A Heathen's Day

Nature's Peace

2008-07-24T08:51:00.003-04:00

Some deer have been visiting my backyard. Two males and a female. They munch on the apples that are falling from an old apple tree. Unfortunately, today one of them started to nibble at the garden, so I went outside. They moved off and the two males stood off while the female sniffed and came closer, sniffed and came closer, till she was about 10 feet from me. I waved my arms at her then and spoke to her to keep her away from the garden because if she walked up and began to eat, I couldn't very well push her away. Figured it was best to just keep her away to begin with, and I have no doubt she would have continued to approach otherwise. I wish I'd taken the camera out with me but hadn't expected such close contact. Still, I got some pictures the other day on the occasion of their first visit. I also got a picture of a bird's nest in the front yard:

Lack of Respect

2008-07-23T23:36:00.003-04:00

What do you say when somebody you think you should be able to trust feeds your child a religion they know is unwelcome? My son's grandmother did that tonight, while watching him. She taught him "When you're happy and you know it clap your hands" with an added "Amen!" between verses. I told him, in her presence, "you're a Heathen boy. Heathen boys don't say amen." She had the nerve to laugh. She doesn't take seriously any religion other than her own. She has laughed before. She will never see my son again unless she comes to me and admits she was wrong and apologizes. Of course, she won't do that. She won't think she's done anything wrong. There is no crime, after all, for those who have Christ. The woman lives by that credo.

It's a shame, really, that people cannot show that modicum of respect for the beliefs of others that a functioning society requires. I can't put into words how angry and disappointed I am. It's simply not possible. But again, it demonstrates to me the degree to which the so-called "Religious Right" feels it's ideology trumps all else. They expect as a matter of course that you won't criticize their beliefs or the myths and lies they've built up around their own religion and those of others, but they will not extend the same courtesy. When you have sole possession of the "Truth" I suppose it's not necessary.

It's time to sit down and begin work on my piece about how to teach a child about Christianity. That will have to be done hand in hand with teaching him about the religion of his ancestors. Hopefully, she didn't go beyond the "amen's" but this is not the first time she has done something like this, nor is it even the worst thing she has threatened (a couple of years ago, for example, claiming the right to "anoint" or even "baptize" him in the name of Christ. Either way, I won't trust him to her care again.

US Army Coercing Religion

2008-07-23T14:15:00.001-04:00

This in today from Americans United:

July 23, 2008

Army Base Cannot Coerce Soldier Trainees To Attend Church Services, Says Americans United

Watchdog Group Asks U.S. Department of Defense to Investigate Missouri Army Base That Promotes Baptist Church Proselytism

Americans United for Separation of Church and State today asked the U.S. Department of Defense to investigate an Army base’s practice of coercing soldiers to attend church services during their training.

Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri offers “Free Day Away” as one of only two opportunities for soldiers to leave the base during eight weeks of vigorous Army training. (The other day is the day before graduation, which can be spent with parents and guests.) During “Free Day Away,” trainees are picked up by a bus sent from the Tabernacle Baptist Church of Lebanon, Mo., to participate in a day full of recreational activities, followed by dinner and a required church service.

Trainees are given the impression that the event is sponsored by the Army and that they must attend. If they do not attend, they have to remain on the base and continue with training, while those who attend the event have a break for the day.

“We believe that it is of utmost importance that the Army guarantee the constitutional rights of those who risk their lives to protect our freedom,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director. “And that means ensuring that soldiers have the freedom to practice any faith or no faith at all.

“The coercive religious practices at Fort Leonard Wood are an outrage,” he continued, “and the Department of Defense should put a stop to them immediately.”

During the church service, soldiers are told that they are all sinners who must repent and that they “must be saved now or go to hell.” Soldiers willing to accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior are instructed to step into the aisles of the church and enroll in a six-lesson correspondence course that will lead to their “personal salvation.”

In a 2003 article in the Global Baptist Times, the pastor of Tabernacle Church reported that 270,000 soldiers had participated in the “Free Day Away” ministry since its inception in 1971 and that 47,000 had accepted Jesus Christ as their savior. The Tabernacle Church also asks the soldiers to provide their home addresses so members of their families can also be “saved.”

Fort Leonard Wood has promoted this program for the past 36 years and the program is endorsed by the base commander, Americans United learned during its investigation.

Americans United, in its letter, urged Gordon S. Heddell, acting inspector general for the Department of Defense, to conduct a full investigation into the Army’s “Free Day Away” practice.

The letter was prepared by Americans United Senior Litigation Counsel Alex J. Luchenitser and volunteer attorney Howard Sribnick.

A Heathen's Cry in the Wilderness

2008-07-18T12:24:00.002-04:00

If a Heathen cries out in the wilderness, can you hear him? It doesn't seem so. All we hear about is how our candidates bow to a vociferous and intolerant minority of 25% of the population while ignoring the other 75%. It seems they understand as little about the meaning of "mandate of the people" as our dear gangster President Dubya. Everyone who has dropped by once or twice already knows all I'm about to say, but I'm going to say it anyway, simply because it needs to be said and here I have a soapbox to shout it from.

