I have posted a religious dialogue tool, which lists three ways to “Declare Thyself !”

• Philosopher, declare thyself !
• Atheist, declare thyself !
• Christian, declare thyself !

I hope to put up some more in the future.  These posts are tables which help declare what sort of atheist, christian or philosopher you are.  Following are my declarations to illustrate how I use these tables.  I hope by making clear my positions I can facilitate dialogue with my visitors.  See it it helps you.  Take a chance, label yourself, put the tables on a post on your blog — remember, you can always change your mind!

Your Atheism Positions

For an explanation on how to use this table, see the section in my Religious Dialogue Tools.   For an example of how I used it, see my declaration post .  Remember, the words in the right-hand column are only suggestions (heck, so is the left-hand column for that matter).  Modify the chart to best express yourself.  Both Atheists and Agnostics can use this table to describe themselves, if they desire.  It would be cool if you copy and pasted this table into one of your posts, fill out your preferences and then give us a link in the comments below !  Thanks.

Definition: Atheism: Not believing in any theistic god(s).  Assertion: “I believe in no theistic gods.”

Level of Certainty:	Weak (Agnostic) / Moderate / Strong (Gnostic)
Openness:	Totally Open / Open, but cautious / Closeted
Degree of Outreach:	Passive, Affirm only, Debater, Active, Evangelical, Militant
Present Religious Participation:	Abstaining (rare) / Occasional / Often
Stance toward Categorically Rejecting Religion:	Categorically Against / Indifferent / Friendly / Sympathetic
Degree of Enchantment	Disenchanted/ Disappointed / Neutral / Enchanted
Mystical Perceptions:	Non-Mystical / Partially Mystical / Highly Mystical
Theory of Religion:	How did religion evolve, what useful functions (if any) does it serve?
Non-theistic Leanings	Do you believe in any matrix of the universe, any higher (albeit non-interventional power), and principle behind reality?
Secular Superstitious or Irrational Habits	Do you buy the lottery, have a lucky charm, avoid unlucky things, have favorite irrational habits?
View of Reason	How highly do you value reason? How rational do you feel humans are or can be?
Faith Items	What things you believe in for which you don’t have evidence
Past Belief History	Former Believer / Life Long Non-believer (Natural)
Past Orthopraxy History	Former Practitioner (poor, casual, diligent) / Life Long Non-practitioner
Past Sect History	List sects/denominations/religion you belonged to

CATEGORIES & DEFINITIONS

Below I offer some terms for the categories.  But feel free to use your own terms or thoughts.  This is a tool to express yourself, not to argue terms.  Thank you.  Hope these help.  Suggestions welcome !

• Level of Certainty:
  • Gnostic = affirms no gods, and he also claims to know there are no gods.
  • Moderate = affirms no gods, and holds its it fairly strongly
  • Agnostic = affirms no gods, but doesn’t claim to know there are no gods.
• Intellectual Involvement:
  • Casual Atheist =  affirms no god but hasn’t thought much about it.
  • Weak Atheist = affirms no god
  • Strong Atheist= not only lacks a belief in gods, but also affirms that no gods exist (AKA, positive, explicit atheist).  Feels strongly justified in his disbelief.
• Stance toward Categorically rejecting Religion?:
  • Categorically Against: feel religion is destructive. Believes religion inevitably has bad consequences and needs to be condemned categorically
  • Indifferent:
  • Friendly:  Another way of saying Sympathetic but a little less likely to point to commonalities.
  • Sympathetic: believes that practiced correctly it is possible for a religion to do more good than harm.  Though still critical, they see that good mental habits can be captured by both religious and secular belief webs.
• Openness
  • Open
  • Cautiously Open
  • Closeted
• Degree of Outreach:
  • Passive: Doesn’t try to influence the world in favor of atheism.
  • Affirm only:  When asked, often confirms self as atheist but does not do much more than that.
  • Debater:  Loves a good debate and will gladly debate if someone desires.  But is not pushy or confrontive.
  • Active: labors on behalf of causes that specifically benefit atheists (but not necessarily just atheists). For example, he strives against discrimination toward atheists, or he strives in favor of separation of church and state.
  • Evangelical : seeks to persuade others to give up theistic belief.
  • Militant: uses violence to promote atheism or destroy religion. (Often, the term “militant atheist” is misapplied to non-violent evangelical atheists like Richard Dawkins. But to preserve the parallel with the “militant Christian” who bombs abortion clinics or the “militant Muslim” suicide bomber, I prefer the definition of “militant atheist” that assumes acts of violence.)
• Present Religious Participation:
  • Abstaining/Rare
  • Occasional
  • Often
• Degree of Enchantment
  • Disenchanted – Finds a naturalistic understanding of the universe a bit disappointing, hollow, or depressing.
  • Cynical — Some may prefer this term for their naturalist view of the world.
  • Neutral
  • Content
    
  • Enchanted — elated at the amazingness of life.  See Luke’s essay.
• Mystical Perceptions
  • How inclined are you to have “unity” type of experiences or “ecstatic” experiences or similar unusual pleasant hard to describe changes of your normal consciousness.
• Belief History
  • Tell us how strong your beliefs were when you belonged to your former faith.  Some folks participated in religion but never with a full heart.
• Orthopraxy History
  • Tell us how diligently you practiced your former faith (here, belief is not the emphasis).  Some folks belonged but never practiced.
• Sect History
  • Tell us how you were raise and religious groups with which you have identified.  Keep it short.
• Theory of Religion
  • I will expand this in later posts.  There are various opinions on how religion evolved, what purposes it serves, etc…
• Non-Theistic Leanings
  • Some folks, while not believing in an intervening god(s), feel the some connecting universe principle.  Perhaps would label themselves panentheists, deists or the like where that greater “power” is impersonal and not intervening like a theist god would be.
• Secular Superstitions or Irrational Habits
  • Are you aware of your irrational mind, how do you view it?  Can you recognize any silly habits for an atheist to have? Smile.
• View of Reason
  • Many atheists put reason on a very high pedestal.  Some view reasons as totally corrupt.
    See my posts on “Emotive Rationalists” and “Hyper Rationalists“
• Faith Items
  • Many scientists realize that they hold several items with a large degree of faith.  See this post on Believing what you can’t prove.  Some atheist view “faith” as irrational and evidence-deprived and feel they don’t have any of this.

__________
Resources:

• HT to Luke’s 17 Kinds of Atheism which I used as the basis for this chart.

OK, I admit, this post’s title was a cheap, journalistic trick, but in a way, it is true:  People may soon notice that my icon has changed and leaping-Sabio is gone! Sniffle …

When I began this blog one year ago, I decided that due to the nature of the material and the community I lived in, I would use a fictitious name and symbol to keep my pedestrian identity secret.  So while trying to create a icon, I ran upon a leaping paleolithic hunter on some nutrition sites and decided to photoshop the fellow over a setting sun and call it my own.  Thus, the Sabio you know and love was born.    But alas, little did I know that this silhouetted  primal maniac was someone’s official corporate logo.  And this week I got the following letter in my e-mail box.

Hello, Sabio,
My name is Aaron Fox. I am the editor of MarksDailyApple.com and the GM of Primal Nutrition, Inc. It was brought to my attention that you are using our brand logo on your site as your own. Our image of “Grok” is the logo for the Primal Blueprint brand. As such we ask that you remove the graphic from your site (as seen here) in the manner in which it is used. Thank you for your cooperation.
–
Aaron Fox, Editor
www.MarksDailyApple.com
Serving up health and fitness insights (daily, of course) with a side of irreverence.

So, to protect my legal butt and because it is the right thing to do (in that order), I have changed my icon.   BTW, Marks’ Daily Apple is a fantastic website for carnivores and/or people interested in nutrition, exercise and health!

In deciding on my new icon, I used a well-researched principle of mythology:  To make a myth easy to remember and thus effective one should tell a fairly normal story and only change one or two facts to be extra-normal or miraculous.  Thus, I am leaving the sun the same and only changing the leaping-lad into an ouroboros — boy, I hope he is not someone’s property.   I use the self-consuming Ouroborus as a symbol for the undoing of self, a theme in my blog.  The Ouroborus is appropriately also used in myths, like the Phoenix, as a symbol for re-birth or eternal return.   The rising sun is a symbol for optimism, strength, inspiration and support.

Though my former version of Sabio has “passed on”, I am not saddened.  One of my favorite posts, called Mini-Deaths, describes why.  Oddly enough, that post was read by few because I posted it back-to-back with another post.  Hint:  If you really have a post you want your readers to see, don’t post back to back or only the most devoted and diligent readers will find it — and don’t be deluded that you have any of those readers. 

So, I thought some of you may enjoy the story and I thought it wise to head off questions and so this post.  It will take time for my new symbol to propagate over the web.  Some of the places I have had to change it are:

• bloggers.com (which I established to comment on blogspot blogs.
• gravatar (for your universally recognized avatar)
• WordPress.com Favicon ( btw, if you have a wordpress, account, try jazzing it up with a flavicon!)
• Intense Debate (another commenting tool used by some sites)
• Atheist Nexus (a great site)

Who’d have guessed it would take so much work to change an image.  If you find my icon elsewhere on locations I have forgotten, please let me know so I can wipe leaping-Sabio off this etheric plane !  And BTW, I am updating my blog’s organizing, so if you subscribe by e-mail, you may be getting hit with several posts over the next few days — sorry.

Dalai Lama teaches Kalachakra

The Dalai Lama had come to Madison, Wisconsin to teach and initiate into the Kalachakra meditation practice.  His seminar lasted five days.  The first four days were held in a mundane large auditorium on U of W’s campus where the 500 of us students could easily fit.  But on day five, the culminating ceremony was held out in some natural, beautiful, wooded property outside of Madison.  There we all sat cross-legged under huge canopy tents set up to shade us from the sun for the day-long teaching.

