Archive for the ‘Christianity’ Category

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Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

Buy tramadol online, I grew up in a small Kentucky town in the mid-90's, where we didn't yet have modern amenities like the Internet or a public library.  I was thus confined to drawing inspiration from whatever I could get my hands on at my high school library:  Kurt Vonnegut, Jack Kerouac, Robert Pirsig and yes, a bit of Ayn Rand (hey, every teenager has a phase).  But perhaps no reading had as much impact on my development, as a teenage conservative Christian, as archconservative evangelical theologian C. S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters, written as an imagined correspondence from an high-ranking demon (Screwtape) to his junior-ranking nephew, Wormwood, on assignment on the terrestrial plane attempting to seduce a human "patient" away from following "the Enemy" (God).  (Funny how in hell there are apparently "junior" demons who just joined the ranks, you know, recently....) In this passage, near the end of Chapter 4, Screwtape instructs his charge on how to lead people astray during the act of prayer:

...But even if [the Enemy] defeats your first attempts at misdirection, we have a subtler weapon.  The humans do not start from that direct perception of Him which we, unhappily, paypal tramadol online cheap, cannot avoid.  They have never known that ghastly luminosity, that stabbing and searing glare which makes the background of permanent pain in our lives.  If you look into your patient's mind when he is praying, you will not find that.  If you examine the object to which he is attending, you will find that it is a composite object containing many quite ridiculous ingredients.  There will be images derived from pictures of the Enemy as He appeared during the discreditable episode known as the Incarnation; there will be vaguer -- perhaps quite savage and puerile -- images associated with the other two Persons.  There will even be some of his own reverence (and of bodily sensations accompanying it) objectified and attributed to the object revered.  I have known cases where what the patient called his "God" was actually located -- up and to the left at the corner of the bedroom ceiling, or inside his own head, or in a crucifix on the wall.  But whatever the nature of the composite object, you must keep him praying to it -- to the thing that he has made, not the Person who has made him.  You may even encourage him to attach great importance to the correction and improvement of this composite object, and to keeping it steadily before his imagination during the whole prayer.  For if he ever comes to make the distinction, if he ever consciously directs his prayers "Not to what I think thou art but to what thou knowest thyself to be," our situation is, for the moment, Does Ultram Cause Weight Gain, desperate.  Once all his thoughts and images have been flung aside or, if retained, retained with a full recognition of their merely subjective nature, and if the man trusts himself to the completely real, eternal, invisible Presence, there with him in the room and never knowable by him as he is known by it -- why, then it is that the incalculable may occur.  In avoiding this situation -- this real nakedness of the soul in prayer -- you will be helped by the fact that the humans themselves do not desire it as much as they suppose.  There's such a thing as getting more than they bargained for!

To which the Tibetan Book of the Dead (only discovered, alas, years later) has the answer:

Alas. when the Uncertain Experiencing of Reality is dawning upon me here,
With every thought of fear or terror or awe for all [apparitional appearances] set aside,
May I recognize whatever [visions] appear, as the reflections of mine own consciousness;
May I know them to be of the nature of apparitions in the Bardo:
When at this all-important moment [of opportunity] of achieving a great end,
May I not fear the bands of Peaceful and Wrathful [Deities], mine own thought-forms.

Repeat thou these [verses] clearly, and remembering their significance as thou repeatest them, go forwards, [O nobly-born], buy tramadol online. Thereby, whatever visions of awe or terror appear, recognition is certain; and forget not this vital secret art lying therein.

O nobly-born, Buy Hydrochloride Tramadol, when thy body and mind were separating, thou must have experienced a glimpse of the Pure Truth, subtle, sparkling, bright, dazzling, glorious, and radiantly awesome, in appearance like a mirage moving across a landscape in spring-time in one continuous stream of vibrations. Be not daunted thereby, nor terrified, nor awed. Generic tramadol online without prescription, That is the radiance of thine own true nature. Buy tramadol online, Recognize it.

From the midst of that radiance, the natural sound of Reality, reverberating like a thousand thunders simultaneously sounding, will come. That is the natural sound of thine own real self. Be not daunted thereby, nor terrified, nor awed.


Whatever I think God is, can be nothing other than my own creation.  This goes for you too, Christianity.  Like all religions, you are an apparition of human creation.  Like everything that is, you are a figure on the unknowable ground of Reality, and by the mere fact of your existence, What Drug Class Is Tramadol, you carry the germ of the Divine.

But I'm sorry, I have to tell you this: Just about everything you do, Buddhism does as well or better.  Just sayin'.