I belong to one of the smallest and least noted minorities in the country. I am a polytheist. I honor the customs and traditions of my Scandinavian ancestors. In other words, I am a Heathen. I honor Odin, Thor, and the rest of the Aesir and the Vanir. A brief explanatory note is likely in order: For a polytheist, the world is filled with the divine. I honor my ancestors as well as the spirits of wood and rock, which we call land-wights, and the dísir, or grandmothers, the spirits of female ancestors who watch over the hearth and home. While the world is filled with the divine, our Gods are benign. They do not seek to punish us or inflict pain and suffering on us for our sins or failings. For us there is no Satan chasing after our souls. We need no prayers at night asking God to take them into his care if we die. Our souls enter into us at birth, when we are named at a water sprinkling ceremony, and depart us at death, and return to the halls of our ancestors. We look not to a future existence, but to this earthly life, seeing ourselves as part of a line that stretches into the distant past, and not the end of that line, being both inheritors and progenitors who owe our place in this life to those who have come before and who seek to put those who follow us on a decent footing. This means we look for an earth to pass onto them, with a breathable atmosphere and nonpoisonous water and soil. We must husband this planet that has come into our care because we are not the owners but renters, and we pray to our Gods not out of fear but offer sacrifices and prayer to them as tenants pay rent to landlords, because it is owed.

It is perhaps understandable to others that the direction this country has taken under the present administration is worrisome to us. The growth of monotheistic intolerance is a factor that cannot be ignored. The transformation of the Grand Old Party into God's Own Party and the influence of the so-called Religious Right is a cause for concern. What is a Heathen to do when American politics have become so polarized, when the presidency is seen by some as a sacral kingship, the holder of the office chosen by the Christian God to lead the nation, and some believe the world, to some sort of righteousness? Nor is it only the Republicans candidates who cater to the Evangelicals but the Democrats too, Obama and Clinton both. Naturally, none of the candidates care much what non-Christians think or believe (and woe unto you if you are a Muslim), or what they hope for or what they fear. Our concerns are of no consequence. Despite the fact that according to one study Evangelicals compose only about a quarter of the population, and hard-core Evangelicals only about half that total, politicians cater to their strident voices all out of proportion to their numbers. The silent majority, non-Christians and liberal Christians, abide and accept. We do not make ourselves heard. Perhaps this is due to a lack of fanaticism or zeal. We have our beliefs, we have our customs and traditions, but we do not feel an overriding need or drive to share these with others, much less convert others to our views. But now a warning is in order: when we let the other side dictate the terms of the debate, we let them also determine its outcome. It is important that all of us speak up and be heard. If we do not, we give up the right to complain later.

So here I am, truly a voice crying in the wilderness, seeking to be heard, seeking to find sanity in a political system that has become hopelessly embroiled in the needs, desires and expectations of a single monotheistic religion. Where there is religious plurality, politics and religion do not mix. We cannot pretend that everyone in this country is a Christian or accepts or abides by Christian values. We cannot pretend that everyone in this country, like our president, sees a mandate in a minority. We cannot let the most strident few dictate the terms by which the rest of us must live. We are told that this is moral and this is not, but the view is a narrow one. What is moral to one person, to one culture, is not moral to another. It is only the greatest arrogance that allows a person to believe that their way is the only way. We are assured that there is but one capital-T Truth, and that against this is today's heresy, relativism. But for a polytheist, the truth is myriad. There is no single road, no single way. There can be no comparison of Gods, no "my God is better than your God" or "my God is the only God." If Bush is the president of the Christian God he is the president of only part of the population, and since Christianity is not a monolithic whole but a variety, to which group of Christians does he belong? According to the view of the most zealous, he is the president of about one-eighth to one-quarter of the population of the United States. Ironically, this is about equal to his approval rating, which stands at about 28%. This should say something to you. It does to me.

A political system that caters to a single religion, and by no means the religion of the overwhelming majority of the nation's population, cannot work in a pluralistic society. It is to create a system of Spartans and helots, and we all know for those zealous few who those helots are destined to be. It is perhaps understandable why the rest of us, what is rapidly becoming a majority of us non-Christians, do not wish to live according to Biblical Law. It is perhaps easy to understand why we have no desire to partake in a Christian theocracy fashioned by the minority and dominated by a few fringe fanatics. I am not interested in whether a candidate goes to church every Sunday, or what they believe about their God. I am interested in whether or not they will uphold the Constitution, not whether or not they will uphold the Decalogue. I want a President who will follow not his religious beliefs but who will, as JFK promised to do, resign his office should conscience and duty come into conflict. We have seen what happens when politics are dictated by a belief that the Middle East is central to the Parousia, the second-coming Christians look forward to. The rest of us don't want to go on this journey of yours, this almost feverish desire for a fiery end. We want a president who will do what is best for this country and for its people and not what he thinks his God wants him to do. We want a president who will obey the Constitution, not the Law of Moses.

There seems little to look forward to for a Heathen this election year. The field is full of bleak offerings. I have thrown my own support behind Hilary Clinton because she seems to spend less time catering to the so-called Religious Right than the others. I hope this means something. I hope that like Bill Clinton she will leave religion in the church and keep her beliefs in her pocket and not wear them on her sleeve, a bit of advice I take from Jesus, who criticized the too-openly pious of his time. Bill may have strayed from the Decalogue, but he followed what is for a president the more important set of rules, the law of the land and the Constitution of the United States of America. President Bush, on the other hand, may follow the one scrupulously, but he has never hesitated to attack the other. It has never ceased to amaze me, as a Heathen, that people got so upset that Bill had oral sex in the White House, a violation of a set of rules a president does not swear to obey, but don't care that Dubya uses the White House to systematically dismantle the Constitution, which a president does vow to obey.