Two hours into the ceremony, huge expansive dark clouds started to form and the wind picked up.  The tents began for flap.  His Holiness’s voice became harder to hear over the roar of the brewing storm.  So the Dalai Lama stopped the ceremony, paused and then began to explain about his personal weather man.

Most decisions in our lives are very complex.   They involve many influences tugging at our minds.  We are conscious of some of these tugging influences, but I contend that we are not conscious of most of the influences.  But once our minds have made a choice, we slowly form stories to explain to both ourselves and others the “hows?” or “whys?” of our decision.  The resulting story excludes this complexity.

These stories usually are very simplified.  For not only do we ourselves not understand many of the processes that subconsciously informed our decisions, but even our simplified understanding gets whittled down further over time as we watch others respond to our stories.

Let me give a fictional example.  Imagine “Fred” breaks up with his girlfriend “Mary”.  Fred’s friends will ask him “Why did you break up with Mary?”  Now, if the people asking are close friends of Mary, he may say, “Well, she just did not like me as much as I think couples who are in-love should like each other.  So I decided to be honest and just break up.”  Mary’s friends, knowing that Mary had doubts about Fred, know he is right but they don’t want to hurt Fred’s feelings any further so they just comfort him saying, “Well, I hope it all works out for you.”

But Fred tells a different version to another group of his own friends who barely know Mary, “Well, Mary always complained and was never happy.”   Lots of these friends like this story because it makes Fred look good and they personally feel that they have had girlfriends that complained too much.  So they give him lots of strong head nods as they pat him on the back and laughingly say, “Well, there are lots of fish in the sea, you’ll find a good one!”

Now, there may be elements of truth to both stories, but even these two stories themselves surely don’t carry half of the real complexity of this couple’s separation.  And over time,  Fred may just stick with the story where he gets the most head nods and pats on the back.  Fred will only use the story that works best.  And he will use it over and over for years and slowly Fred himself will start forgetting the details of his relationship with Mary and he will simply rewrite his real history with Mary with this approved simple version of Mary.

Did you re-write your religious history?

New couples usually do this with each other – deriding their previous partners with simple stories to make both their new partner and themselves feel good.  “He/she was just a complete idiot”, they say.  And with the right amount of head nods, the story sticks.  The human mind does this constantly.  This is just one of the many ways our rationality is bounded.

Question for readers:  Can you recognize how you have re-written your story of a former relationship?  Or, more in keeping with the theme of this blog:  Can you recognize how you have simplified your story of conversion in or out of a religion?

Please supply your own caption in the comments !

Jesse Galef did an excellent article showing the problem with “Metaphorical Truth“.  He analyzes the issue beautifully.  Below is my take on it.  But be sure to read his short article.
_________________

Did George Washington cut down a cherry tree and then confess his misdeed, or didn’t he?  If he did, we have more evidence that George was an honest man.  Indeed that is the exact intent of the author –Parson Weems.  But if George did not cut down that cherry tree, we are still lacking evidence.  George may have been an honest man, but we should not look to this myth as evidence.

Is the Bible true?  Fortunately, many liberal/progressive Christians are now willing to concede that much of the Bible is not literally true.  But many are loathe to totally give up on the word true even of the verses they consider non-literal.  “True” after all is a powerful word.  Every religion wants to consider its positions “true”, they all want their god to be “true”.  “True” is not a word one wants to give up on easily.  Few will easily forsake the word “true“.  Sure, they may concede a certain story may not be “literally” true, but they still want that story to be “metaphorically” true.

Their tool to preserve “truth” in a myth is  a hermeneutic style called “Narrative Theology“.   Using the Narrative approach they feel they can both keep valuing these passages and still consider them true in some sense.  But should they be allowed to keep both these?  I can understand the valuing a message in any myth (as I illustrated “valuing” in the Hindu story on Ganesh) but that is far different from considering the myth to “true”.

Theologian N.T. Wright recently did quick 10-minute video, Meaning and Myth,  telling us how we need to embrace myths as “true” while we still recognize them as non-literal myths.  In this video, he is willing to call Gen 1 & 2 “myths” but still wants them to be right about God’s working in nature and right about “a primordial couple getting something wrong”.  But you see, he offers no evidence for that.  He is trying to count these stories as evidence while he simultaneously calls them a “myth”.  He wants to sound cool, modern, intellectual and yet sneak back in the same of ideas.

This Metaphorical Truth Slight-of-Hand can be found inside all of the following packages:

• Post-liberal theology
• Radical Orthodoxy
• Post-modernism
• Emergent Church movement

This flavor of progressive Christianity uses this intellectual slight-of-hand so they can feel that have escaped falling into the abyss of rationistic, individualist theological liberalism.  But such a move is dishonest.   Now, I must say that outside of the “Metaphorical Truth Slight-of-Hand”, there is much about this “Narrative” approach that I do see as valuable including:

• Viewing the story as complete in itself (non-reductionist)
• Seeking deep messages and themes without focusing on literal truth
• Trying to feel the intent of the author
• Allowing a story to speak to you on a personal level

But we can do all this without clamoring to preserve the word “true” with the phrase “metaphorically true”.  And we can realize that a myth is a myth and not confuse them with actual events.  Sure, the story can affect you deeply and mean a lot to you, but that does not make it “true”– literally or metaphorically.

Did you ever wonder who you should consider your friends?  Well, so did the gospel writers and they may have disagreed with each other.  It seems that Matthew was a bit more inclusive than Mark.  And, well, Luke appears quite conflicted.  

Exclusive Verses:

• Matthew 12:30 & Luke 11:23 –> Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.

Inclusive Verses:

• Mark 9:40 –> Whoever is not against us is for us.
• Luke 9: 50 –> But Jesus said to him, ‘Do not stop him; for whoever is not against you is for you.’

I thought a picture would help illustrate this classic biblical contradiction.  But in all fairness, do you think we could reconcile these purported sayings of Jesus by imagining him saying:  ”Look, if an unbeliever is doing good, they do my work.  But those who do evil are against us.”

What do you think?

Ganesh and the Repairman

A while back, when living in Washington D.C.,  a telephone repairman came to my house to install some new phone outlets.  I heard the doorbell ring,  went to the door and saw the repairman standing with tools in hand ready to help me get a new computer line.  When I opened the door he put on a huge smile and with no hesitation enthusiastically greeted me saying, “Praise Jesus, good day sir!  It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?”   I courteously bit my tongue and replied flatly , “Hello. Yes, it is a fine day.  Come in. “   I then led him to my study where I needed a new phone jack.

As we approached my study, I felt his curiosity when he noticed the strange-faced cloth hanging in front of my study’s entry.  But he politely didn’t ask.   So I pushed the cloth to the side and he awkwardly bowed his head to pass under the cloth and walked in my study.You see,  I used to live in Japan where cloth was often put decoratively in front of entryways — they are called “Noren”.   You can find them classically in old-fashioned inns (Ryokans), temples, traditional homes and in entries to public baths.  I had grown fond of them while there and kept one to remind me of  things I loved about Japan.   Here are some examples of other noren below to give you a taste.

Anyway, I digress.  I just wanted to say that I knew such a simple thing would still be a little unusual to many Americans.  But now my born-again Christian repairman was in for more of a surprise.  As came upon my desk he saw a poster of Ganesh, the elephant-headed Hindu god.  I could see the repairman pause as his eyes lit upon it.  Now I was sure he was biting his tongue.   He then spent 20 quiet minutes quietly and professionally installing my phone jack.  He didn’t praise Jesus once. He didn’t speak of God’s glorious creation.  He knew he was not on terribly familiar turf.  But when he finished, I could see him finally build the courage to asked me, “Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

“No,” I said, “what is it?”  And pointing at the Ganesh poster he said, “Do you believe in this stuff?”

I smiled and replied, “Do you mean, ‘Do I believe an elephant-headed boy-god lives up in the sky and will grant me my wishes if I pray to him with total belief’?”

“Well, yes” he replied just a little more nervously not realizing the implication.

“Are you serious?” I smilingly reassured him, “Of course not!  I just enjoy the image.”

With this, the repairman noticeably relaxed and replied with mild reassurance, “Oh, I was just curious.”

I decided not to discuss it further with the gentleman — I could tell he was already well outside his range of comfort.  But let me tell you another story where I did not hold back discussing the obvious.

The Sikh with a Heart Attack

I was working an evening shift at an Emergency Department in rural Washington state. A man had walked into our ER waiting room clasping his chest complaining of severe indigestion.  But he was pale and sweating and the wise nursing staff quickly knew to ignore his self-diagnose and to triage him as a potential heart attack victim.   They moved him to one of the glass-walled cardiac rooms in the middle of the Emergency Department.   The staff all hustled to remove his clothing off so they could place EKG leads and get some IV lines started.

This sort of hustling activity was, of course, normal activity in an Emergency Department. The only difference tonight was that the patient was a Sikh — and in this rural part of Washington, there were not many Sikhs.But before I continue the story, allow me offer a little background info on Sikhs. Sikhism is the fifth largest religion in the world and third largest in India, after Hinduism and Islam. It was founded in the 1400s by Guru Nanak Dev in the Punjab of India. Sikhism advocates the pursuit of union with God through meditation on the name and message of God and through truthful living.

Baptized male Sikhs are obliged to always wear “the Five Ks” or “articles of faith”:

1. Kesh: uncut hair and beard: to sustain higher consciousness
2. Kangha: a small wooden hair comb:  symbol of cleanliness
3. Kara: a steel bracelet: signifying bondage to truth and freedom from every other entanglement.
4. Kirpan: a small dagger: which the believer is committed to use righteously defending the fine line of the Truth.  (recently causing trouble recently at airports)
5. Kaccha: special cotton undergarment: a reminder of commitment to purity.

