of faith in his novels. I have not read Brothers Karamazov but love this quote ‘If there is no God, everything is permissible.’ It always rings true for me. I also love Kant’s quote ‘Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more seriously reflection concentrates upon them: the starry heaven above me and the moral law within me.’ Bible agrees with this kind of thought in a few places like in Luke 17:21 ‘‘Nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold the kingdom of God is within you.’’ (English Standard Version of Bible).

To cut the long story short in order to have an intellectually honest faith I find myself reading Bart D. Ehrman’s book ‘Misquoting Jesus: The story behind who changed the Bible and Why’. He is a Bible scholar who has extensively studied (and taught) Bible (especially New Testament) in original languages for years. This book’s content is not original but has been presented in a very easy to grasp format for a layman who wants to do some honest investigation into the Biblical text and history of the very early Christian church. One review of the book fired a passionate debate on Amazon.com and you can access it from this link: http://www.amazon.com/review/R3L9D4Y81NNVGY/ref=cm_cr_dp_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0060859512&nodeID=283155#wasThisHelpful

This only proves how Christian faith means different things to different people. I personally believe in being intellectually honest but at the same time agreeing with Immanuel Kant and Luke 21:17, the Ten Commandments, teachings of Christ to love all mankind and to love God. I also believe that the theology presented in the Book of Romans is a good introduction to Christian faith. I believe objective scholarly resources should be used only to have a healthy faith, for a progressive and open minded Christian.

Robert Frost’s poem October 20, 2007

Picture: Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Well, reading a friend’s blog I came up with this idea to post a poem by my favorite poet, Robert Frost. He is my favorite poet for his marvelous gift for conveying great irony, philosophy, humor or provocative ideas through deft weaving of rather simple words. He was an Atheist but still he had warm humor towards the ideas of God. Here is one example:

”Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee

And I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me.”
Another thing that I love about him was his depiction of rural New England and its wilderness in his poems: woods, frosts, snows, storms, birches, farms and what not… All beautiful stuff. I have several of his poems as my favorites but here is just one, ”The Road not taken”:

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Televangelist Wisdom June 11, 2007

Picture: Thus spake the Bogeyman, ”OOOOooo…! Baby Jesus is gonna get ya…..!

I just came across Pat Robertson quotes while Googling for something. Many people have already heard them sometime but I really wanted to have them documented on my blog.

Convenient and imbecile Blaming games–

1.)

“Well, I totally concur.” –Pat Robertson to Jerry Falwell following the Sept. 11 attacks, after Falwell said, “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way — all of them who have tried to secularize America — I point the finger in their face and say: “You helped this happen.” (From ABout.com)

2.)

(CNN) Friday, January 6, 2006 –

Television evangelist Pat Robertson suggested Thursday that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s stroke was divine retribution for the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, which Robertson opposed.

“He was dividing God’s land, and I would say, ‘Woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the [European Union], the United Nations or the United States of America,’” Robertson told viewers of his long-running television show, “The 700 Club.”

“God says, ‘This land belongs to me, and you’d better leave it alone,’” he said.

3.)

This one cracked me up… one of my all time favourite Televangelist quotes:

“(T)he feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.” –Pat Robertson (From about.com)

4.)

“I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover: If there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God, you just rejected him from your city. And don’t wonder why he hasn’t helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I’m not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that’s the case, don’t ask for his help because he might not be there.” –Pat Robertson, after the city of Dover, Pennsylvania voted to boot the current school board, which instituted an intelligent design policy that led to a federal trial

5.)

Playing the poor victim

“Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It’s no different. It is the same thing. It is happening all over again. It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians.Wholesale abuse and discrimination and the worst bigotry directed toward any group in America today. More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history.” –Pat Robertson

Jerry Falwell finally lands in his own ”Heaven” May 15, 2007

erry Falwell finally lands in his own ”Heaven”.

Picture: Jerry Falwell… Do you see that little box way up in the heavens? One day I wish to spend eternity up there and I want all of you to follow me.

Death will get ya in the end all ye poor and rich, black n white, sinners and saints. Yeah, one recurrent bunch of themes of my blogs is about religion, politics, ethics, freedom of thought and conscience. Anything significant that happens in these spheres gets my attention. Also, I am surprised to find how some folks have done great satirical comedy on religious dogmas. I recently watched Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. The genre is classic Python absurdist comedy. At times it is hilarious and outrageous (young kids, male and female, singing chorus about condoms, God and sperm) but it conveys its central message in a much better way than Richard Dawkins etc.

Now, I just got news that Jerry Falwell has finally gone to his heaven, at least theoretically. I am not going to do a little biography of him. Can’t be bothered or even interested. He was one fundamentalist Christian preacher and proponent with all the hellfire and judgment talk. Indeed many Christians must hold him in angelic bright light but the likes of him make me puke. I find this breed- sort of Western Christian Taleban- very distasteful, corrupt, sleazy, selfish, malicious and evil people who prey upon the weak and resort to demagoguery of the cheapest sort to advance their holy careers.