Keep religion at home, and in the church. They say politics are dirty by nature, but if there is one thing that can dirty politics it is religion. It is traditionally believed that as Lord Cornwallis marched his troops out of Yorktown in surrender that the band played the old ballad, The World Turned Upside Down, written as a result of another unwise admixture of politics and religion. Perhaps, as our system of government comes crashing down around us, that will be our exit song as well.

Pelosi Calls Bush a 'Total Failure' With 'No Ideas'

2008-07-18T11:28:00.002-04:00

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday called President Bush "a total failure" — among the Democrat's harshest assessments to date of the Commander-In-Chief. "God bless him, bless his heart, President of the United States — a total failure, losing all credibility with the American people on the economy, on the war, on energy, you name the subject'

I agree entirely with Pelosi with regards to Bush as a failure. Unfortunately, I also believe Congress has been a failure, though not for the reasons Bush cites. Congress has in fact betrayed the American people every bit as thoroughly as has our president, by catering to his every law-breaking whim, and by abrogating its own constitutional authority to reign in the executive branch.

read more | digg story

Abuse of Holy Symbols

2008-07-16T07:29:00.003-04:00

I wrote an email yesterday protesting the use of our holy symbols by an English racist group, the British People's Party. Indrani gave me a head's up about these people, for which I wish to thank her. To make matters worse, the BPP has a Hitler Youth-type group called the "Viking Youth" and they use an Othala rune as its symbol. It's all very Nazi-ish and disgusting and is the kind of thing we, as Heathens, are going to be combating and competing with for a long time. It's difficult for the general public not to see these things and associate them with the Nazis and having these debased (if that term can be used) forms of Nazism just serves to keep that association alive.

Living in a free society there is little that can be done about such flagrant abuses of what are, to us, holy symbols, but we can make our displeasure known and we can try to shout louder than they do that the images they create are false.

Outrageous FISA legislation - Add your name to ACLU paper

2008-07-10T16:05:00.001-04:00

We want Congress to stand up for our freedom, but they keep caving in to fear mongering! Help the ACLU spell it out for them. The ACLU is preparing to challenge the unconstitutional FISA Amendments Act in court and protect your right to privacy. In addition, the ACLU will be taking out a full-page ad in a major national newspaper announcing the l

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She's just not that into you -- or is she?

2008-07-10T12:07:00.002-04:00

This is comlpetely off the beaten path for my blog but the story is interesting to me because I'm famous for being completely unaware of when a girl is showing interest in me. I've lost track of the number of times someone has told me a girl was flirting with me when I was completely unaware of it. Of course, I've also had a girl tell me I was flirting with another girl when I was not - I was simply "chatting her up" - from my perspective, being friendly. If I'd have been talking to a guy nobody would have thought anything of it. So it's just interesting to me how we can be so completely unaware of each others intentions in social interactions.

According to researchers at Indiana University and Yale University, Tardif isn't the only man flying blind. Women are better than men at interpreting facial expressions and body language, at least when it comes to images of women, according to a study published in the April issue of the journal "Psychological Science."Researchers chalk it up to women's more developed ability to read others' signals, and men's tendency to oversexualize social situations or miss the message entirely.

Senate Approves Bill to Broaden Wiretap Powers

2008-07-10T07:57:00.002-04:00

The Senate approved a bill expanding the government ’s surveillance powers, and granted immunity for phone companies that cooperated in the wiretapping program.'

We, the American People, have been betrayed by Congress. Somebody remind me again why we worked so hard to vote these Democrat jokers into office when all they do is bend over for Bush as enthusiastically as the Republicans they replaced?

read more | digg story

Bauer Talks out His Ass

2008-07-07T08:02:00.003-04:00

Where have we heard this before?

"[South Carolina Lt. Governor Andre] Bauer said allowing Christians to have a specialty license plate is freedom of speech. He said those who oppose are prejudiced against Christians."

Same old story, isn't it? Religious Tolerance to these people, as I have said again and again, is about the right of Christians to trump the rights of others whenever they come into contact.

This was true twenty centuries ago when Christianity came into contact with Paganism and it is true today and was for every one of those two thousand years in between. It's the old "There is no crime for those who have Christ" attitude. I read recently of another case, an incident in Puerto Rico in 1960 when the Catholic Church opposed the ruling party over birth control. The PDP (Popular Democratic Party) won by a landslide and investigation showed that the there was wholesale voter registration fraud by the Christian Action Party "defended because of the overriding moral issues involved!!!"[1]

But the laws DO apply. The Courts have repeatedly come down on such nonsense and upheld the Wall of Separation. It is to be hoped that the lawsuit filed by American United for Separation of Church and State will win out and the "I Believe" license plates will never see the road.

Christianity does not have the right to trump the rights of others. We must do everything in our power to make certain this day never comes. We outnumber them - I am speaking of reasonable people, not just Pagans - by a factor of about 3 to 1. But they are louder, more vociferous, and under the current corrupt political climate they have been getting way with murder and as I pointed out the other day, only the Courts have stood up to them.

And it is not only Pagans who will suffer, or other religious minorities. History has shown that nobody hates a Christian like another Christian. Every Christian who does not think the right way will instantly become a heretic and will be held in worse light than any Pagan. You think things will be hard for us? Those Christians who sail blithely along through life thinking a Christian is a Christian will learn quickly that they were naive.

We have to fight now, or give up our right to fight later.