Finally, in addition to the 5 Ks is the Sikh’s turban  –  a crown of  their spirituality.  Also, note that special holy underwear is not unique to Sikhs.   Such sacred undergarment is found also in Judaism and Mormonism.  In all three of these traditions, the special garments are meant as a reminder to the believer of what they have chosen to value.

The Lord said to Moses: Speak to the Israelites, and tell them to make fringes on the corners of their garments throughout their generations and to put a blue cord on the fringe at each corner. You have the fringe so that, when you see it, you will remember all the commandments of the Lord and do them, and not follow the lust of your own heart and your own eyes.
– Numbers 15: 37-39 (NRSV)

Sikh Holy Undergarment
Jewish Holy Undergarment	Mormon Holy Undergarment

Anyway, back in the glass-walled cardiac room the Sikh gentleman was now stripped down, had EKG-leads placed and was being monitored as they drew blood. The room was intentionally a glass fishbowl so that all staff could readily see if help was needed in the room at anytime. But it also meant our Sikh friend, in his non-typical attire, was there for all to see. Some ER staff started joking about his clothing. And someone finally asked, “What kind of strange religion is that which would demand such a strange way of dressing?” I broke. Having lived with Sikhs in India, having attended their temples and basically having a temperament that is easily upset by parochialism of any sort, I turned to the staff who made the pejorative comment (and who I also happened to know was Christian) and loudly ranted: “So, his religion is weird, is it? Yet you have a god who loves the smell of burned offerings. But burned vegetables were never enough for your god, he preferred the aroma of seared animal flesh. Then your god’s tastes progressed further and he started to crave human flesh. Finally it wasn’t just any human flesh he demanded. He decided that punishing a guilty person was not good enough, he wanted to punish an innocent person. So he decided to miraculously mate with a human female and make himself a human baby (who was actually also totally a god). Then he arranged for his boy-god child to grow up and be tortured and murdered — geee, what a great Dad. Glorifying in his brilliant plan, your god then demanded that his believers celebrate this human sacrifice by pretending to drink his boy’s blood and eat his boy’s body. Finally, apparently your god has also decided that anyone who does not believe this fantastic story, who does not thank him for killing his child and who does not chat to his son in their mind, should be condemned to burn in hell for eternity.” Well, everyone in the ER stopped joking about the Sikh gentlemen. Now they were whispering about me. I lost a lot of credibility in the ER that night — it took me almost a year to regain ‘full’ acceptance. But damn, I felt good for speaking out. Both stories illustrate that we can not see our own beliefs clearly. We can not imagine how bizarre our beliefs look to an outsider. But the strangeness of other people’s beliefs always stand out clearly to us. Questions: Have you ever defended another faith? Have you ever defended Christians, when fellow Atheists made fun of them wrongly? ______________ Related Post: (1) Ganesh : How Ganesh got his head — from my Mahabharata series.

The Text

Vyasa dictates the Mahabharata to Ganesh

The Mahabharata Series (cont.)

Listen–

I was born full-grown from the dew of my mother’s body.  We were alone, and Devi told me, “Guard the door. Let no one enter, because I’m going to take a bath.”

Then Shiva, whom I had never seen, came home. I would not let him into his own house.

“Who are you to stop me?” he raged.

And I told him, “No beggars here, so go away!”

“I may be half naked, ” he answered, “but all the world is mine, though I care not for it.”

“Then go drag about your world, but not Parvati’s mountain home! I am Shiva’s son, and guard this door for her with my life!”

“Well,” he said, “you are a great liar. Do you think I don’t know my own sons?”

“Foolishness!” I said.  “I was only born today, but I know a rag picker when I see one. Now get on your way.”

He fixed his eyes on me and very calmly asked, “Will you let me in?”

“Ask no more!” I said.

“Then I shall not,” he replied, and with a sharp glance he cut off my head and threw it far away, beyond the Himalayas.

Devi ran out, crying, “You’ll never amount to anything! You’ve killed our son!” She bent over my body and wept. “What good are you for a husband?  You wander away and leave me home to do all the work.  Because you wander around dreaming all the time, we have to live in poverty with hardly enough to eat.”

The Lord of All the Worlds pacified her; looking around, the first head he saw happened to be an elephant’s, and he set it on my shoulders and restored me to life.

“Paravati was happy again, and that is how I first met my father,” said Ganesha, “long long ago.”

“Alright,” said Vyasa, “now I will begin.” And he began to tell his story to Ganesha, who wrote it on leaves.

William Buck’s “Mahabharata“, pgs 4-5

Explanations and notes follow.

I am doing a series on the Mahābhārata.  The  Mahābhārata is written in Sanskrit.  For millennium, Hindus have claimed that Sanskrit is a  unique, sacred, and magically powerful language. I heard this claim over and over again in India and in Ashrams in this country. But is Sanskrit really unique, so special, and so precious?  After all, it is a dead language.

Most cultures view their languages this way.  I recently heard an NPR show about the Hopi language and how the Hopi have a prophecy that when their language is no longer spoken, the world will end. But, and I know this is not politically correct, I think the Hopi language will die just like Sanskrit did and the world will continue. Languages are not sacred !

Indo-European Language Tree

I have personally seen this “my-language-is-special-and-unique” attitude among speakers of Japanese, Arabic, Chinese, and Hebrew.  Human arrogance about what is special to them is universal.

That which is dear to us is sacred.  By sacred, I mean it is not open to negotiation and thus guarded with all the unconscious intellectual vigor our brains can muster.  For many, these guarded sacred items include our nation, our tribe, our religion and our language.

We often see that naive mono-linguists think their language is unique in its ability to express deep thoughts. Well of course they do — they have never mastered another language.  A good way to cure this parochial blindness is to do comparative studies.  Using comparative linguistics researchers have learned more about the very nature of language than by studying any one language in depth.

Comparative Embryology

Likewise, we started learning much more biology when we started doing comparative biology.  Likewise, studying comparative government can open the eyes of a person about the nature of government more than by just studying all the historical details of their own government.

I feel that religious folks who have never thoroughly understood another religion are handicapped in a similar way to mono-linguists.  And no matter how deep they dive into their religion, no matter how thoroughly they know their religious history, their scriptures original language(s) or the intricacies of their religion’s theologies, it will be the rare person who will see the deep patterns of all human religious thought.  It is by comparative religious studies that people can see how much their religion shares with other religions.  Doing comparative studies helps people to see the nature of human hearts which generates their faiths.

Comparative Anatomy

So instead of trying to argue the inconsistencies of the Bible, the inaccuracies of the archeology and history,  the bigotry of many doctrines and the subtle philosophical arguments, why not encourage comparative studies of religion.  Through this people can see what they share with others.  This will set up a cognitive dissonance between that insight and their religious teaching that their religion is unique, special and superior.  This may tip the scale for that person becoming more inclusive in their religious thinking.  And moving toward inclusivness is a huge step.

It is my hope that my little study of the Mahābhārata will offer some good comparative religious material. Do you have experiences where comparative studies opened your eyes?

____________
Related Posts:
1) The Mahabharata Series : posts on the famous Hindu epic
2) The Original Source Mystique:  on the misuse of the Bible’s original languages

Trimurti: Brahmā, Vishnu, and Shiva

The Mahabharata Series (cont.)

Before starting the reading of Buck’s Mahabharata, I thought a little background on the Hindu pantheon would be helpful.  The descriptions below are oversimplified, but I am hoping that is the best approach.  Besides, I thought folks would enjoy the iconography !

Hinduism came to India with the Aryan invaders who brought their Vedic gods.  At that time the indigenous people of India had many local gods.  As the Vedic deities and local deities blended, Hinduism  was formed.  As a result of this amalgamation, there are many different names for any one God and many different stories about that god/goddess — often inconsistent.  But three main deities stand out: Shiva, Vishnu and Brahmā who in later Hinduism are known as the Trimurti (three forms).  These three are felt to be different aspects of the divine — think trinity in Christianity.  However, the mother Goddess also plays a huge role and she is variously designated as a consort (sexual partner) each in the Trimurti.

Lots of pictures follow:

Authorship

Vyasa

The Mahabharata Series (cont.)

The Mahābhārata is an amalgam of many authors but traditionally attributed to Vyasa (an immortal, pictured here)

Date

Composed over centuries (like the Hebrew Bible).
Some think it was begun in the 700s BCE and finished in the 300s BCE.  Here is some dates to give perspective:

• 3000-900 BCE ? Kurukshetra War (subject of Mahabharata)
• 1600  BCE  Beginning of Greek Civilization
• 1194 BCE Trojan War (subject of Greek Epics)
• 1000 BCE King David (legend)
• 740 Kingdom of Israel falls to Neo-Assyrian Empire
• 586 Jerusalem fall to Nebuchadnezzar
• 551 BCE  Confucious born
• 486 BCE Buddha born
• 469 BCE Socrates born
• 327 BCE Alexander the Great reaches India
• 304 BCE Ashoka the Great born
• 27 BCE Founding of Roman Empire

Your Philosophical Positions

See the section in my Religious Dialogue Tools for an explanation for how to use this table as a means of declaring your positions on Philosophical Issues.  Note, no one is expected to know all these various categories or positions, but if you have thought about them, tell us your preference may be most helpful.