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Sunday, January 4th, 2009

Barack Obama and Rick Warren No rx tramadol online no rx, President-elect Barack Obama has ignited a firestorm over his invitation of Pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation prayer at his inauguration on January 20.  Many pro-gay rights Obama supporters feel disgusted and betrayed by this choice, viewing Obama's invitation as a tacit endorsement of Warren's anti-homosexual views.  Protest groups are popping up on Facebook, and gay bloggers such as Dan Savage, John Aravosis, Pam Spaulding, and Rachel Maddow are up in arms.

It's not that I can't relate.   People concerned with equality and civil liberties have every right to take Warren to task for his views.  However, I think the degree of despair and outrage is perhaps somewhat overblown, and the people who feel that Obama has betrayed his gay and gay-friendly supporters by this invitation might want to take a second look before jumping back into the comfortable rut of knee-jerk cynicism.

Rick Warren has many faults.  A conservative Christian and bestselling author of The Purpose-Drive Life, Warren has a huge national audience and has been a key supporter in mobilizing his California-based church community to turn out for Proposition 8, which cheapened marriage by tearing apart loving families and adult soulmates who just want a quiet domestic life like normal people.  (Arguments against gay marriage that equate it with incest or pedophilia are deeply flawed.  Gay marriage does not grant new rights to anyone who could not get married already, it simply permits anyone who could get married already to marry anyone else who could also get married already.  Marriage remains the domain of consenting adult humans.  When it comes down to it, it's just not as radical a change as some make it out to be.)  Besides being a homophobe, Rick Warren is anti-woman and a young-earth Creationist with a problematic relationship to science.

But there's more to this picture than the cookie-cutter battle between right-wing bigots and the people they oppress.  I'm afraid people on both sides have oversimplified this controversy by failing to see the complexity inherent in the situation.  And so, I think some additional information that often gets overlooked might help to put this in perspective.

First of all, Warren's role at the inauguration has been greatly exaggerated.  He's been called "the prime-time player".  While Warren is indeed giving the opening prayer, he's not the only one praying at the ceremony.  Arguably more important is the role given to civil rights legend (and fierce gay-rights supporter) Rev. Joe Lowery, who is giving the benediction: the closing blessing, the prayer that truly sets the tone for the new administration, which bookends Warren's mainstream conservative views.  How do you think Rick Warren will feel going on after the San Francisco Boys' Chorus, or when Aretha Franklin takes the stage immediately after him?  Take a look at the event schedule for the day, and you'll quickly see that Warren's voice is merely one of many, a voice representing the formidable constituency of conservative Christianity in this country.  No matter how much we disagree with them, Mg Tramadol, excluding them doesn't make them go away; they're a part of this country too, and this invitation says that Obama won't treat them the way they treated us when they were in power.

Moreover, unlike traditional right-wing asshats such as James Dobson, Jerry Fallwell, and Pat Robertson, Rick Warren is a great choice to represent conservative Christians.  He has shown an openness to dialogue and a willingness to both listen to and work with people who disagree with him.  Not only has he drawn fire from the Left, he has been harshly criticized by many on the Right.  In a 2006 article titled "Why is Obama's evil in Rick Warren's pulpit?", WorldNetDaily commentator Kevin McCollough criticized Warren for inviting Obama to speak at his church, saying:

...Warren is ready to turn over the spiritual mantle to a man [Obama] who represents the views of Satan at worst or progressive anti-God liberals at best in most of his public positions on the greatest moral tests of our time.

Contrast that with a current screed against Rick Warren, coming from People for the American Way's Kathryn Kolbert:
...The sad truth is that this decision further elevates someone who has in recent weeks actively promoted legalized discrimination and denigrated the lives and relationships of millions of Americans. No rx tramadol online no rx, Rick Warren gets plenty of attention through his books and media appearances. He doesn't need or deserve this position of honor. There is no shortage of religious leaders who reflect the values on which President-elect Obama campaigned and who are working to advance the common good.

Though Kolbert's rhetoric is much milder in tone (for instance, she's not associating anyone with Satan), there's an astonishing similarity in the fundamentalist rhetoric on the Left and on the Right.  That's because there's a deep psychological similarity to all mindsets that shut out dissenting viewpoints.  These disagreements are not rational, they are emotional, and these reactions are indicative of people letting their emotions get the best of them.

Obama's own response to this controversy has frequently been dismissed out-of-hand, but I think it's worth taking a minute to parse:

 I think that it is no secret that I am a fierce advocate for equality for gay and lesbian Americans. It is something that I have been consistent on, and something that I intend to continue to be consistent on during my presidency.

What I've also said is that it is important for America to come together, even though we may have disagreements on certain social issues, no rx tramadol online no rx. And I would note that a couple of years ago, Acetaminophen Hcl Par Tramadol, I was invited to Rick Warren's church to speak, despite his awareness that I held views that were entirely contrary to his when it came to gay and lesbian rights, when it came to issues like abortion. Nevertheless, I had an opportunity to speak. And that dialogue, I think, is part of what my campaign's been all about; that we're not going to agree on every single issue, but what we have to do is to be able to create an atmosphere when we -- where we can disagree without being disagreeable and then focus on those things that we hold in common as Americans.