Notes:

[1] Jeffrey J.W. Baker, “Science, Birth Control, and the Roman Catholic Church,” BioScience (1970), 143-151

The Origins of Democracy and the Big Lie

2008-07-05T16:15:00.003-04:00

I came across reference to a review today of a book written in the year I was born, 1957, Christianity, Democracy, and Technology, by Zoltan Sztankay (New York: Philosophical Library). It was written as a response to Communism but it is the author's premise that I find wholly deplorable: "Since Christianity is the basis of democracy, and since technology depends on democracy, the two latter never could have developed without Christianity..."

I found three reviews of the book, and while these argued that the Soviet Union demonstrates the falsity of the claim that technology is dependent upon democracy, none of the reviewers take the author to task for the absurd claim that Christianity is the basis of democracy.

This is a blatant untruth and it is often repeated by today's Evangelicals and Fundamentalists. It is a basic platform of the so-called Religious Right and the lie is being repeated to a new generation of Christians even as I sit here arguing against it.

The facts are, nothing at all supports this thesis. Certainly our democracy is not Greek democracy (if ours is democracy at all) but the Greeks were not Christians, but Pagans, or Hellenes as they prefer to be called. The Jews, who provide the basis for Christianity, were by no means democratic in their political outlook. They were ruled by kings first, and then by a high priesthood acting (supposedly) on behalf of their god, YHWH. But this was a theocracy and not a democracy. Nor did Christians embrace democracy throughout any of their history. Indeed, even today many of them look to a re-establishment of a theocracy. The "divine right" of kings was upheld by the Church from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Enlightenment. Even people living in the supposedly horrible and autocratic Roman Empire had more access to democracy on a local level than Christians living in the Middle Ages.

It's time to put an end to such absurd claims. They must be buried by the weight of evidence against them. And that evidence is out there. We must demand that Christians making these claims provide evidence for them. Of course, they cannot. There is none available. The evidence destroys their claim and demonstrates beyond fear of contestation that democracy is a Pagan invention, the Paganism is more friendly to science and technology, and that technology relies neither on democracy or Christianity.

One of the Greatest Quotes Ever

2008-07-03T21:55:00.001-04:00

Things are more like they are now than they have ever been.
- Gerald R. Ford

A Supreme Court on the Brink

2008-07-03T11:51:00.001-04:00

Speaking of the Judicial Branch: Some of the most important decisions came on 5-to-4 votes — a stark reminder that the court is just one justice away from solidifying a far-right majority.

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The Judicial Branch to the Rescue Again

2008-07-03T11:41:00.002-04:00

Time and again we see the Executive Branch trying to trample the other branches of government, with great success against Congress and less against the courts, which stand alone between the American people and Bush's dreams of turning the office of President into that of a dictator. The New York Times reports that "A federal judge in California said Wednesday that the wiretapping law established by Congress was the “exclusive” means for the president to eavesdrop on Americans, and he rejected the government’s claim that the president’s constitutional authority as commander in chief trumped that law."

Huzzah for the courts! Bush can get himself a pet attorney general, but he can't buy the courts and the courts say he can't trump the Constitution, whatever Congress is willing to allow.

Ironically, the judge, Vaughn R. Walker, was appointed by Bush's father, who was in all ways a better man than the son.

On This Day

2008-07-02T08:35:00.001-04:00

On July 2, 1937, aviator Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to make the first round-the-world flight at the equator.

Our Religion in Music

2008-07-01T07:22:00.005-04:00

Everyone is familiar with church music, for example, the ubiquitous Onward Christian Soldiers. Many people, myself included, have been in church choirs. We all know Handel's Messiah and many of us have had some exposure to modern Christian music, call it rock or pop, from commercials on TV if nothing else. Christians hop and bop with the best of them - it's okay if you're bopping for Christ, despite ancient prohibitions against it. As is also well known, music and dance were a huge part of the Pagan experience. Not just religious processions but music at temples and shrines. Female choruses are attested as early as the 7th century BCE and Plato (Laws 672e) speaks of choral dancing. A bowl in the holdings of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts illustrates a religious scene: seven women dancing in a circle with joined hands while another plays flutes.

Sadly, not much evidence for this music has survived. Few people realize that Homer was sung. So were the tales of the Poetic Edda. The Greeks used a notational system and some evidence of this has survived and attempts have been made to reconstruct what ancient music sounded like. Daemonia Nymphe performs "music based on the aesthetic and theoretical border of ancient hellenic music" using reconstructed ancient instruments such as lyres and kitharas. A reconstruction of the Edda put to song can be found, performed by Sequentia and it's hauntingly beautiful). Listening to ancient instruments is something I very much enjoy...closing my eyes and sitting back and letting the world that was unfold in my mind. You can hear ancient Greek instruments at Ancient Greek Music and if you want to hear something truly haunting and somewhat chilling, try Whistles of Death, an attempt at recreating the sound made by Aztec clay whistles which Roberto Valazquez believes were played prior to human sacrifice.

Nowadays, we Pagans mostly have to settle for New Age music. Unfortunately, while some of it is evocative it is not particularly ancient or genuine. It might be considered spiritual and I like some of it. I also like Native American flute music though not in a way that has anything to do with my religion. Hellenes probably have enough to go on that they could, if an effort was made, create new pieces, new hymns, in the tradition of the old. Or they can buy a CD of ancient music performed by modern orchestras, using ancient instruments. I don't know what those of us who have nothing to go on should do. It's not just Heathens; Copts, those recreating the rites of the ancient Egyptians, also have no evidence of musical notation to go on. Even so, evidence for the Mediterranean civilizations is abundant by way of comparison; We don't know much about Norse or Teutonic religion, about what rituals were like or what people did when they gathered together in a temple. We don't even know for sure what those temples looked like, since they were made of wood, though arguments have been raised that they looked very much like stave churches.