School of Philosophy:	Analytic / Continental
Ontology:	Naturalist / Non-Naturalist / Supernaturalist
Science:	Scientific realism / Scientific anti-realism
Theory of Time:	B-Theory / A-Theory
Theology:	Theist/ Deist / Pantheist / Panentheist / Non-Theist / Atheist / Agnostic
Politics:	Libertarianism / Egalitarianism
Language:	Russellianism / Fregeanism
Mind:	Anti-physicalism / Physicalism
Mental Content:	Externalism / Internalism
Abstract Objects:	Nominalism / Platonism
Knowledge:	Empiricism / Rationalism
Personal Identity:	Physical View / Psychological View
Free Will:	Incompatibilism / Compatibilism
Normative Ethics:	Consequentialism / Deontology / Virtue Ethics
Meta-Ethics:	Moral realism (Cognitivism, Ethical Naturalism, Ethical non-naturalism, Rationalism) / Moral Anti-realism (Non-cognitivism, Expressivism, Emotivism, Error Theory, Prescriptivism, Relativism, Subjectivism)

CATEGORIES & DEFINITIONS

I list some of the above categories below in order to add brief definitions and/or links to help understand each category. I will be working on this list slowly. Suggestions welcome !

• School of Philosophy: Analytic (wiki) / Continental (wiki)
• Ontology: Naturalism / Non-Naturalism / Supernaturalism
• Science: (sep) Scientific realism / Scientific anti-realism:
• Theory of Time: (sep) B-Theory / A-Theory
• Theology: Theism/ Deism / Pantheism (sep) / Panentheism (sep) / Non-Theism / Atheism / Agnosticism
• Politics: Libertarianism (sep) / Egalitarianism (sep)
• Language: Russellianism / Fregeanism (sep)
• Mind: Anti-physicalism / Physicalism (sep )
• Mental Content: Externalism (sep) / Internalism (sep)
• Abstract Objects: Nominalism (sep)/ Platonism (sep)
• Knowledge: Empiricism / Rationalism (sep)
• Personal Identity: Physical View / Psychological View (sep)
• Free Will: Incompatibilism (sep) / Compatibilism (sep)
• Normative Ethics: Consequentialism (sep) / Deontology (sep) / Virtue Ethics (sep)
• Meta-Ethics: Moral realism (Cognitivist, Rationalist) (sep)(wiki) / Moral Anti-realism (Expressivism, Emotivism, Error Theory, Prescriptivism, Relativism, Subjectivism) (sep)

__________
Resources:

• On-line Research in Philosophy

Christian Theology

See the section in my Religious Dialogue Tools for an explanation for how to use this table as a means of declaring your positions on Christian Theology Issues.  Note, no one is expected to know all these various categories or positions, but if you have thought about them, tell us your preference may be most helpful.

My Denomination:
God’s Nature:	Perfect / All-knowing / All-powerful / Omni-present / All-Loving / Perfect / Eternal / Personal / Perfectly Just / Perfectly Merciful
Christology:	High / Low
Theology of Scripture:	Inerrant / Errant Infallible / Fallible
Soteriology 1:	Exclusivist,  Inclusivist, Pluralist, Universalist
Soteriology 2:	Calvinism / Arminianism / Moninism
Atonement Theology:	Moral Influence Theory / Recapitulation Theory / Ransom Theory / Satisfaction Theory / Penal Substitutionary Theory / Governmental Theory / Participatory Theory / Mystical Theory
Literal Bodily Resurrection:	No / Yes
Cosmology:	Young Earth Creationist / Gap Creationist / Old Earth Creationist / Evolutionist
View on State of Israel:	Christian Zionist / Pro-Israel / Israel-Neutral
Missionology:	Salvation First / Service First
Eschatology:	Premillenialist / Postmillenialist / Amillenialist / Preterist / No Millenialist
View on Science:	Science leery / Science friendly
Women can be priest or minister:	No / Yes
Homosexuality can be valid life style:	No / Yes

I list some of the above categories below in order to add brief definitions and/or links to help understand each category.  I will be working on this list slowly.  Suggestions welcome !

Christian Theology Categories

• View of Scripture :     Infallible / Fallible
• Soteriology 1 :     See my post on these positions:  Exclusivist,  Inclusivist, Pluralist, Universalist
• Soteriology 2 :    Calvinism / Arminianism / Moninism
• Atonement Theology:  See my post
• Literal Bodily Resurrection :    No / Yes
• Cosmology :    Young Earth Creationist / Gap Creationist / Old Earth Creationist / Evolutionist
• View on State of Israel :   Christian Zionist / Pro-Israel / Israel-Neutral
• Missionology : Salvation First / Service First
• Eschatology :  See my post

__________
Resources:

• On-line Research in Philosophy

This morning, while doing my atheist education homework, I read Luke’s “CommonSense Atheism” post on the infinite regress argument.  On that post, I read an excellent comment by a proud Irish fellow named “John D”, so I went to his site, “Philosophical Disquisitions” where I enjoyed his article  discussing Colin McGinn’s book “Shakespeare’s Philosophy”. I am not a huge literature person, but wish I were.  And I have not read Shakespeare, though I have seen many of his plays.  Yet this article got me excited about looking into Shakespeare again.  For it seems that Shakespeare agrees with my philosophy of self (“Many-Selves, No Self”). But, as to be expected, John D (through McGinn & Shakespeare) captures my view of self in far less words than me, and with rich imagery. For convenience, I will now quote part of John D’s post but please do go read the rest if you have a chance.

(b) The Self
Drama is all about selves. A play is usually an assemblage of characters or selves engaging in activities and events. These activities and events constitute the “plot”. The question that arises is whether the self remains constant throughout the plot or whether it is changed by the plot.

McGinn argues that Shakespeare is sceptical of the notion that the self is a constant, definite, singular “thing” or “essence”. Instead, McGinn suggests that for Shakespeare the self is interactive and theatrical.

It is interactive in that it never makes sense to talk about the self in isolation. The self only becomes apparent in social interactions. For example, if we describe someone as being generous, what we mean is that they behave in certain ways towards other people.

It is theatrical in that it is best understood in terms of the roles a person plays in life. This idea is manifest in the famous Seven Ages of Man speech in As You Like It. We treat life like a stage play in which we play different roles, each designed to make an impression on an audience of some kind. We are familiar with this: we all put on a different “act” depending on the people we are with.

This View of Self is part of Shakespeare’s worldview and my worldview.  Luke started to build a Taxonomy of Worldviews and I feel such a taxonomy can be useful in facilitating conversations between those with philosophical or theological inclinations. Luke states that

A worldview consists of one’s beliefs about:

• Ontology
• Explanation
• Values
• Epistemology

For me, philosophy of mind or view of self is absolutely central to my worldview.  And apparently Shakespeare captured my views hundreds of years ago.  Perhaps my View of Self would fall under Epistemology in Luke’s schema, or does it inform my epistemology and thus epistemology should be subsumed under philosophy of mind?  I am not sure. I think most of us have no formal, systematized worldviews nonetheless many of us have deep preferences and ways of seeing the world that inform all our other views — systematized or not.  We are all casual philosophers.   Shakespeare’s View of Self is a great illustration of a major way I view my world.  The other major component of my worldview is “The Fool” — it is the fundamental insight into my own ignorance and limitations. I feel that Shakespeare understood this very well too!  I really have to read the chap.

Philosophical Blogging

Many of us bloggers philosophize.  Some of us are outright professional philosophers, some of us sloppily slip out philosophical claims in the midst of our dairy-like posts, and then there is everything in between.  Recently I envisioned a way to simply illustrate two important aspects of philosophical thinking — systematization and knowledge.  I have quickly crafted this taxonomy of  Philosopher Types which categorizes according to both degrees of systematization and depth of knowledge.

This visual taxonomy goes with the caveat that none of us is just one type of philosopher.  We all have different philosophers living in us depending on the time of day, our company and the subject matter.  On a good day, I like to think of myself as a solid casual philosopher.  However, when I read the smart guys, it makes me feel like that is a bit of an arrogant over-estimation !

Questions for readers

• Would you add or correct any categories?
• What axises would you like to see on a philosopher taxonomy chart?
• How do you see yourself when it comes to your blogging philosophy or theology?

Chart Wars

Finally, below is a fun video I saw on “Graph Wars” which illustrates the importance of visual thinking — both deceptive and productive uses.  It also secretly evangelizes the great Flying Spaghetti Monster (pbuh) and speaks of the infamous pirates.

HT: Experimental Theology

Linnaeus

I love taxonomies !

Taxonomy is the practice and science of classification.  It is an important tool to expand knowledge.

Strengths of Taxonomies

• Help wrestle with data, with the world
• Help to see patterns that before escaped your eye
• Is a tool of science to build models and deepen understanding

Weaknesses of Taxonomies

• Views only a small part of the things being classified (reductionistic)
• Imply deeper understanding than actually present
• Ignore or overlook deeper complex relationships

Solutions

• Hold loosely:  The trick with taxonomies is to hold them loosely, to realize their short comings, and to rejoice when evidence comes forth showing that a better taxonomy exists.
• Use several taxonomies to view something
• Test your taxonomies !
• Don’t let taxonomies be your only way of viewing reality

Interestingly, the word was coined by Carl Linnaeus (1707-78) who laid the foundations for how we name living organisms in science using the binomial nomenclature.  The taxonomies of organisms has changed drastically over the centuries.  We have progressed from Linnaean Taxonomy to Evolutionary Taxonomy and now to Cladistic Taxonomy.

One of my other favorite taxonomies is that of  language families and their taxonomies have changed over the last 100 years.  But early taxonomies, no matter how inaccurate were good starting points — initial hypotheses.  Below is a fun illustration (here is the large version):

—————————

Linguistic Romp:  Latin vs. Greek

• tax = taxare [L] “evaluate, estimate, assess, handle”
• taxi =  short for “taximeter”= “charging (assess) meter” [L]
• taxidermy = “taxis”[Gk] = “arrangement” + dermis [Greek] = “skin”
• taxonomy = “taxis”[Gk] = “order, arrangement” + “Nomos ” = “law” or “science”
• ataxia = “a” [Gk] “not” + “taxis”=ordered. “Not-ordered” . Inability to walk correctly
• syntax = “syn”[Gk] together + “taxis”= arrange

I am an Explorer !