So Rick Warren has been invited to speak. No rx tramadol online no rx, Dr. Joseph Lowery, who has deeply contrasting views to Rick Warren on a whole host of issues, is also speaking. During the course of the entire inaugural festivities, there are going to be a wide range of viewpoints that are presented. And that's how it should be, because that's what America's about. That's part of the magic of this country, is that we are diverse and noisy and opinionated. And so, you know, that's the spirit in which, you know, we have put together what I think will be a terrific inauguration, no rx tramadol online no rx. And that's, hopefully, Online tramadol from canada, going to be a spirit that carries over into my administration.


Read what he said: giving people an opportunity to speak, listening to their concerns.  Because, like it or not, agree with them or not, opponents to gay rights have deep-seated emotional concerns that are only going to get worse by yelling at them, telling them they're wrong and they need to shut up.   Nobody reacts positively to that.  It feels good, but it's completely unproductive.  Do what you're going to do.  Live your life as you see fit, and don't let them tell you what to do, don't apologize for yourself for a second or let them hold dominion over you.  But at the same time, see them with pity, not with malice: these are deeply unhappy people, warped by emotional forces beyond their control, clinging to an ideology they don't entirely understand, shaped by evolutionary pressures they don't even vaguely grasp.  View them as you would have them view Palestinian extremists.

Remember, the force holding us back from equality and civil rights is not an evil corporation.  It is not a political faction.  It is not a corrupt politician or a fringe radical group.  It is a built-in element of the human psyche that has been overstimulated by a traditional fundamentalist ideology.  The problem is deeper than gay rights or any other political cause.  This problem is itself the very deep rift in our society, and the solution calls for healing the American propensity toward fundamentalism of all stripes.  Have you taken the plank out of your own eye first.

In the fundamentalist mindset, those who disagree with us are evil.  But evil is not an explanatory concept.  It helps us feel good about our right(eous)ness, but it does nothing to address the concerns of the Other or the root causes of their sometimes violent distress; as we have seen in right-wing American rhetoric around Iraq and 9/11, it dangerously oversimplifies.  There will be some individuals who are unreachable, who are so calloused and so cowed by fear and hatred that they may never come around.  The work of love and compassion always takes longer than we want it to; it demands more of us - more understanding, more patience, generic tramadol online, more kindness, more self-sacrifice - than yelling and picketing.  This is not a war that is won by fighting, because it is a war that has gone on for centuries, for millenia.  As our economy is on the brink of a collapse, we risk seeing our society lose a lot of its hard-earned civil rights gains to the emergency of the moment, to a despairing public heading back to church in bad times.

And so it is incumbent on us - and on smart, post-partisan people like Obama - to reach out to those we disagree with with love and compassion, even as they lash out against us.  (It's a lot more fun to get outraged at people who fight back, and this is why it's helpful to turn the other cheek.)   Of course, we should still hold Obama's feet to the fire to move legislation where it counts; we can't take for granted that he will in fact carry through on his promises.  While Obama sadly does not support marriage equality, his plans for LGBT rights are more ambitious and detailed than any national candidate's before him. So if you were surprised by Obama's choice of someone you don't agree with, if you wish you could take back your vote, if this action is inconsistent with the Obama you thought you were getting, then you haven't been paying attention to what he's been saying all along.  This is what it looks like to sit down with your enemies without preconditions.  This is what it looks like to set an example for the path forward: not to give in to people who would do you harm, but to understand them, and hopefully speak to their fears and concerns.  This is not about compromise.  This is not giving in.  This is about persuasion.

As Andrew Sullivan says:

...The truth is: if we cannot engage a Rick Warren on the question of our equality, we may secure a narrow and bitter victory in some states (just as the Christianists won a narrow and bitter victory in California in November). But we will not win the bigger argument and our victories will lack the moral legitimacy they deserve.

Only we can do this.  We cannot expect people given over to small-minded ideology to be able to figure out how to heal this country, or understand the causes of their own discontent.  Only we - not trapped by ideological constraints, What Chemicals Are In Tramadol, viewing the world through the eyes of our enemies, availing ourselves of the full spectrum of human experience, knowledge, and expression - can figure out how to build a bridge for these frightened, trapped people, and lead them to the other side.

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Monday, December 15th, 2008

Buddhist tantric union: time and eternity

Overnight tramadol overnight delivery, Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.

I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, Drugs Similar To Ultram, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon. Paypal tramadol online without prescription, Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves' eyes, Tramadol Overdose.

Behold, thou art fair, Tramadol Used To Treat, my beloved, yea, pleasant: also our bed is green.