I sit at home and like everyone else, see commercials for Christian music, for gospel music. I think about how much music is missing from my own religious life. People tend to forget that music was a part of religion long before Judaism and Christianity. It's not in our faces the way Christian music is. When you hear the word "hymn" (Greek hymnos or "song of praise")you don't think of Pagan music. It's just another way in which our perceptions have been molded by our environment. Whether you Google hymn or ancient hymns most of what you will find is related to Christianity. That's how far lost our own music is lost. Like another important component of ancient Paganism, sacrifice, music must be restored to its proper place by today's Pagans.

Whether we write our own or make do with New Age music or Sequentia or soundtracks or something else, we must get music back into our religion. It's an ancient and essential component. I would love to see the day when a collection of Pagan hymns is advertised on TV. That day is probably far off, long after my own departure to the halls of my ancestors, but if we undertake the task today it will come in time. I say often that we are the generation that is laying the groundwork for the true revival of Paganism. I really don't believe we are seeing that revival today. And modern forms of Paganism will continue to grow and develop and mature until something more permanent settles into being. This will be the work of our children, and our children's children, but it will never come about if we don't make our own effort today.

Music should be more than an inspirational backdrop. Hymns were once sung in devotion to our gods, to honor them. As Pagans, we should all reflect on the efficacy of hymns over the spoken word and look to the day when our voices are again raised in praise of the gods.

How to Put Civil Liberties in the White House

2008-06-30T09:10:00.002-04:00

The next president should create a new executive branch position: a civil liberties adviser.

The author writes,

Some may object to the idea of an official civil liberties adviser (or a Council of Civil Liberties Advisers analogous to the Council of Economic Advisers) on the ground that we already have an attorney general, a legal counselor to the president, an office of legal counsel and a host of other lawyers in the executive branch. (The president himself is often a lawyer.) But all these officials, presidents included, have mixed and often conflicting agendas and responsibilities. None is assigned the specific responsibility of articulating and advancing the cause of civil liberties.

I would add that in the current administration, the attorney general has been made a part of the campaign against civil liberties, a crony of the executive branch whose sole purpose is to justify whatever actions the president deems fit.

Normally this is not an idea I would embrace, much less endorse, but after the Bush years, I think it's almost a basic requirement of the next presidency. The American people need to be reassured that they actually have civil liberties, liberties which cannot be taken away on a whim, or ignored.

read more | digg story

11 Year Romanian Rape Victim to have Abortion in the UK

2008-06-27T09:32:00.002-04:00

The girl’s pregnancy was not discovered until 17 weeks – too late for an abortion under Romanian law, which allows terminations only up until the 14th week of pregnancy, and then only if the mother's life is endangered or the foetus is deformed. Some 20 Christian Orthodox groups had threatened to press charges if the girl was allowed to abort the foetus [but] the Romanian Orthodox Church said any decision on abortion should be left to the family.

read more | digg story

I believe this is where "pro-life" groups and the Church can often err. They talk about the right to life but they don't care about the life of an abused 11-year-old girl. The simple fact is that the girl has already suffered and should not be made to suffer more by giving birth to the product of her rape. Girls this age are not prepared to be having babies. I am glad that if some groups are opposed that at least the Romanian Orthodox Church itself has the wisdom to see this and I applaud their forbearance.

Idiot Reactionary Number 1: James Dobson

2008-06-24T13:43:00.003-04:00

Speaking of Christian forces of reaction, James Dobson, one of the more vociferous and shall I say, "uninformed" of the so-called Religious Right's spokesmen, is in the news again, this time attacking Obama:

"Which passages of scripture should guide our public policy?" Obama asks in the speech. "Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go with Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount?

"So before we get carried away, let's read our Bible now," Obama also said to cheers. "Folks haven't been reading their Bible."

Dobson's less than helpful analysis of Obama's very wise words was that "I think he's deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own world view, his own confused theology." Dobson later added that Obama is "dragging biblical understanding through the gutter."

Indeed. Biblical understanding. I think Mr. Dobson needs to apply himself a bit before he attempts to speak with such authority.

"Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal rather than religion-specific values," Obama said. "It requires their proposals be subject to argument and amenable to reason."

Dobson said the suggestion is an attempt to lead by the "lowest common denominator of morality."

Apropos of Dobson's idiotic tirade, I received this today from Americans United:

June 24, 2008

Dobson Attack On Religious Diversity, Secular Government Is Deplorable, Says Americans United

Religious Right Leader’s Views Are Extreme And Divisive, Says AU’s Lynn

Religious broadcaster James Dobson’s attack on religious diversity and secular government is deplorable, says Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Dobson, a leading Religious Right powerbroker, used his Focus on the Family national radio program today to dismiss American religious pluralism and to criticize the idea that laws must be secular, a concept that Dobson labeled a “fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution.”

Said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director, “Dobson is an extremist who wants the government to impose his fundamentalist viewpoint. He simply cannot accept the fact that America is a diverse nation that welcomes people of all faiths and none. His tirade today is deplorable and probably the most insensitive of his career.

“It is ironic that Dobson is holding himself out as some sort of authority on constitutional law and theology,” Lynn continued. “He is not a theologian or an attorney, and his lack of knowledge about those fields really shows.

“Our Constitution mandates the separation of religion and government,” Lynn concluded. “That means each of us is free to follow our own consciences. Dobson has no right to set himself up as some sort of spiritual dictator who gets to make personal decisions for the rest of us.”