Poor Searching Souls

Images are important.  We often use images to think about others, to understand them and to interact with them.  But images can be wrong.

Some Christians, when generous, have an image of Atheists as “searchers”.   They envision us as fumbling in the dark.  Or perhaps they use the image of the proverbial blind men who can only barely perceive the elephant [God].  Thus they see their role as being there to gently fill in our lack of vision.  These Christians get their “seeker” image from one of their favorite Bible verses where Jesus says:

‘So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.
– Luke 11: 9-10 (NRSV)

Blind Unbelievers Searching for God

You see, using this image of us as searching for the truth,  they can then feel they are part of God’s mission to help us — they are there to offer our blind eyes a glimpse of Jesus.  To them, it is much more generous to see us as seekers rather than to just envision us as doomed blasphemous unbelievers.  For if we are “seekers” or “searchers”, we are not yet full blown dangerous hell-fated heretics.   To rid themselves of that image, they are compelled to sanitize us with the “Seeker Image”.  For if they didn’t, they would have to contend with this haunting Bible verse that commands them to shun us:

Everyone who does not abide in the teaching of Christ, but goes beyond it, does not have God; whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. Do not receive into the house or welcome anyone who comes to you and does not bring this teaching; for to welcome is to participate in the evil deeds of such a person.
– 2 John 1:9-11 (NRSV)

Thus if they are truly Bible-loving Christians and they want to keep relating with us unbelievers, they must first sanitize us.  They sanitize us by imaging us poor atheists as still “searching”.   They then think of themselves as being in relationship to us so as to gently guide us toward the light — toward truth.   Or perhaps to just be kind to us while God works with us.  Either way, once they have sanitized us as being a “searcher” instead of just a pure outright blasphemer, they feel safe to continue relating to us.  These images help ease their cognitive dissonance.

This sanitization is needed because of another conscience-haunting Bible verse:

Do not be mismatched with unbelievers. For what partnership is there between righteousness and lawlessness? Or what fellowship is there between light and darkness?
– 2 Corinthians 6:14 (NRSV)

So,  2 John tells them to shun guests or strangers who don’t believe, while 2 Corinthians tells them to not even partner up with deniers of Christ.

So, how can a Bible-loving Christian deal with us hell-bound unbelievers?  They must do something to cure their cognitive dissonance.  Well, one method is to use the imagery in the Luke verse above (also in Matthew 7:7).  They can use Luke and Matthew to help see us as seekers who may someday find Jesus.  Doing this, they sanitize us and then can sweep those other nasty verses under their spiritual carpet and alleviate their mental distress.

But don’t let them sanitize you !   Get the image of a “searcher” out of their heads.  Tell them you are an explorer !

Images are important.  Don’t indulge them by letting them envision you as a blind seeker.   This blind seeker image is fed by this story of Jesus healing a blind man just like you.

He [the former blind man] answered, ‘The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, “Go to Siloam and wash.” Then I went and washed and received my sight.’
– John 9:11 (NRSV)

Instead of letting Christians sanitize you and thus letting them easing their consciences, keep that cognitive dissonance burning in their minds.  Tell them you are not a seeker.  Tell them you don’t need Jesus to rub mud in your eyes.  Tell them you are not searching for either Jesus or God.  Tell them you are not searching for the final truth of the universe so as to comfort your soul.

Let Christians know you are not burdened with spiritual confusion nor seeking the one answer.  You are not a seeker.  Instead, tell them you are an EXPLORER !  Instead of buying into their view that there is some final goal in life, tell them that “The path IS the goal”.   You may appear as a seeker to them because you keep looking into all the various religious thoughts out there.  But let them know you do it more as an anthropologist, or a sociologist or a psychologist or as a scientist.  Give them the image of yourself as an excited explorer.

Here are some images I have to replace the old seeker images.  If you have other images of explorers you enjoy, please give me the link in the comments and I will include them.

Credit: Courtesy of the University of Haifa

Fascinating new discovery of ancient Hebrew text – 10th century BCE.
This post contains some supplements to aid your understanding of this story.

English translation of the deciphered text:

1. you shall not do [it], but worship the [Lord].
2. Judge the sla[ve] and the wid[ow] / Judge the orph[an]
3. [and] the stranger. [Pl]ead for the infant / plead for the po[or and]
4. the widow. Rehabilitate [the poor] at the hands of the king.
5. Protect the po[or and] the slave / [supp]ort the stranger.

Note: this post has been updated to include the excellent comments of Ian

Alexa Traffic Ranks on My Friends ! (Jan 5, 2010)

In the Bible scholar blog world, there has been much chatter about rankings.  Biblioblog use to compare all the Biblioblogs to each other using Alexa rankings (the lower the number, the more visited the site is).  Recently, John Loftus, at Debunking Christianity, got high in the Biblioblog rankings and that apparently caused a stir.  Then Luke at Common Sense Atheism (one of my favorites) rated top atheist sites where he himself now lies.

So with all this talk about Alexa rankings, I decided to explore them.  I started with my own site, of course, only to find I was naturally orders of magnitude from Luke, John and the other disciples of popular atheism !    So, I decide to look at my blogging friends.  I recently re-made my “Friends Tab” which I am very proud of and decided to use their data to test out Alexa and see what it is all about — I am a nerdy, experimental guy.  The data  is at the bottom of the post.  Continue reading to see the results !

But before list the ratings, I must admit that I am hesitant to put this post up for fear of being misunderstood or angering folks, but I figure, what the heck !   But maybe I can avoid bad feelings by stating my caveats first:  For me, the ranks means nothing except popularity — and we all know both the strength and weaknesses of popularity.  Popular does not mean “good”, or “valuable” or anything like that.  And though it can be correlated to influence, it is only influential on those who value such things.

So, popular has to be looked at with a very critical eye.  I care nothing popularity — almost so little that my attitude verges on pathological . Of course, it is to my advantage to devalue popularity  considering I shall never be popular !   But the sociological side of this data and the idea of influence is very interesting.  Thus, I thought some of you would find the links to the Biblioblog, the controversy, the link to Alexa and this list to be interesting.  And finally, please do not think of me superficial — or at least not from just this post. 

Ranked Friends:

1. Friendly Atheist: 13,222
2. Atheist Media: 80,093
3. Dr Jim’s Thinking Shop: 170,417
4. Common Sense Atheism: 225,646
5. Epiphenom: 1,041,796
6. Sects and Violence in the Ancient World: 1,417,731
7. Triangulations: 3,445,108
8. Theophiliacs: 4,037,922
9. Biblecritic: 6,491,244
10. On Leaving Fundamentalist Christianity: 10,572,806
11. Al’s Musings: 12,132,703
12. The Last Laugh: 12,546,570
13. Atheists and Christians: 12,986,764
14. Super Jesus: 17,218,298
15. Losing My Religion: 17,416,446
16. Toothface: 25,021,593

“No Data”: (not sure what that means)

• Dust & Light
• West Virgina Salvation
• A Time to Rend
• In This Short Time
• Rocket Propelled Peacocks
• Extheist
• Ian
• Aporetically Yours
• Thought Begets Heresy
• Tit for Tat
• Zen Agnostic
• Changing Scenery

http://zenagnostic.blogspot.com/

Tom Rees (Facebook)

Tom Rees posts superb reviews of recent research on religion on his site “Ephiphenom“.  I feel this is a must read site for any atheist trying to understand religion from a scientific perspective.  Besides learning about each study, the diligent reader will slowly learn how the mind of a careful scientist works.

Tom just posted a fantastic one-page summary of his 2009 articles . PLEASE, go give it a read, it is short.

I had the honor of having Tom visit this site to comment on a post I did on finger lengths.  His comment is illustrative of how careful we must be when evaluating studies — especially when the study says something we want it to say !  Please give his comment a read.

Finally, here is a bit more information to help you to know Tom Rees:

• Employer: Parexel International as the manager of Scientific and Editorial Services in Worthing, United Kingdom.
• Education
  • PhD:  Microbial Biotechnology (Cranfield Univ 1996)
  • Grad School (MSc): Applied Toxicology(University of Portsmouth 1993 )
  • Undergrad: Physiology and Biochem (University of Southampton 1991)

I want to use this post to playfully illustrate one way I think about beliefs.  At times, I like to think of each our beliefs as having four different levels of commitment. I visualize each belief as having 4-colored traffic light attached to it.  The color lit on a light indicates our level of commitment to that belief.

• Green:   Committed (little doubt)
• Red:   Rejected (little doubt)
• Yellow:  Doubted
• Grey: Suspended from consideration

Grey light beliefs are more common than we imagine.  We put things in the grey light category because believing or disbelieving in them gives us so many perceived benefits that we have decided to protect them from scrutiny.  With grey light objects we may have many doubts but we are not questioning the belief.   I wrote a short post once on how my son did this with the Tooth Fairy call “Sacrificing Rationality“.  I recently talked with a friend who did this with a relationship he was in.  Grey lights permeate our mental geography.

Well, at the risk of making the model cumbersome, I actually visualize 3 other variant lights in my model.

Yellow-transition-Green:
Something we doubt but we are leaning toward believing.

Yellow-transition-Red:
Something we doubt and we are considering rejecting.

Grey-transition-Yellow:
A Grey Light (suspended doubt) that we are now considering to start doubting.

