How One Might Love Themselves

Once I am aware of my construct triggers my response is usually different because my awareness of the trigger necessarily changes it.

What I mean is that when I am innocent and an event triggers a reaction, I react. But when I am aware, the event asserts the notion in me that I articulate as "watch, I'm going to do something around this!".

Having articulated that feeling, the next action I take is to question the value of my first impulse. If that impulse would have been ill-advised, I will probably control it. The act of controlling it is not something that would have happened prior to my awareness of the action and it's consequences. This dynamic is why I am sure that self examination is a good thing. What I need are more experiences in which, when I am aware of the way I react to something, I feel proud of that first impulse and give myself permission to behave, in awareness, as I would have in innocence. That would be a form of personal validation.

Effect of Marital Quality on Children

Reading this thread triggers some profound memories for me. When my parents argued, I recall that mom was them so irritated by her small children that she would do things to them that would probably shock most people. This memory prompted me to do a little research on marital arguments ans their effect on children.

An interesting study presented by doctoral candidate Leavitt on marital quality and the effects on children tests three hypotheses. The questions are if marital arguments have an effect math scores, reading scores, or behavior.

His data suggests that there is not a strong connection between parental harmony and their children's academic performance. The data did, however, support the idea that parental harmony may influence the children's behavior.

Reference:
Leavitt, S. (n.d). Parents' marital quality and interactions in relation to child well-being. Retrieved from ProQuest: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses database.

A Reflection on Mans Role and Rituals

Focusing on rituals is an important spiritual consideration. I am reminded of my foyer where my sons walk in and take off their shoes. Being young, they tend to kick off their shoes only because they will be dunned by their old man if they do not. Thus, they enter and kick off their shoes. Being frivolous boys, however, their shoes land where-ever they land once pulled off, toe to heel as they rush by the transom.

Several times a day, I have occasion to re-enter our home and as I remove and assemble my shoes on the mat, I pick up their carelessly discarded foot coverings and place them, left and right, on the snow mat in the front hall. This, for me, is a ritual that affirms my place in the family. I must say that my ritual pales in comparison to a commitment to facing Mecca five times a day, genuflecting to God and praising His sacred name.

I suspect that somewhere between a constant vigilance to the Kaaba and the periodic assembling of my sons shoes is the place where God lives.

Just a very late night thought :)

Rivals or Brothers?

In examining an ecumenical basis for promoting interfaith communication the first point of opportunity must be the common ancestry these faiths have in their father Abraham. One of the few generalities one can be comfortable with is that all brothers are rivals for their father's affection.

Rivals or brothers, the Qur'an (Q.29.46) confirms that Muslims, Christians and Jews worship the same God. Indeed, they all view God as the creator of the world and all life on it and He is all powerful and all knowing.

Each of these faiths believe that God has sent mankind many prophets, messengers of His word. Each believes that in the end, God demands an accounting from His children for how they have conducted their lives.

In each of these religions, charity is a valued attribute. Prayer is a common central component in all these faiths. They all value honesty and social justice. They all promote loving ones fellow man and cherish the ideal of living life in peace.

In the most basic ideals, each of these religions can make a strong argument for being an ecumenical partner in a growing interfaith movement. The stumbling block that needs to be removed also happened to be a trait all three religions seem to have in common. It is articulated well in a 1992 publication by the World Council of Churches who note that Muslims and Christians tend to view themselves in the ideal and the other in the actual.

http://www.oikoumene.org/resources/documents/wcc-programmes/interreligious-dialogue-and-cooperation/interreligious-trust-and-respect/issues-in-christian-muslim-relations-ecumenical-considerations.html

What's in a Jet Contrail?

The discussion about Jet contrails, what's in them and what effect they are having on our planet is heating up along with our globe, mates!

A 1997 article in the Christian Science Monitor quoted a Patrick Minnis, an atmospheric scientist at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. as pointing out that when we look at the planet from outer space, some portion of the clouds we see might not be natural, but instead be the result of Jet exhaust. His work has proven that these contrails can expand over time to cover tens of thousands of square miles with unnatural cloud formations that certainly have an effect of some kind. What the effects are is still being studied.

In 1996, NASA conducted the Subsonic Aircraft Contrail and Cloud Effects Study (SUCCESS) whose findings aer published at http://www.espo.nasa.gov/success
Unfortunately, while the study did reveal the potential for sulfuric acid particles in the contrails, which hints at an acid rain source, the study produced more questions than answers.

Cowen, R. (1997, July 29). Those hazy jet trails may heat up the debate about global warming. Christian Science Monitor, p. 12. Retrieved from MasterFILE Premier database.

Two Dead Per Minute Due To War

According to the BBC, every minute, two people die in a war somewhere in the world.

In Chad the Libyans have attempted to create an Islamic republic by force.

In Lebanon, the islamic republic has strong sympathies for the Palestinians, who lands are occupied by Israel. Hostilities have included the loss of life at the beginning of this month between Israel and Lebanon.

Like Kosovo v. Serbian conflict, the conflict in Cyprus between the Muslim Turks and Christian Greeks has a religious components, it is really more of an ethnic conflict.