Dobson’s remarks came in the context of an attack on a two-year-old Barack Obama speech on the role of religion in public life. Dobson has indicated that he will not vote for either Obama or John McCain for president.

Christians: No One Path to Salvation

2008-06-24T08:48:00.003-04:00

Americans of every religious stripe are considerably more tolerant of the beliefs of others than most of us might have assumed, according to a new poll released Monday. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life last year surveyed 35,000 Americans, & found that 70% of respondents agreed with the statement "Many religions can lead to eternal life."

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This is interesting news and perhaps demonstrates why Fundamentalists have become so strident. They're losing their grip on the flock. I've said before that I believe the current levels of Christian zeal are to be understood as reactionary. Of course, those same reactionaries will not see a display of tolerance in the poll results but backsliding, "going your own way" and being led astray by a secular Pagan society. The article bears this out. As Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, says, "the cultural context and the reality of pluralism has pulled many away from historic Christianity."

I hope the poll numbers are accurate. History has demonstrated that Pagans can live with Christians. For us, YHWH is just another god. Ancient Pagans had no trouble with adding another god to their pantheon. All gods exist after all. Our only problem was and is the expectation that we all believe the same thing they do. Traditionally, it is Christianity that is unable to accept other gods and other paths and Christianity has never been comfortable allowing the existence of alternatives to itself. This seems to be changing:

Analysts expressed some surprise at how far the tolerance needle has swung, but said the trend itself was foreseeable because of American Christians' increasing proximity to other faiths since immigration quotas were loosened in the 1960s. Says Rice's Lindsay, the author of Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite: "If you have a colleague who is Buddhist or your kid plays with a little boy who is Hindu, it changes your appreciation of the religious 'other.'"

Perhaps. And I hope so. Proximity to Pagans may have tempered all but the most ardent Yahwists in the Biblical era but as we know, the fanatics won out. Similarly, Christians learned to live beside their Pagan neighbors in the Roman Empire. Scholars have recently suggested that there was a great deal less friction than previously thought.[1] But as so often happens, the fanatics had their way and as Ramsay MacMullen observes, "Certainly the decision to practice the faith of one's fathers had become, for no-Christians, a somewhat risky business by the mid-fourth century in some cities and by the mid-fifth, in most."[2]

It was to remain risky for the next 1700 years, until the Enlightenment. It is my hope that this poll offers evidence that the advances made possible by the Enlightenment might be of a more permanent nature than hoped for by Christian Fundamentalists.

The following graph is from the article at the New York Times

Notes:

[1] H. A. Drake, "Lambs into Lions: Explaining Early Christian Intolerance" Past and Present, No. 153 (Nov., 1996), pp. 27-28.

[2] Ramsay MacMullen, Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries, 30.

George Carlin Dies At Age 71

2008-06-23T11:16:00.002-04:00

Comedian George Carlin died Sunday in Los Angeles.I mourn his passing, that of a great man unafraid of confronting unwelcome truths. We shall not see his like again.

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I thought afterward that I would throw in my favorite Carlin routine, as a tribute and because it is so relevant to what I do here:

The World

2008-06-22T14:38:00.002-04:00

I cam upon this quote this afternoon which, in light of my previous post, I thought interesting:

I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.
- Umberto Eco

Self-Enslavement

2008-06-22T08:15:00.002-04:00

"Our particular principles of religion are a subject of accountability to God alone. I inquire after no man's, and trouble none with mine." --Thomas Jefferson to Miles King, 1814. ME 14:198

"Go Your Own Way" is, besides being a very good Fleetwood Mac song, is a Christian catch-phrase, and a negative one at that. As I write this, I am thinking about our conversation here the other day, in which I referred to the brain-washing that goes on in that particular form of monotheism. I suppose it stands to reason that for the more fundamentalist types, going your own way would be a bad thing. Now, growing up as a Lutheran, we were not taught that it was a bad thing, though if I had asked I suppose it's conceivable that's the answer I might have been given.

By going your own way, a Christian walks outside of God's grace - there is a path that is to be followed, and if you step outside of that, if you no longer let your fellow church-members stick their nose in your business, you are casting off personal accountability and "going your own way." In other words, you are breaking away from the carefully placed and multiple layers of thought control failsafes and thinking for yourself. Or as they see it, putting your little sheep ass in the line of fire of the "wolves" - evil, secular, "Pagan" society.

A Christian blogger says it best: "Autonomy. It is the essence of Hell, it is sin's direst judgment, it is the Christian's most horrifying fear. Left to oneself, left to go one's own way."

It's an interesting way of looking at the world. But I suppose if you are anxious that everyone in your group remains brain-washed, you have to have systems in place to make sure they don't think for themselves. What's frightening to me is these people voluntarily put themselves in this situation. I've always said that Christianity wouldn't know personal responsibility if it hit them in the face. It's never their fault. It's society's, or secularism, or diversity or plurality. It's Satan. It's easier, I suppose, to be an automaton than to have autonomy. Just think what everybody else thinks, do what everybody else does.

As I thought about all this I tried to put it into a Pagan perspective. Certainly, everybody who has lived in a small town knows the tendency for everybody to be in everybody else's business. That's human nature. But we're not just talking about Mrs. Johnson down the street liking to do her jumping jacks in a Darth Vader costume. We're talking about thought. Not just actions, but thought. What you're thinking. How you're seeing the world. What you're thinking about God. Are you right with Jesus? I shiver as I think about it. I don't think about being "right" with Odin or Thor, or Freyr or Freyja, at least not in the sense the Christians are talking about, where we are given a choice of orthodoxy (right thought) or heresy (wrong thought). I mean, if I honor them with sacrifices, with libations, I suppose we could look at that as being "right" with my gods, but I'm can't see this translating over into Paganism.