I find this model helpful in thinking about both my own and others’ beliefs.  This model makes up what I call my “lay epistemology”.  Below is a little more about “lay epistemology”.

Index: Mahabharata (Buck)

• Mahabharata Background
  • Introduction
  • Hindu Gods
• Chapter 1
  • Ganesh

Related Posts:

• Comparative Studies Insights

I am slowly blogging through William Buck’s version of the Mahabharata — one of the major texts of popular Hinduism.  Below in the Outline, are the links to posts as they appear.  Each post will consist excerpts which I enjoy.  I will supplement the excerpts with explanations and possible elaborations from other sources to help readers.

Series purposes:

• Mythology: To re-read a fun book full of fantastic myths.  In the West, we refer mainly to Greek, Biblical or Shakespeare images.  I wish we could add Hindu images, they are so rich.  ! I first read this book 20 years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it.   I hope to make Buck’s book more accessible to readers who are not familiar with the background of these myths.
• Hinduism: To help others learn about Hinduism
• Comparative Religion: To include comparative religious information. Learning about more than one religion and comparing them is a very good way to start and understand the religious nature of humans.  See my Comparative Studies post.

At the bottom of this post are pictures of  11 commenters hands.  A recent study claims that people with relatively small ring fingers are more susceptible to superstitious thinking.  My blog illustrates my own personal susceptibility too superstitious perceptions which is indeed verified by my hand.  So now I have an excuse!  See if you think these commenters also confirm the hypothesis.

Background

Apparently finger lengths tell us something about our minds.  Particularly, lots of research has explored the ratio of our index finger to our ringer finger.  In medicine, the ring finger is the 4th digit (4D) and the index finger is the 2nd digit (2D).  So the ratio is mathematically expressed as 2D:4D.  The 2D:4D ratio has been shown to be related to the individual’s prenatal androgen levels (e.g. testosterone) and thus correlated to sexual characteristics.  I will let the reader explore all that information at this wiki article on Digit Ratio.  I have not dug deep to inspect the quality of all this research and will have to leave that to the like of Tom Reese at the fine site: Ephiphenom if he is interested.

Recent Study

A new 2D:4D ratio study tries to relate the ratio to Woo Woo thinking:    “Who wants to believe?  Associations between digit ration (2D:4D:) and paranormal and superstitious beliefs” by Martin Voracek (University of Vienna School of Psychology) in Personality and Individual Differences.   Voracek’s study suggests that folks with a lower 2D:4D ratio tend to experience and believe in the paranormal more than those with a higher ratio.  He suggests that this woo tendency is prenatally determined and reflected in our finger lengths.

Click to see the pics and read on: 

Biblioblogs is a loose knit group of blogs which “deal primarily with matters concerning scholarly or academic biblical studies”.  Somehow I was graciously added to that group.  “Debunking Christianity” by John Loftus has actually been number #2 on their list in terms of popularity — which is now updated here at Free Old Testament Audio.

I am also affiliated with a secular group of Bible bloggers run by a professor of Religion in Canada, Jim Linville, at Jim’s Thinking Shop and Tearoom, a comical site.

My site is generally about religion and philosophy.  But this annotated list of posts deals specifically with Bible passages or Biblical theology.  I will try to choose posts in which both believers and non-believers alike may find something of value.  Here too is a short piece on Atheist Bible Literacy .

• Proverbs 27:17 : Bloggers help each other
• Ecclesiastics 3:1-7 : A time to rend
• Ambulance Snake: Nehushtan, Asclepius & Caduceus
• Biblical Criticism : Tools for studying the Bible
• Eschatology : Diagrams of various Christian Eschatologies
• Theological Roots of Pentecostalism : a book review
• Atonement Theology : The varieties of Christian atonement theories
• Metaphorical vs. Literal Truth : How can we speak of “truth” in myths?

Declaring Thyself Posts

Below is an annotated list of posts which can aid religious dialogue:

• Christians:  your christology, soteriology, atonement theory …
• Philosophers:  your epistemology, philosophy of mind, your ethical philosophy …
• Atheists: your certainty, openness, enchantment …

Without knowing each other’s positions, a dialogue can be frustrating.  Just calling yourself a “Christian” or an “Atheist” is not helpful since there are a great many of varieties of each.  The posts linked above are tables to help you declare your positions.  Simply drag your mouse over the whole table and then cut and paste the contents into a post or comment and touch it up to make it tell your position.

Go to this post to see how I have used them to tell my stances.  It is my hope that this will facilitate dialogue.  Note how I use percentages at times to show how I realize that my mind holds various opinions simultaneously.   As I acknowledge in my post on Taxonomies that there are huge obvious caveats with using such simple categorical taxonomy of ideas. But when viewed primarily as a tool for dialog, I think this may be useful.

Dialogue Ethics Posts

• The Debator’s Golden Rule:  See if you can agree to this?
• Generous Translation:  Even if you disagree with someone, how could you translate it into your system?

Definitions of Terms Posts

• “Religion“:  Religion, as a word, is huge. This post shows why.
• “Faith“: This often comes up in religious dialogue, the differences in meaning are crucial.
• “Truth”:  coming
• “God”: Coming

For people without common vocabulary and agreed meanings, defining terms is often a necessary starting point.  Without a common language, debators often inadvertently fall into the ambiguity logical fallacy called the Equivocation Fallacy where they jump between the various meanings of a word and keep the conversation confused.  Above I am beginning a list of words to define.

_________
HT: for pic to Handy Manny’s Talkin’ Tool Box

My first memorable “mystical experience” was on the toilet. I was very young and it was an ordinary day.  I don’t remember being in anything but a normal mood.  I was in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet doing the normal bathroom thing.  The door to the bathroom was just a little ajar to the hallway.  Occasionally someone in my family walked by the door and I thought to myself ,

“Gee, I didn’t close the door — this is a little embarrassing.  But wait, no one seems to know I am in here.  That is good.”

But as I thought about no one knowing I was in the bathroom, I started thinking more generally:

“Wow, this is what it would look like if I weren’t here.  Gee, but what if they don’t know I am in here because I don’t really exist?  What if I never existed?  What would this family be like now if I never existed?  What if all memories of me disappeared?  Who would I be if all these memories were gone, even my own?”

Then, bang!  Suddenly nothing was normal.  I had an abrupt flood of feelings and insights.  I suddenly felt like “I” disappeared and yet it was a rich, peaceful, buzzing feeling — my whole body felt it.  It was a little scary, but still exciting and happy.  And I felt secure in a deep understanding that was settling in.

Then the feeling faded.  That all lasted about 3 minutes and I would never forget it.  In fact, over then next two months, when sitting on the toilet I would try to think the same thoughts and ask the same questions in order to trigger the experience but it would not return.   About a half a year later, in the same setting but without trying, the epiphany came upon me again but with much less intensity.  And after that day, that experience would never return.

The hum of change from this rather simple and naive experience of a young boy has lasted as fuel for his understanding of reality since then.  Have any of you had similar experiences?  Or have you had positive inner experiences that hum for years and inform your life?  What is an atheist suppose to call these?  I could probably explain them neurologically but how do I convey them?  So, can you see why I call myself a “sympathetic Atheist“?

____________
Related Posts:

• My Mystical Explosion
• My Supernatural Experiences

Yesterday a friend (and commenter) snapped an I-phone shot of me while we were sledding with our fantastic kids.
What amazing fun sledding is !  And ahhhhh, the privilege of regaining raw, fresh experiential joy with children.

I thought putting a face to all my writings on this site would add personal flavor and texture to otherwise rather dry words.  Faces make dialogue feel so much more full.  Yeah, it is a big photo, but if the point is to share a countenance, I figured I would share it loudly.  Sadly, I have chosen to keep my name off this blog to protect my career, preserve some casual but useful relationships and maintain some privacy, but I figure until face-recognition search engines are developed, I can probably still share this photo safely.

I also would like to use this post to thank all who visit Triangulations for helping me contemplate issues, practice writing, improve my dialoging skills and learn how to relate in a blogging world.  I look forward to another year together with you.  I apologize ahead of time for my awkwardness, inconsistencies and mistakes and thank you for your kindness.  It is my hope that putting a face to these feelings & thoughts helps.

I wish you all the best in this coming decade !

Many years ago I was in a dual Ph.D. program in Philosophy and South Asian Studies at the University of Minnesota with a sub-specialty of comparative Religious Studies.  For money I worked nights and weekends at a Psychiatric Juvenile Center (my undergrad was in Psych) and I was an apartment manager.  I was also receiving a fellowship and teaching an undergrad course in comparative religions.  My graduate language was Urdu (the national language of Pakistan and closely related to Hindi).

After finishing my Ph.D. course work I was awarded a fellowship to study a year abroad in Pakistan.  My girlfriend, at the time, also got an award to study in India, so we decided to separate for a year. That is the setting for the story below, if you are interested.

Sport Allergies Syndrome

Sport fans are part of a huge secular religious group.  To me, people who follow sports seem almost as blind as religious fundamentalists.  Or at least I have told myself this for years.  In Pakistan I was considered weird for not liking cricket, in Japan I was odd for not following Sumo and in the USA I am called a heretic for not following my city’s football team !

But over the years I have come to realize that Sport Fans aren’t odd.  Instead, I have come to the humble realization that I am a the freak.  The vast majority of men I know (and women, for that matter) love watching and cheering for sport teams.  I use to think they were weird but now I have come to suspect that I am the strange one.  After all, I am the minority.

I have often wondered, “Why don’t I like sports”.   As a kid I actually tried to like sports so I could talk with all the other guys.  I would try to make the game more rich by memorizing the teams and players’ statistics but this did not help — I still hated watching and talking about it.  I have never succeeded in even slightly enjoying spectator sports.  But then I have never succeed in similar ventures with Poetry, Opera, Ballet, Fishing, Golf or Bowling.