Syria is not directly at war with Israel but it has deployed hundreds of scud missiles along it's border which are aimed at israel.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban have destroyed historic buddhist idols and waged war on even less orthodox muslims in an attempt to impose an extreme Islamic orthodoxy.

Pakistan was formed specifically to give Islamic indians a self ruled land. The tensions between primarily Hindu India and Islamic Pakistan have always run high.

The United Nations maintains a middle-east peace keeping force headquartered in Jerusalem where Jew, Muslims and Christians all have very strong feelings and the risk of conflict is always high.

According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life; "Among the world's 25 most populous countries, Iran, Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan and India stand out as having the most restrictions." They also conclude that "Brazil, Japan, the United States, Italy, South Africa and the United Kingdom have the least."

There are wars in the furtherance of political independence such as in the Western Sahara but in general we fight over how we think others should worship.


http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/currentops.shtml
http://pewforum.org/Government/Global-Restrictions-on-Religion.aspx

Does one need to believe in the resurreciton to be Christian?

In consideration of the question, is a belief in the resurrection essential to being a Christian, I submit the following transitive idea. Non-Christians around the world believe in resurrection, therefore, the two notions are not married.

According to Ohyun Kwon "the primitive church clearly related the resurrection of Jesus to the old testament." In his research, he has personally studied the Old Testament, The Apocrypha, and the Pseudepigrapha, including the Dead Sea Scrolls in search of references to an early understanding of resurrection. In lieu of full disclosure, he explains that he was only able to personally study those that were written in Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic or Latin and those which were written in original languages like Ugaritic found him employing the assistance of his professors.

In his studies, he concludes that the idea of resurrection is not a revelation at the time of Jesus, nor is it imported from Egyptian, Iranian or Hellenistic influences. He suggests that there are fundamental elements of Judaism that form a basis for the germination and emergence of the Christian revelations and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He explains that early ideas of resurrection are "pregnant with the Canaanite mythology of Baal's dying and rising again (Ohyun K. 1984)"

Personally, this discovery transcends the question of needing to be christian to believe in resurrection. Images of John Barleycorn and Dionysus who are both ritualistically rent to pieces as are the fields and vines from which their spirits are derived. Although my denomination derives from the Christian doctrine, I am not a disciple of Jesus. I do, however, derive spiritual sustenance from the changing of the seasons and in particular from the blossoms on my pear tree each spring. For me, there is no greater miracle of resurrection than a quince bush in bloom.

KWON, O. (n.d). THE FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF RESURRECTION FAITH IN EARLY JUDAISM (APOCRYPHA, PSEUDEPIGRAPHA, OLD TESTAMENT; ISRAEL). Retrieved from ProQuest: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses database.

A Medical Excuse from prayer in schools

Psychologists tell us that the area of our brains that assists us in forming ethical choices doesn't begin to aggressively develop until we enter into our pubescent phase. They also tell us that the portions of the brain that evaluates facts as true, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, proves to be inconsistently developed in preadolescent brains.

The problem this presents for the teaching of religion in the schools is that the elementary educational system must, given the nature of the development of the human brain, be devoted to the introduction of and memorization of facts in evidence. You can teach a child that the sum of two twos is four, and you can teach them that in 2008 there were 228 million self-identified Christians reporting on the United States Census versus 9 million members of other religious faiths. You cannot, however, teach them that; there may be a religious trend in America based on the fact that a majority of the American population, reporting to their government, identified themselves as Christian. Our children are simply not physically able to assimilate the subtleties of this observation in a educationally significant and consistent manner.

Perhaps, one of the rights of passage into adulthood is the physical ability to distinguish between what one believes, and why one believes it.

citing:
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/population/religion.html (table 75)

Liu, D., Sabbagh, M., Gehring, W., & Wellman, H. (2009). Neural correlates of children's theory of mind development. Child Development, 80(2), 318-326. Retrieved from MEDLINE with Full Text database.

Do Atheists Care If Others View Them As Religious?

For Atheists who grapple more than academically with the question of atheism as a religion, the question is a matter of human rights. In this discussion I examined atheism as a religion, which, in my estimation does not seem to be terribly important to atheist except from the stand point of having the right not to be distracted by the question. Within this framework, the question of atheism as a religion is relegated to the realm of the legal as opposed to the theological, which may in turn be considered a branch of anthropology to the serious atheist.

As a question of legal precedence, Derek H. points out that the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the case of Kaufman v. McCaughtry (2005) that atheism is entitled to the same treatment that traditional religions receive under the Constitution of the United States of America.

This precedence introduces an interesting outline of the history of the "Right to Atheism" as outlined in a 2005 article from the Journal of Church and State, cited below.

For those who wish a quick feeling of numinous awe at the collected human genius of atheist minds, I offer the following URL:
http://brainz.org/50-most-brilliant-atheists-all-time/ perhaps if I eat a few more apples....


Derek H., D. (n.d). Is atheism a religion? Recent judicial perspectives on the constitutional meaning of "religion".(Kaufman v. McCaughtry). Journal of Church and State, 47(4), 707. Retrieved from Gale: Academic OneFile (PowerSearch) database.