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Posts tagged ‘Religion’

Jan 7

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India: A Land of Contradiction

I came to India to see how people here live – day to day. How important is commerce, religion, family? What I’ve found is that India is not that different from Europe or the United States. Their concerns are the same as ours. Religion here ranges from the superficial to the profound; commerce is the engine that drives the country; and family is very important. I wasn’t sure what to expect and perhaps expecting something different was a little silly in hindsight. I tend to focus on commonality rather than differences but here are some differences:

  • The people here are incredibly curious – curious about everything. I’m a minority here and get lots stares and smiles. When I am filming or taking pictures complete strangers walk up and want me to take their picture. It’s inexplicable to me.
  • There is no concept of waiting in line. There are so many people competing for attention that the solution is to just rush any service counter and push until you get to the front. It’s not considered rude – it’s just the way it is.
  • Traffic follows pretty much the same rules. If you can squeeze in between two lanes of traffic in the middle, go for it! Surprisingly, I’ve yet to see any serious accidents. There are dividing lines on the road but they are a complete waste of paint. There are also traffic lights but they are largely ignored unless a few police officers are directing traffic. The power grid goes down so often that you can easily understand why people ignore the traffic lights – most of the time they do not even work.
  • The poverty is everywhere. In fact, it is so ubiquitous that it’s easy to ignore. It appears the poorest people do not do most of the begging because they are busy doing whatever jobs they can find. The state hires street sweepers – not the big machines like in the US – to sweep the streets with straw brooms. They are everywhere sweeping away. In a dusty city like Delhi, it’s an endless job. I’ll have to write more about poverty later as I haven’t had a chance to really mentally process this side of India.
  • Construction is everywhere. You can see the tangible results of the massive influx of money into India. There is no doubt that India’s potential is yet to be tapped.
  • I’ve also discovered that there is no reason to learn Hindi if you want to do business in India. Everyone with a college education speaks English and there are enough signs in English that an American can easily find their way around. However, without knowing Hindi you really miss out on the heart of the culture. Most of the working class do not speak English and that’s the majority of the population – at least in Delhi. If you want to understand India, you’ll have to learn the language.

That’s all I’ve got for now. I will write more later…

Jul 7

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Codex Sinaiticus Goes Online

Codex Sinaiticus is one of the most important books in the world. Handwritten well over 1600 years ago, the manuscript contains the Christian Bible in Greek, including the oldest complete copy of the New Testament. Its heavily corrected text is of outstanding importance for the history of the Bible and the manuscript – the oldest substantial book to survive Antiquity – is of supreme importance for the history of the book.

From the press release: Codex Sinaiticus is one of the most important witnesses to the Greek text of the Septuagint (the Old Testament in the version that was adopted by early Greek-speaking Christians) and the Christian New Testament. No other early manuscript of the Christian Bible has been so extensively corrected. A glance at the transcription will show just how common these corrections are. They are especially frequent in the Septuagint portion. They range in date from those made by the original scribes in the fourth century to ones made in the twelfth century. They range from the alteration of a single letter to the insertion of whole sentences.

One important goal of the Codex Sinaiticus Project is to provide a better understanding of the text of the Codex and of the subsequent corrections to it. This will not only help us to understand this manuscript better, but will also give us insights into the way the texts of the Bible were copied, read and used. By the middle of the fourth century there was wide but not complete agreement on which books should be considered authoritative for Christian communities. Codex Sinaiticus, one of the two earliest collections of such books, is essential for an understanding of the content and the arrangement of the Bible, as well as the uses made of it.

The Greek Septuagint in the Codex includes books not found in the Hebrew Bible and regarded in the Protestant tradition as apocryphal, such as 2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, 1 & 4 Maccabees, Wisdom and Sirach. Appended to the New Testament are the Epistle of Barnabas and ‘The Shepherd’ of Hermas. The idiosyncratic sequence of books is also remarkable: within the New Testament the Letter to the Hebrews is placed after Paul’s Second Letter to the Thessalonians, and the Acts of the Apostles between the Pastoral and Catholic Epistles. The content and arrangement of the books in Codex Sinaiticus shed light on the history of the construction of the Christian Bible.

The ability to place these ‘canonical books’ in a single codex itself influenced the way Christians thought about their books, and this is directly dependent upon the technological advances seen in Codex Sinaiticus. The quality of its parchment and the advanced binding structure that would have been needed to support over 730 large-format leaves, which make Codex Sinaiticus such an outstanding example of book manufacture, also made possible the concept of a ‘Bible’. The careful planning, skillful writing and editorial control needed for such an ambitious project gives us an invaluable insight into early Christian book production.

