Saturday, November 15, 2008

The 'real' DaVinci Code type scandal

Nag Hamadi,1946 Those scrolls are found.

How many have found their way to the secret vaults of the Catholic Church?

How many of the Scrolls have been allowed to be studied by modern academics?

Does 'The Gospel of Thomas:the secret sayings of Jesus", and other such scrolls, really threaten the fundamentals of the church - or do such documents more adequately reflect the way in which Christianity has been manipulated from within?

Can the institutionalised Christian Church survive the open study of ALL the scrolls documents from Nag Hamadi or must these remain 'protected from public view?'

"Unless drastic measures are taken at once,the greatest and most valuable of all Hebrew and Aramaic manuscript discoveries
is likely to become the academic scandal par excellence of the twentieth century."
-- Geza Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls: Qumran in Perspective (Fortress, 1981), p. 24.

All that which is hidden shall be revealed (St.Mark's Gospel)

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Thursday, November 13, 2008

Superior religions......... ?

saudi blasphemy law 

........................................see post below......................................

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Be aware of religious "rights"

"They undermine the standards codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the keystone of the United Nations, by granting greater rights to religions than to individuals, including those who choose to hold no faith – or who would seek to convert.

Another stark irony hangs over the UN special session this week. Saudi Arabia is one of the world's worst abusers of religious freedom, a fact recognized by the Bush administration when it named it a "country of particular concern" under the International Religious Freedom Act in 2004. The king couldn't hold such a conference at home, where conservative clerics no doubt would purge the guest list of Jews from Israel, Baha'is, and Ahmadis."

"The Saudis' dubious interfaith agenda at the UN" is the name of the article which discusses repressive and inhumane religious laws...and the rest of the article is here

It should be read regardless of what religion - or none - you hold.

But control-freak rules have always been the domain of insecure   "faiths",and especially those sects,

religio-politico orgs that seek to control a state, a country....or a world

Personally,I think that religions should earn the loving respect of the world community. This they can do by upholding modern standards of human rights and by so demonstrating their LOVE for humanity as to be a catalyst for lovingness.

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Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Obama on his Faith - 1

"And so, the biggest challenge, I think, is always maintaining your moral compass. Those are the conversations I'm having internally. I'm measuring my actions against that inner voice that for me at least is audible, is active, it tells me where I think I'm on track and where I think I'm off track. ...

Looking for, ... It's interesting, the most powerful political moments for me come when I feel like my actions are aligned with a certain truth. I can feel it. When I'm talking to a group and I'm saying something truthful, I can feel a power that comes out of those statements that is different than when I'm just being glib or clever"

You can read part of this interview which originally appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times in 2004 here
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Sunday, November 09, 2008

Christian contradiction

just in case there are some folks smugly smiling the 'I told you so'

thing over my last posting,I thought I would update with another event

from yesterday

holy sepulchre

you can read more HERE

Islam struggling to survive

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Comments have appeared previously in this blog concerning
the 'hijacking of Islam', and there is no doubt that the honour
and purity of Islam suffered a grievous wound on 11th September
2001.

The integrity of Islam,however,received a mortal blow at Beslan.

Throughout this blog,over these years, I have sought to demonstrate
the contradictions within faiths of all kinds and have especially sought
to counteract the amazingly distorted proclamations of many religions
that were based upon spurious and dubious interpretations of old
(and somewhat mystic) writings.

My main argument with Islam is the deafening silence of the Imams
and persons of high,even royal,influence within the Islamic world on
the subject of jihadist violence based,not on the Koran, but on extreme
interpretations of not always clearly translated hadiths. In the absence
of outrage at the murder of innocents, the imprisonment torture and
execution of even children..in the absence of that outrage,
silence becomes approval!

It appears that Islam is now beginning to understand it's loss of influence
in the lives of ordinary,decent,compassionate & peace loving Muslims
(which are,by far,the great majority of Islam and for whom I have love
and respect). In India,yesterday, 6000 muslim clerics issued a FATWA 
against terrorism. Amongst it's words were:

"Islam rejects all kinds of unjust violence, breach of peace, bloodshed,
murder and plunder and does not allow it in any form"......... the fatwa
written at the Darul Uloom Deoband, India's foremost Islamic seminary.
The Darul Uloom is one of the most revered Islamic centres in the world.

Here,at last, an authoritative and  respected centre of Islamic knowledge,
has made a clearly unambigious  (?) declaration...yet as with so many of
these 'fatwas' there is always an inherent stumbling block (as there also is
in many so-called Christian pronouncements). In this fatwa it is found
in the word 'unjust'


Why is it always so hard to simply say 'The One God is a God of
unconditional lovingness and violence against each other is a
denial of that lovingness,ergo,is not from God" ?

Is this too much to expect from any "religious expression" ?