Our Christian blogger says, "To be given up to our own heart's lusts and to be left to walk according to our own ideas is as dreadful a condition as a creature is capable of falling into in this world."

There is nothing remotely Pagan in that statement. It's completely anathema. Look at how thinking for yourself is equated with lust. Everything bad for these people is "sex". Look at how in the Hebrew Bible the act of Israel turning away from YHWH is described as "whoring after other gods." I personally don't see where thinking for himself turned Socrates to lust. He put his mind to good use. Christians make a big deal about him having to drink Hemlock but let's face it folks, Socrates wouldn't have lasted as long as he did in a Christian community. His ass would have been lighting a bonfire a long time before the city elders got fed up with his rabble-rousing. Yes, it's possible to go too far in any society, and this is the less we should draw from Socrates' misadventures. But Pagans were always free to think. There was no "revealed truth" - no idea at all of such a thing - and therefore no reason to fear "going your own way."

Our Christian blogger says,

The rebel imagines that he knows what is best for himself. He believes in his passions, his drives, his notions. The word of his viscera and glands is the word of his god. Anything that opposes his will is his enemy; anything that would thwart him or frustrate him, or force consequences upon him, is his sworn foe.

And his chief foe is God. Because "joy" to him is unbridled autonomy, unfettered self-will, God truly is a "cosmic killjoy."

But it doesn't have to be this way. God doesn't have to be seen as a "cosmic killjoy." Isn't the Christian God understood to have given humans the senses by which we understand and interact with the world? Doesn't this include any "drive" and any "notions"? Yet Christian doctrine has created a set of circumstances, rigidly enforced, which turns the world, the natural order of things, on their head. Personal accountability becomes an anti-accountability, a surrender of personal accountability to the majority, to the hive-mind. This, I submit, is not simply anti-Pagan in thinking but anti-human. Humans aren't bugs. I was brought up to believe that God gave me a brain to use it, not to surrender it. That, I suppose, is heresy to people like the Assembly of God (and others) but then as a Heathen friend always told me, Lutherans are the most Heathen of Christians. I suppose to the hard-core fundamentalists (who would no doubt agree) my upbringing in Christianity would be seen as proof-positive that you have to keep the hive-mind alive and enforce those thought controls. Allowed to think for ourselves, we do stray.

Our Christian blogger finishes his post with a plea: "Dear God, whatever You do, don't let us go our own way." I cannot imagine Marcus Aurelius writing something like this, for example. He might have wished not to abandon Reason or to lose control of his Passions, but he didn't feel he needed multiple levels of controls to ensure that he didn't stray from the straight and narrow. I don't know of any Pagan in history asking this of his god. Obviously, any sane person wants their gods on their side, or at least not against them. But this "Jesus take the wheel" thing, which I find so completely contrary to nature, is embraced by Christianity. When I hear that Carrie Underwood song, I keep thinking to myself that I wouldn't want a god who is going to direct my life to that extent. I can't imagine. I didn't even think that way as a Christian. I realize it was Benjamin Franklin and not Jesus who said "God helps them who help themselves" but don't you think this makes more sense?

And think about it. Jesus was an apocalyptic Jew. He thought his God was going to come down and put an end to the reign of evil and restore Israel to glory. His belief system was not "I Screwed Up My Life Anonymous" and he never claimed that if you completely screwed things up that you could simply surrender your free will to him and he would wave a magic wand and make it better. I don't recall that passage of scripture at all. But Christians do it all the time, "surrendering" their lives to Christ, putting themselves in his hands to direct them. Here too is a surrender of personal responsibility. How about you take personal responsibility for your lives and take your own damn wheel and steer into that spin and save yourself and your child in the backseat? Or better yet, be more careful when you're driving on ice. Don't put yourself into that position. But I know Christians who will do something completely stupid because they trust God will make sure it all turns out all right. Go to Chicago without money. God will make sure I get home. No, you will mooch off others and get them to buy gas for you to get home. That's not God's will, that's you taking advantage of the kindness in human nature.

Where is personal responsibility? It's out in the cold, out there on "Go your own way" Street, that street they don't want you to travel on.

It's that old "get out of jail" free card. You can mess up your life as badly as you can imagine, kill one, kill many, destroy lives and livelihoods, but at the end, you can always play that card. One of the Manson family is trying to play it now, in fact. Susan Atkins, formerly known as Sadie Mae Glutz, who murdered Susan Tate and her unborn child in an orgy of blood back in 1969, is now a born-again Christian. She's also dying. She doesn't want to die in prison. She turned her life over to Christ. So did the emperor Julian's uncle back in the fourth century. He was emperor at the time, and an ardent Christian. He killed Julian's family. But he also thought that if he gave his heart over to Christ all that would be forgiven. Julian, unsurprisingly, went his own way when he saw how distasteful and hypocritical the alternative was.