Some people think that sports are just a way for people to bond.  But heck, I have lots of friends and I love to bond just as much as the next guy — I just don’t like to do it by watching and talking about sports.  Mind you, I do enjoy participating in several sports, but they all happen to be individual sports: kayaking, swimming, martial arts, tennis.

Just recently I think I figured it out:  I have a disease.  I started thinking of my allergy to sports in a syndrome sort of way.  So here is what I have come up with.  Please tell me what you think.

“Sport Allergies Syndrome” is a condition whereby to qualify,
the sufferer must fulfill at least 4 of the following 6 criteria:

• Negative attitude toward Sports
  • Either you are actually critical of the game, or mildly dislike it or just plain apathetic.
  • Negative potential: Quick to be critical
• Competing Hobbies:  Significantly enticing activities (“hobbies”) to compete with sitting around and watching TV for hours.
• No Fear of Ridicule:  Don’t need approval of others and ridicule rolls right off you.
  • Negative potential:  May be a bit careless with the feeling of others.
• Self-Content:  No strong need to bond with others during such an activity.  You don’t mind playing alone.
  • Negative potential: Slow to bond with groups.
• Natural Rebel:  If you tell them they should do something, they think of ways to avoid it.
  • These are the rebel types — they probably shrug off a lot more that society tells them is normal.
  • Negative potential:  Can be a “poor team player”.
• Crowd Averse:  or hates the crowd mentality

So, do the criteria work?  Or is it refuted because you a sports fan with 4 or more of these traits?  Or is it refuted because you do have Sport Allergies but less than 4 criteria?  Can you think of other criteria?  Help me tighten up the definition !

I like thinking of fuzzy things like this in a syndrome sort of way.  I analyze religion in a similar sort of way in this post.  I have actually suspected that some of these criteria are shared by atheists and thus suspected that a disproportionate number of Atheists also suffer from Sport Allergies.  But alas, many Atheists continue supporting this nasty form of mercenary tribalism even after they have shed the chains of other forms of superstitious think ! 

My Typical Superstitious Morning

I laugh at my mind constantly.  She (my mind) is so silly, so primitive, so deluded, so stubborn, so dull.  I mean, how many times have I told her something is not true or not so and yet she keeps coming back with the same perceptions and conclusions.  She is totally unruly.  Yet, I can not live without her.  She is also the source of all the great joys in my life.  Alas!

This above story happened earlier this week and is just one of thousands of examples of how unruly my mind can be.  You see, the bulb simply burns out and I look for someone to blame.  This story reveals how my mind is obsessed with “agency”.  She assumes somebody is behind everything !  This phenomena explains much of religious thinking.  And don’t think that if you are an atheist your mind is free of religious thinking.  It ain’t that simple.

A huge delusion that feeds religious thinking is to see “peopleness” were it doesn’t belong.  Atheists should not be deluded in thinking that just because they have declared themselves free of the gods and no longer deluded by such abstractions, that they are somehow magically free from the curse of peopleness.  OK, I will stop inventing terms.  Bruce Hood, in his book “Supersense: Why we believe the unbelievable” tells us the proper academic phrase for “the curse of peopleness” — “promiscuous teleology“.  “Teleology” is the explanation of phenomena in terms of goals or purposes, as if an agent (a person) is behind an event.  And you’ve got to love the nuances of the adjective, “promiscuous”!  For indeed, the mind goes overboard looking for someone to be responsible for all actions — even if the action is simply a light bulb naturally burning out.  Hood points us to  research that shows that children from a very young age see the inanimate world as alive and relating to them.  Piaget called this “egocentrism” to reflect this self-obsessed perspective.  Children are also prone to “anthropomorphism”, which means that they think about nonhuman things as if they were human.  Adults do the same.  Have you ever lost your temper at a chair that is in your way?  This illustrates how the mind-modules, which are used by religious thinking, are present from a young age and don’t disappear just because someone declares themselves free of the gods.  Two other fantastic books which illustrate anthropomorphism in our religious minds are:

• Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought  by Pascal Boyer
• Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion by Stewart Guthrie

I think what happened in this light bulb story is a variant of that notion of promiscuous teleology which itself is a child of anthropomorphism — two persistent superstitious modules in all of our heads.   Being cognition modules, they must have had or still have some adaptive advantage to exist.  I won’t explore that in this post, but I did touch on the selective advantages of superstitions in my post on “The Benefits of Pareidolia “.

Here, a bulb blows out — but who did it?  No one, of course.  It just finally wore out.  Such is the nature of bulbs.  And when these sort of bulbs die [note the anthropomorphizing language -- see how pervasive the thinking is], they go out with a bang.  But now the mistake jumps in:  When the bulb blows, my mind tells me somebody caused it to happen, a person did it.  My mind searches for someone to blame.  It reaches to the most convenient and closest actor — my wife.  She did it!  She probably screwed it in loose or bought cheap bulbs.  Or maybe the darn kids did it by continually bumping the lamp when playing.

“Stop it !  Come on! ” I tell my mind, “I love my wife and kids, why are you attacking them?”  But my mind often has no mercy.  In her delusions, my mind just throws stuff together and tempts me to buy into her story – at least emotionally so.  She does not expect me to analyze what she offers me, she just want me to nod, agree and reflexively move on.

A Buddhist perspective

Buddhism’s primary practice is the honest observation of the mind.  It trains the practitioner to bravely observe one’s true nature — how one’s mind works.  “Bravely”, because what we see is not always pretty or noble.  Buddhism teaches respect for the mind but also offers ways to discipline the mind.  It lets us realize that the mind, while serving us constantly, also generates all sorts of delusions which cause many problems in life.  Observation is the first step in the Buddhist practice.  This task is difficult and is aided by other methods which help weaken the delusions.

Buddhism offers many approaches to cure our undesirable reflexes that lead to our unsatisfactory experience of life.  One, is to observe the illusion but not to feed it.  The practitioner strengthens her mind to resist following a particular unhealthy thought.  For instance, I see my mind accuse my wife and children of causing the bulb to go out and I chuckle at my mind, pat her on the back, maybe even give her a hug and move back into a more restful mind.  Another method is to spend time contemplating positive emotions and positive beliefs so that when negative emotions bubble up (like anger toward others), I readily have positive modules fired up ready to take over if I deem the anger irrational or unproductive.

OK, I had no real intent to go into Buddhist solutions in this post, but I realized how central it was to how I viewed the above situation.  Don’t get me wrong, certainly there is no reason that a purely secular way of dealing with these insights could not be equally as productive.  But I do feel that working with the unhealthy aspects of our minds is best done intentionally.  And it is this intentional inner life that people often refer to as their “spirituality” or their “religion” or their “faith”.  I think this is one of the possible positive potentials of religions.

Sorry, this was a long-winded post, but if you made it this far, I have a few questions:  How do other religious practitioners reading this post work with such mundane emotions in their lives?  How do you pure secularists nurture your mental/moral culture?

Summary:

• Superstitious modules in the brain are present from a young age
• “Promiscuous Teleology” and “Anthropomorphism” are just two examples of Superstitious Brain Modules.
• Superstitious modules serve a function to the brain, but like all modules, they often are also misused to our detriment.
• All religions capitalize on the Superstitious Brain Modules, but many of them also offer us methods to deal with their downsides.
• Superstitious modules keeping working even in Atheists.  I am curious how we acknowledge them and use them.

This winter morning while I was driving to work on our back roads, I had to stop for a school bus which was picking up children from their homes.  I knew I would have several more stops like this for the next two miles on our hilly country road and I was already running a bit late.  But as I watched the kids get on the bus, their parents tucked in their scarfs, put on their warm hats and hugged them goodbye.  I suddenly saw the bus loaded with much more than just kids.  I sort of visualized the bus overflowing with all the emotions and feelings of their loving parents.  I was very touched.  And for the next few stops on our snowy, slow, morning road, I smiled fully at the bus stacked high with children and all those feelings.

So I thought I’d try and PhotoShop a picture to capture and share my feeling.  Isn’t it nice when the mind gives us a treat like this?

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Related Post:  I saw an Angel

For those having difficulty agreeing with someone on how to define Atheism, I suggest 7 obstacles you may need to overcome in order to have a fruitful discussion.

(1) Dialogue Purpose

You might start by trying to agree on the purpose of your dialogue.  Often it is best to put agendas up front instead of waiting for horns to lock after wasted hours of discussion due to fixed and incompatible goals.

(2) Philosophy of Language

You may need to agree on the nature of language and definitions.  You may have to skip this one and just hope it is not an issue.  But contradictory positions could stall a dialogue.  For some people see language as rigid and others as constantly changing.  Some see the meaning of words as something to be discovered and others as contractual agreements.  Some see language in a reductionistic, algorithmic manner while others see language as a organic web of interconnected beliefs and feelings in our minds.

(3) Definitions:

Next, the debators need to acknowledge that words have multiple definitions and that to avoid the Equivocation Fallacy entering the discussion, they need to agree on one of the usages or construct another.  Below are the three common definitions of the word “Atheism”

A. not believing in any god.   not believing in Theism.
—–AKA: “weak atheism”  or “implicit” atheism

B. believing “no god(s) exist” or  explicitly denying the existence of any gods
—–AKA: “strong atheism” or “explicit” atheism

C. Godlessness (Websters International Dictionary 1903)  Godlessness in life or conduct. Called also practical atheism (Funk & Wagnalls, 1895)

But deciding on a definition may be difficult without addressing these last three obstacles:

(4) Admitting Historical Nuances

You need to agree that historically, “atheist” had definition # 3 and still has a huge percent of that connotation for many people.  Thus people may be hesitant to self-identify as Atheist because of all this baggage.