What is most unpleasant about them is that they use their own personal agenda and promote their own careers by using ‘God’. Prominent part of this unpleasantness is their own reeking hypocrisy. Take Ted Haggard’s example. He was the head of the 30-million strong National Association of Evangelicals and strongly held on to fundamentalist Christianity, inerrancy of Bible and condemnation of homosexuality. But alas, in his own life he enjoyed gay sex, drugs and used to employ the services of male prostitutes. Hmmmm.. I cannot say, because of his personal choices, he was an evil man (he certainly did have some ideals and was a good leader in other ways) but his hypocrisy makes him a baddie. But how did Christians treat him? Did they show any FORGIVENESS ? Nope, they kicked him out of all leadership positions. He is too dirty for them now (though he is genuinely repentant) and cannot be made clean with either the water or the blood.. Haaaa.. Too Sad.

Another local example (Christchurch, New Zealand) was of one Graham Capill, the former leader of the New Zealand Christian Heritage party. He was a strong moral crusader and spat fire when talking about sexual morals and homosexuality (sure, the classic fag bashing is always the easiest thing to score plenty of moral points.) But alas, Capill had libido problems. But it was not that bad… he may still go to heaven because he did not take part in sodomy like that Ted American bastard mentioned in the above paragraph. He only made love to several young women, between the ages of 8 to 12. Interestingly, he maintained that at least one girl had sex with him with her own consent…. Hmmmmmm…

Anyhow, Coming back to Jerry Falwell.

Here are his holy remarks as published in Wikipedia:

Falwell was a controversial subject for his theological, political and social beliefs. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Falwell said on the 700 Club, “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say ‘you helped this happen.’” (a sentiment with which Pat Robertson concurred). ^[28] After heavy criticism, Falwell apologized. ^[29]. As for homosexuality, Falwell remarked, “AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals.” Falwell’s ghostwriter, Mel White, said Falwell remarked about gay protesters, “Thank God for these gay demonstrators. If I didn’t have them, I’d have to invent them. They give me all the publicity I need.”^[30]

During the Civil Rights Movement Falwell was a supporter of racial segregation. He said this about Martin Luther King: “I do question the sincerity of people like the Reverend Martin Luther King…”^{[citation needed]}

Falwell has also said, “Labor unions should study and read the Bible instead of asking for more money. When people get right with God, they are better workers.”^[31] Regarding public schools, “I hope to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we don’t have public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them.” (America Can Be Saved!, Sword of the Lord Publishers, Murfreesboro, Tenn. 1979, p. 52-53.)^[32]

I am so thankful to God that Jerry Falwell was airlifted by the angels to be carried to his own heaven. Good riddance.

Obituary of a ‘crazy’ girl (I knew before she was born) and thinking about Jesus April 29, 2007

Weird blog title huh? But I just got the news in an email that ”Blue Saphire” passed away. The ‘crazy’ girl of 16 was playing/cooking at the stove and it burst, giving her serious burn injuries. She was hospitalized and died in the hospital on the third day. Strangely, she kept talking crazy and funny/wise things on her death bed to the relatives, family friends and other visitors.

 

Flashback (About 17 years back in Asia) I was around 10! I have a stunningly accurate memory for most days of my childhood. I remember a lot from the age of 3 or 4! So, I remember. I was 10 and with my mother, in the kitchen of some distant family friends. A very poor family, in the countryside. A woman in that family was pregnant for the 3rd time and had two daughters already. All these women were talking about her pregnancy and I was lost in my own daydreams. I always have had the talent for making unwelcome, out of the blue remarks. I wonder what struck me that day but cutting everyone’s conversation I yelped, ”Mom!!! This time when the baby girl comes out we’re gonna name her ”Blue Saphire!”

 

Before I could see a stinging slap burned my cheek. ”What the fuck!” I thought and almost whispered it (yep I was a precocious swearer). The pregnant woman was laughing and said, ”O please leave him alone, he didn’t mean it.”. My mother had slapped me out of extreme embarrassment I caused her. In that culture and countryside region, during that time, a girl child was considered a curse and a burden: a misfortune for the family. People only wanted a son , not daughter…not the third one, in any case! So, I had actually said something like a bad curse. (What the fuck???, I wonder even now)

 

But…well, God vindicated me as a baby girl was born within next few months. As a further vindication, she was named ”Blue Saphire”. I was always proud of the fact that even at the age of 10 I was able to suggest a pretty name that was happily accepted by a family as the name of their kid. But this girl was different. She was born with mental abnormalities which made her ”crazy”. She was always doing goofus things and giggling and cackling. She was a great entertainment for us kids. She always did loony things: played in the mud when her mom had just changed her into newly washed clothes, wore her clothes inside out or backside forward, she always broke the pencils when she wanted to sharpen them and then throw them away and cackle. A crazy girl with dirt on her clothes and smile on her face. She loved it so much when people called her crazy. She laughed.