Codex Sinaiticus Online

May 3

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Religious Misunderstandings

Religions are predicated on some profound or miraculous event that requires blind faith to believe in. From an objective point of view, these events are usually quite incredible and sometimes sound plain silly. Did you know that…

  • Christians believe that Jesus was born to a virgin mother and that the universe was created in 6 days
  • Mormons believe that God lives on a planet near the star Kolob and that the Garden of Eden is in Missouri
  • The Kaaba – that Muslims walk around – contains a black stone that they believe is a special divine meteorite that fell at the foot of Adam and Eve
  • Hindus believe that every 40 billion years all things dissolve and nothing exists for an equivalent time – then it all begins again
  • Hindus also once believed that the Earth rested on four elephants and those elephants stood on a giant tortoise floating on the universal ocean
  • Buddhists believe that all life is suffering and that the only way to escape suffering is to eliminate all desire and attachments by becoming a monk and meditate
  • Xenu, according to Scientology, is the dictator of the Galactic Confederacy who, 75 million years ago, brought billions of his people to Earth in a DC-8-like spacecraft
  • Wiccans believe in magic that can be manipulated through the form of witchcraft or sorcery

A religion is more than just a belief in the incredible though. I haven’t found a single case where there isn’t a strong sense of community. Most people are just looking for a place to belong and a way to give their life some meaning. Most of our lives have very little meaning so it’s no wonder we are attracted to the fantastic with promises of another life, after death, that will be much better than this one. Though each religion may be based on a myth that requires a stretch of the imagination, what you get in return is not so bad, is it?

Mormons believe that God was once like humans and that humans can become like God. How empowering is that? Christians believe that we all have the power to be saved and go to Heaven after we die. Muslims believe in a rich afterlife and are required to give a portion of their income to the poor. Scientology has rallied against the power of pharmaceutical companies and also setup some of the best drug rehabilitation centers in the world. Hindus have developed a religion and cosmology that is remarkably close to modern science and cosmology.

Of course, depending on where you were born and what language you speak, someone else’s religion always seems a little silly. But remember that your religion also seems a little silly to them, too. Instead of condemning one another for not believing as we do, it seems better to embrace these differences in the marketplace of ideas. In the end, they are all trying to accomplish the same thing – to give your life and your eventual death meaning in a universe that often feels completely meaningless.

Jul 22

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Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829)

It’s hard to believe that it has taken modern science 200 years to catch up to Lamarck. One of the common threads on Nautis Project has always been the incompleteness of a biological theory of evolution, morphology, and memory. It is these gaps in our knowledge that people like Lamarck, Darwin, Bergson, and Goethe tried to address in biology and Campbell and Jung drew attention in psychology and mythology. I’ve written about this before here:

There is a good article in New Scientist this month, Rewriting Darwin: The new non-genetic inheritance that outlines some of the research being done in this area. This field is also called epigenetics. For a complete definition and etymology, see Wikipedia. Most of the current research barely scratches the surface of what I believe will eventually be found. The real question is: what does this mean for memory? I believe it will take more than DNA methylation to explain how memory is transmitted. This can’t explain instinct can it?

One of the most laughable areas of science is in the realm of animal instincts. Here is a great quote from Wikipedia that sums up our knowledge perfectly:

Technically speaking, any event that initiates an instinctive behavior is termed a key stimulus (KS) or a releasing stimulus. Key stimuli in turn lead to innate releasing mechanisms (IRM), which in turn produce fixed action patterns (FAP). More than one key stimulus may be needed to trigger an FAP.

In other words, they have no idea. I remember asking my Biology 101 professor about birds and how they inherit nest building skills or migratory patterns. Of course, he looked at me like I was from another planet. I received the same response in the psychology department. The one place I didn’t a response like this is in the Mythology and Art departments – they take as axiomatic the inheritance of collective memory. Artists are, thankfully, not confined to explaining the world based on the latest scientific fashion. It’s true that epigenetic inheritance through methylation of histones is still a long way from morphic resonance – but it’s a start.

Mar 28

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Science and Spirit

Why is there such a split between science and religion? Was it always this way? As children, were we taught that this is the proper way of the world? Rupert Sheldrake and Matthew Fox discuss these issues in a fascinating talk in Part 2 of Accessing the Mystic.

Mar 11

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Hoodwinked and Bamboozled

I’ve always enjoyed talking politics with friends. I’ve even stayed in touch with History and Political Science professors from my undergraduate days. A few days ago, while talking with a former History professor, I realized that not everyone sees America the way I do. I told him that for the first time in my life I was really optimistic about a presidential candidate. I wasn’t just being forced to choose from two stooges that special interests had propped up. My optimism came from the little known U.S. senator, Barack Obama.

My professor, a man have great respect for, told me that Obama could never be president because he was black. I was stunned. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been. Maybe lots of people feel that way. But there are lots more that don’t. There are people who are donating to Obama’s campaign that can’t afford to donate. People are now voting in primaries that have never voted before. I think that people are beginning to realize that they have been hoodwinked and bamboozled by special interests and incompetence.
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Nov 8

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Where Is the Kingdom of God?

It’s fascinating to see how divisive the interpretation of a single line of the Bible can be. People ask, “How should a line be translated? What was the original intent?” as if there is some secret decoder key. The exact intent is important only when you begin to base your entire ideology on the literal interpretation of the Bible. Then, an exact translation is very important. Otherwise, you are not sure what to believe in. Read more

Sep 12

Some Sheldrake Stuff

It’s interesting that the deeper I dive into ancient Hinduism, the closer I come to the same view that Sheldrake expresses in his first book, A New Science of Life. Most people don’t know this, but Rupert has a copy of the original manuscript he submitted for publication. It was reject as far to mystical and far reaching in its scope. A revised, toned down version was eventual sent to press. That’s the version I want to read. He wrote the book while living in an ashram in Hyderabad, India where perspective on the universe is a little different that in downtown London. He’s promised to dig up this version for me someday when he finds it.
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