(5) Defining “God”

Both parties should agree on what is meant by “God”.  For certainly, the argument changes if one person means a deist god and another means a intervening, personal god, or perhaps an impersonal, divine principle etc…

(6) Defining “Belief“

Both parties should agree on what is meant by “Belief”.  For instance, is the belief intentional (active) or is it default result of not thinking (passive)?  Further, how do degrees of certainty play in the definition?  For this reason, for example, some use the word agnostic as an adjective to describe both theists and atheists.

Readers can see that the permutations entailed by these obstacles explain why pages and pages of books and blogs discuss this issue.  My hope has not been to define Atheism but to offer a method to discuss the issue.  Also, Wiki has a great article on the definition of “Atheism”.   I hope this post illustrates how words are tools created by explicit or implicit contractual agreements between two speakers.   Oooops, I just gave away my philosophy of language.

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Addendum Examples:

After writing this, I realized that maybe a few examples would help.  So, imagine these folks with whom I have different relationships and thus with whom I agree to use these words a bit differently.

My Mahayana Buddhist Buddy

He thinks of “God” as being the “Luminous Mind” in Buddhism –pabhassara citta.  “Belief” for him, is a skillful means–upaya.  So, when speaking to some people, he has no trouble telling them “I believe in God”.  For he certainly does not want them walking away thinking his family is “godless” in their values and behaviors.  And he wants them to see his rather mystical side so as to further dialogue potential.

My University Professor Friend

The head of the Biology department is a Creationist.  Yet this Professor does not yet have tenure and a group of his religious students have reported my friend to the Creationist department chair complaining that he teaches evolution without a God.  My friend is confronted by the department chair.  My friend wants to be honest so he says, “Well, I am an agnostic Atheist but I respect those who feel their may be a God, for I too leave room for uncertainty.  I certainly feel even God could work through evolution.”

My Atheist Pal

He has several Republican Christian friends who have invited him to their Churches or invited his kids to their summer Bible camps.  He decided that he only wants to keep friends who truly understand him.  So he tells them in no uncertain terms he does not believe in an all-powerful, anthropocentric, Israel-favoring, damning deity who is only pleased by blood sacrifice and correct belief.  He says  “I am an Atheist without a touch of Agnostic in me.  No, my kids said they don’t want to go to your camp either.  Do you still want to grab a beer?”.

BTW, all three of those guys are/were me.  See my “Many Selves, No Self” post for clarity.  Hope that helps.

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Related Post:
1) Atheism: an epiphenomenon
2) A.K.A. Atheism:  The pros and cons for other names for “Atheists”
2) Cat vs. Monkey Religions:  Different ways of understanding “God”
3) What are Beliefs

The Evangelist wags her finger at me - Bad Sabio!

Last week, a fiery Evangelical 40-something, career-changing seminary student started our very first coffee-shop conversation by firing the classic Theist pointed-question at me, “So, are you an Agnostic or an Atheist?”    I replied by saying, “First, let me ask you a question.”   But before I could, she (yes a female Episcopal seminary student), replied, “No, I asked the question! Don’t answer the question with a question.” Which struck me as rather ironic considering that in her holy texts (Mark 11:29) we are told that her very own Jesus replied to a pointed question from the Jewish Chief Priests with a question and stated, “I will ask you one question, and you answer Me and then I will tell you …” (NASB)

I told her that she started with the demands, so I have the right to put conditions on the conversation if she wanted to continued. She was indignant and said, “But I asked first”.  To which I replied, “Yes, and since you started by demanding something of me, I will draw the conditions.”  But she still looked puzzled, so I went on further, “Let me illustrate the principle: When a man asks a woman for sex, the woman has the right to set the conditions, no? Otherwise, if the man proceeds with intercourse, ignoring the woman’s conditions, his act becomes rape!” She, of course, was bit surprised by this, allowing me enough time to counter with the “Unicorn Proposal”.

The classic reply to this Theist question is to expose the hidden assumption in the question itself.   One way to do this is to ask the Theist if they are “An-invisible-pink-unicornist” or “A-flying-spaghetti-monsterist”.   Such questions will allow the Theist to see how odd it is to define themselves in terms of something they think is bizarre and of course don’t believe in.   The unicorn reply helps illustrate the loaded nature of the generic Agnostic-vs-Atheist question. Instead of taking the Theist’s lead and jumping into their trite weak argument which says “See, you can’t prove there is no God, so you must admit you are an Agnostic and not an Atheist.  And since you now admit you are an Agnostic, you must admit that there may indeed be a God. And thus the burden of the proof is on you to prove that there is no God.” Their question is simply trying to prime this locomotive of poor reasoning to start rolling. But by making the unicorn proposal, you can deflect the locomotive and get the Theist to see that if they said, “Gee, I have to admit, there may be such a thing as an invisible pink unicorn“,  that they too would not want to spend the next hour trying to “prove” that invisible pink unicorns don’t exist.

So don’t let the proselyte sneak in assumptions and demand you have the kind of conversation they want. Resist rape and try to reveal principles of reasoning. You probably won’t change the Theist, but at least you won’t feel like taking a shower after the conversation.
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Related Posts:
Enchanted Naturalist: I address how to avoid negative labels.
Biblical vs. Pink Unicorns: I encourage not taking cheap shots at the Bible

If you read the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible, you will come away thinking that the ancient Hebrews believed in unicorns.  This is understandable since there are nine verses referring to unicorns: Numbers 23:22, Numbers 24:8, Deuteronomy 33:17, Job 39:9 & 10, Psalms 22:22, Psalms 29:6, Psalms 92:10, and Isaiah 34:7,

Many atheists take potshots at Christian Biblical literalism by pointing out that taking the Bible literally would entail believing in ridiculously fantastic creatures such as unicorns.  Some Atheists get great joy out of showing Biblically naive believers that their beloved Bible has unicorns populating it.

However, examination of the Hebrew makes it clear that the KJV is just a mistranslation.  Wheew, Christians are off the hook on this one — not that there aren’t a lot more hooks out there waiting for them !

Here are the linguistic facts:

• The Hebrew word translated “unicorn” in the KJV is רְאֵ֖ם (re’em) which in the TaNaK (Hebrew Bible) actually means “wild bull” or “ram” and is translated correctly is most other Bibles.
• The Latin translation of the same word in the Vulgate is  “rhinocerotis”
• The Greek word in the Septuagint is μονοκέρωτος (monokέrōtoς) which means “one” (mono) “horn” (kerotos).  This mistranslation of re’em and may have caused of the misunderstanding.  You see, a “rhinocerotis” has one horn.

Anyway, please cut the Christians a break — except those who worship the KJV, of course!  There are a lot more substantive debates to be had.  And besides, approaching conversations about the Bible in this manner, disobeys what I call the Debator’s Golden Rule which calls for helping the other side present their strongest argument.  And more than all this, and the point of this post, is that keeping all the unicorn talk clear-headed allows us to save the unicorn for its most important task: debunking the burden of proof of fantastical notions (covered in another post).  For that purpose, Atheists have created the notion of the Invisible Pink Unicorn (Wiki) as well as the Flying-Spaghetti Monster (wiki) for which we are all deeply grateful.  We don’t want to confuse our conversations with Christians by discussing biblical unicorns when we have the much more useful invisible pink uniform waiting patiently in the forest ready to come to our rescue ! 

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Reference:  see this Bible side-by-side translation.

People rightly question the term “Atheism” as being sadly negative — defining oneself as being NOT-something.  In my post “Atheism: An Epiphenomenon“, I illustrate one approach to this issue.  Today I noticed one of the past posts at Luke’s at Common Sense Atheism where he calls himself an “Enchanted Naturalist“, taking a positive approach to labeling ourselves.  I love that phrase.  Luke’s essay is worth the read !

But before you go, I just wanted to give some fun linguist enrichment: “Enchanted” comes from Old French, “enchanter” which is from Latin “incantare” which is composed of “in” + “cantare” (to sing).  The Latin word “incantare” meant “to sing at” and had connotations of  chanting or muttering magic formulas — to cast a spell, to bewitch !

So, when you read Luke wonderful essay, you will see how the brain sings at us and bewitches us.   And btw, may I suggest that you play the music Luke suggests while reading his post — it helps !

In my post about The Homogenized Bible, my glorious readers discussed not only how the Bible is homogenized in its translation process but also in the way we read and remember it.  Our reader, Ian, a Bible scholar, has kindly illustrated this by quickly putting together this annotated Christmas story.   His story illustrates how the Christmas myth in our heads is a hodgepodge of the inconsistent gospels of Matthew and Luke which are then mixed with folk lore and outright mistakes.  Please take a look at Ian’s work.  But please don’t ruin anyone’s Christmas — wait at least until all the presents are opened. 
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Note: Image by Joe, coloring is mine to illustrate my point of finding your favorite creature (Jesus) in this hodgepodge.

Yesterday, John, at Debunking Christianity , told his secrets on how he increased his blog’s traffic.  He lists:

• Catchy titles
• Frequent posting
• Archives
• Commenting on popular blogs
• Post on current events
• Post on controversial topics
• Feeds
• SUBSTANCE !

It was fun to read John’s stuff, and though I realize stats aren’t the most important thing for a blog which comes from the heart,  I too can’t help looking at my stats.

Today I noticed something that increased my traffic which John did not mention: IMAGES!  If you choose good pics and, more importantly, label them wisely, your hits will go up!   Google will find you.

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Note:
Now be nice, this is my very first attempt at a hand-made cartoon using all kinds of new software.  This cartoon was inspired by the comment thread on Common Sense Atheism’s post: Fear of Death.