 

I never had any personal relation with her but only noticed her as I used to play with other kids. One day her family visited our house in the city. And there she was: the crazy girl with a couple of other kids. I was 17 and she was about 7 or 8. I was really into watching WWF (Wrestling) and I loved slamming (on the bed) all the little kids I could get my hands on. I grabbed Blue Saphire and slammed her. She pleaded, ”Brother don’t slam me, it hurts.” I grabbed her again and slammed her on the bed imitating a baddie. She said, ”Please please don’t hurt me.” I grabbed her on her shoulders and mockingly stared at her. Her nose was running and she had all this gooey snot oozing out. Suddenly, she had some kind of power over me. I felt this great affection for her. I gently patted her cheeks and got a handkerchief and carefully wiped her nose and face. She smiled at me. I have never done this for a kid all my life to this day!

 

Blue Saphire was also capable of extreme affection for her other sisters and one younger brother and heaps of cousins. She cared deeply. I think she understood love better than many of ’sane’ folks. She had a goofy mind but talked like a 50 or 60 year old because she was always memorizing the conversations of these old women she used to play around. In the email my mother wrote, ”She was talking crazy but sweet even on her death bed. She said to your brother who spent considerable time in her hospital room, ‘God will give you a long life dear brother because you have taken such good care of me.”’And then she died on the third day.

 

Call me crazy too, but just 4 or 5 days back I was thinking of her! Not for any particular reason. I never had any contact with her (or any interest in her really) for years and years. Last time I saw her was when I was a kid myself playing with other kids. That’s all. But still she popped into my mind and I remembered her sweet smiling face and thought, ”Mmmmm…. Blue Saphire..So, weird I named her, ehhh… She was crazy but so HAPPY unlike me.”

 

But she ended up doing yet another powerful thing for me today. For some reason, I was (and am) thinking of God (having grown quite ‘Agnostic’ lately) and Jesus, who I am sure (if he was walking through that countryside) would lift Blue Saphire up in his arms and play with her. They would both laugh like crazy.

God only knows what transpires in the heavens. March 31, 2007

Picture: A rare spectacle of a meteor shower

 

 

It so happened that an airplane was calmly flying from Santiago, Chile to Sydney, Australia. But on its way it got a heavenly surprise just as it entered New Zealand airspace. BBC headline describes it more aptly, ‘‘Flaming debris nearly misses jet”. This flaming space debris just exploded, ignited and burned before the place, missing it by about 40 seconds. Had it been on the spot, Al Qaeda could always be blamed for that to bolster political careers and justify security measures. Ok, that was a joke. Or was it…? But let me quote the official description that had me laughing for some reason, ‘Lan airline said the captain ”made visual contact with the incandescent fragments several kilometers away.” Ummm… that almost has some alien erotic undertones to it. Ok, that was a joke too, stop wandering into the fantasy land and keep reading.

 

 

 

 

Definition of a meteor from Word Web Dictionary:

A streak of light in the sky at night that results when a meteoroid hits the earth’s atmosphere and air friction causes the meteoroid to melt or vaporize or explode.

 

Even the definition sounds so poetic and exotic. BBC article mentions that ‘the experts say about 100 tons of extraterrestrial dust grains fall to earth each day.’ Phew. My very first encounter with a shooting star was chilling and thrilling.

 

Flashback: A hot summer day in early 1990s. I am about 14. Nighttime. I am lying in a cot on the rooftop of our house, appreciating the stars and listening to the garble of faint shortwave radio signals. Then this happens. A new bright star appears in the sky, it seems rather very close unlike other stars. In less than a second it flames so bright that it almost dazzles my eyes like a camera flash, if you’re really looking at it. It develops a flaming tail. Now I think it is very much heading for me. So close and speeding towards me. I gasp. It is all happening so fast I have no time to decipher it. Just before I think it is going to hit earth and pulverize everything to make a mushroom cloud I see it break into 2 or 3 fragments that flame up in smoky tails and disappear…

 

 

I had NO IDEA that it was a shooting star. It just looked like some missile or alien thing headed towards earth to destroy everything. It did not look pretty, it looked cold and violent. I have seen many shooting stars after that but that had to be one of the biggest and brightest ones.

 

 

The Night it snowed Embers…..

 

This is a picture of an eerie meteor shower that occurred in 2003 above central Indian skies, in a rural region. It was rather threatening and did some damage to the houses.

 

 

Definition of meteor shower: A transient shower of meteors when a meteor swarm enters the earth’s atmosphere: So unlike a shooting star, meteor shower has a bunch of big, medium and many tiny shooting stars that can light up the night sky. It is rare.

 

Few years after my first shooting star experience the whole world marveled at that famous meteor shower. It was either 1999 or 2001 leonids , also called the King of Meteor showers.The night it was to appear -not in full glory, in my part of the world, but only the faint version of the real thing- I decided to spend the whole night on the rooftop with a thermos of black coffee and scan the sky. I waited and waited. Nothing happened. My two little dogs kept on visiting and checking up on me from time to time, as if asking me to come down because they were getting bored. I kept petting their little heads with affection; they licked my hands, brushed against my legs and went down to come back again.

 

 

At around 1:40am, I did see some very distant, faint light yellow streaks. As if meteor shower was happening on some other planet and I was able to see it from earth. But still it was not in vain, though my dogs would disagree.