The hive-mind is always there, waiting, eager to assimilate. This mind-set, which deals in absolutes, which recognizes no shades of gray, is inimical to the Pagan worldview, which embraces diversity and plurality. By demonizing all that is outside itself, by fostering an us versus them mentality, "going your own way" is made to seem not a liberating act but an abandonment of God, a turning away. But we have to understand: the gods are always there. They set out no narrow path for us to follow, but lay the entire world out before us. All that is the world marks our path, not some tiny portion of it. We do not say, as does Christianity, that all that is within this spot is orthodoxy, and all that is without is heresy. "Do not step off the path" is not part of any Pagan credo for the simple reason that there is no path. But life-hating, nature-denying Christianity says everything that is part of nature is off-limits. That includes sex, of course, but also, as the focus of this article shows, independent thought and self-responsibility. Anything, in fact, which leads you to question the collective wisdom of the hive-mind. Anything which weakens the hold of its weekly brain-washing sessions.

Of course, we are assured that "go your own way" is giving yourself over to worldly temptation. Notice that the "world" itself is seen as bad, as outside of God, outside of that narrow little place where "Truth" reigns. We Pagans are as unclean to this mindset as we were to the authors of the Hebrew Bible. It is significant that the world is seen as Pagan, that our society is seen as Pagan. In a way, that's a compliment. For it is a society which, despite its flaws, embraces many Pagan virtues, free thought foremost among them, a society which embraces diversity and plurality and which upholds tolerance as a virtue. James Dobson, of Focus on the Family, states that,

"[Tolerance is a] kind of watchword of those who reject the concept of right and wrong…. It’s a kind of a desensitization to evil of all varieties. Everything has become acceptable to those who are tolerant."[1]

Compare Dobson's view of tolerance with that of Thomas Jefferson and decide for yourself which world you prefer:

"I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others."[2]

Dobson's is the viewpoint of a person who speaks in absolutes. He believes the world is this way, but it is not. Every Pagan understands this. Pagans always have. Our view has been demonized, but that does not mean it is wrong. I for one don't wish to live in James Dobson's "utopia."

Fortunately for us, neither did Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson saw as his greatest accomplishment the Virginia Statue for Religious Freedom.[3]

Thanks to the Enlightenment Christianity holds in such contempt, thanks to men like Thomas Jefferson, at no time since the days of Paganism have people in the West been so free to think what they wish. No longer do we have an all-powerful Church lurking over our shoulders, putting itself into our business, telling us what to think and killing us if we "go our own way." With every increasing stridency Christian authorities tell us this is bad, that we're turning away from God and his will. With ever increasing stridency we are told that Satan is at work, demonic forces attacking the Church and its family of believers, trying to tear it all apart.

But these natural forces are not evil. They are simply natural, and the unnatural will always be opposed to the natural. Christianity turned the world on its head and it is only to be expected that the world could only be made to stand on its head while everyone was willing to agree that the unnatural is natural and the natural is unnatural. But we are free to think for ourselves these days, to see things for what they are, to understand that the lies that have been told to us since the proclamation of the Theodosian Code, that the world that code created, is an artificial construct. The world isn't like that. The universe is not like that. The universe is not to be understood in an apocalyptic sense as a battle of good versus evil, of an all powerful god about to put his stamp on a world he has for some unknown reason surrendered to evil forces.

Long before the Theodosian Code there was a world that made sense. A world full of the divine, ruled over by beneficent gods and populated by their children who understood that nature is not bad - simply natural. That a wrathful god did not dictate natural disasters but that cause and effect caused flooding and storms. Paganism, at the time it was destroyed, had begun to grow up. It was not killed as a moribund thing that had outlived its usefulness but as a vibrant thing coming out of its youth and into its maturity. We as Pagans must break free of the Darwinian view that Paganism had its chance and failed. We have to break free of the idea that there is only one way to understand the universe. We do not have to try to fit into the Abrahamic mindset. Any effort along those lines will lead to failure. We must not conform. Instead, we must break free.

As Pagans, we must go our own way, and we must see that as a positive and not a negative. For we are not slaves to our gods and they are not wrathful, jealous masters. They love us as their children, and we return that love just as children love their parents. We do not do it out of fear, for that is the path to superstition. We do it out of obligation, because it is right, but also because it is natural to wish to honor your parents. The idea that we must conform to some narrow viewpoint, to limit ourselves to some small place beyond which we cannot stray, is antithetical to everything our ancestors understood to be true. We were not meant to be slaves of the gods, but their children. We are expected to grow and to learn and to live our own lives. We were not expected to surrender to some hive mind and surrender control of our lives to our gods. We turn to the gods for their help and their favor, yes, but they do not make the price of that help slavery.

Notes:

[1] James Dobson, Focus on the Family radio broadcast, Nov. 4, 1996.

[2] Thomas Jefferson to Edward Dowse, 1803. ME 10:378

[3] There are many places to find this statute online and many place to find Jefferson's comments on organized religion in general and Christianity in particular. Americans United hosts a copy at http://www.au.org/site/DocServer/va_statute_for_religious_freedom.pdf?docID=1321

Summer Solstice At Stonehenge

2008-06-21T16:05:00.002-04:00

Druids, New Agers and people just looking for a party are descending on Stonehenge on Friday to mark the mystical moment when the sun rises over the stones for the summer solstice.

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Teacher accused of burning cross on student's arm

2008-06-21T07:34:00.003-04:00

School administrators in Ohio voted Friday to begin the process of firing a middle school teacher accused of burning a cross into a student's arm and refusing to keep his religious beliefs out of the classroom.

John Freshwater was also reprimanded several times for refusing to move his Bible from his classroom desk and teaching creationism alongside evolution, according to the 15-page independent report. The report also cites evidence that Mr. Freshwater told his students that "science is wrong because the Bible states that homosexuality is a sin and so anyone who is gay chooses to be gay and is therefore a sinner."

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