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The above image, from the Buddhist tantric tradition, is allegorical in exactly the same way that Song of Solomon is allegorical: while superficially erotic, the image illustrates the yearning of the temporal and finite (female) for the eternal and infinite (male).  The Christian tradition views mankind as the Bride of Christ; the Buddhist tradition views the seeker as the temporal incarnation of an eternal force.  Each one expresses the same root tension inherent in our condition.

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Monday, December 15th, 2008

Koch Snowflake, Star of David

Overnight tramadol online overnight, [Early Hillel] rabbis liked to point out that King Solomon used three thousand parables to illustrate every single verse of the Torah, and could give a thousand and five interpretations of each parable -- which meant that there were three million, fifteen thousand possible expositions of each unit of scripture!


Indeed, a text that could not be radically reinterpreted to meet the needs of the day was dead; the written words of scripture had to be revitalized by constant exegesis.  Only then could they reveal the divine presence latent within God's Torah.

-- Karen Armstrong: The Bible: A Biography, p. 82

One serious implication of the "democratization" of the post-Lutheran Protestant movement is a tendency toward populist exegesis of scripture.  This has given rise to an unprecedented degree of overt literalism in interpretation; naturally so, since the literal, Blog Tramadol, surface-level reading is the most obvious level of meaning, Purchase tramadol no rx, and the easiest to grasp.  But when the Bible, or any holy text, is approached not as a mystery to be contemplated and studied over a lifetime, Tramadol Withdrawal, but rather as a quick reference guide to life's ills with easy, Tramadol Withdrawal Symptom, one-size-fits-all answers ready for any situation, time, or place, Painkiller Tramadol, we can avoid uncomfortable reflection about ourselves and the fact that our first impulse in a situation isn't always the right one.  The Bible: Use it to confirm what you already know.  Anything beyond that is too much work.

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Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008

Order tramadol overnight delivery, Finding many popular secular critiques of "religion" as lacking in thought, substance, and reflection as a dog barking at the ocean, lately I've been reading Burton Mack's The Christian Myth: Origins, Logic, and Legacy for a grasp on early Christian origins.  He evaluates the current terrain of New Testament studies, littered with apologists looking for the "real" Jesus, and concludes that a new approach is needed.  He then proceeds to lay out a 5-point theory of religion that goes quite far in describing the shape of the terrain of religious understanding that we are now exploring in the context of mythic thinking and social theory.  This extended quote is worth the read (pp. 67-70):

To account for the emergence of Christianity, including the formation of groups and congregations, the development of their various practices and rituals, the production of their mythologies, and the writing of their literature requires a radical shift in thinking and theory. That is because the theory of religion implicit in the field cannot even ask about, much less account for the motivations involved in the investments early Christians made in their new associations.  To account for the data that now confronts the New Testament scholar, a theory of religion is needed that can explain Christian origins as a thoughtful, collective human construction, instead of the result of human response to an overwhelming activity on the part of a god.  Only a theory that gives the people their due, a theory firmly anchored in a social and cultural anthropology, capable of sustaining a conversation with the humanities, can do that.

There are some common features to the many theories of religion now being formulated and tested in the humanities.  I would like to suggest five such features that, Experience Snort Tramadol, taken as a set, provide a perspective on religion that can be used as a kind of lens or working hypothesis for getting started on a collaborative redescription project.

(1) Religion is a social construct.  The notion of personal religious experience is inadequate as a point of departure for defining religion or developing a theory of religion.  That individuals have religious experiences is not in doubt.  But individuals in any culture experience religion in many different ways.  The more interesting phenomena are the myths, rituals, symbols, beliefs and patterns of thinking that are shared by a people.  These cultural constructs can be experienced and manipulated in a variety of ways by individuals, but it is their self-evident status as common cultural coin that marks them as the religion of a people.  ... We need to ask about the reasons for and the processes whereby their myths and rituals were first constructed and agreed upon, and how they came to be taken for granted.  It is the social factor, the possibilities and rewards for coming to these agreements as groups in the context of a social history rife with other peoples, groups, and religions, that we need to understand, order tramadol overnight delivery.

(2) Social formation defines the human enterprise.  Constructing societies large and small is what people do.  It is a fragile, collective craft requiring enormous amounts of negotiation, experimentation, living together, and talking.  And it invariably results in very complex arrangements of relationships, agreements reached on better and less better ways to do things, and practices established to pass on the knowledge and skills accumulated in the process.  Social formation is hard work, creates as many tensions as rewards, and is overkill if thought of simply as a strategy for survival.  But despite the risks and repeated disasters, online tramadol, watching each other and talking about each other is what we humans find most interesting.  If so, a social anthropology will be required to counter the endemic personalisms that pervade Christian mentality, and ask about the reasons for and the processes whereby early Christian myths and rituals were first conceived and agreed upon.  What if the Jesus schools and christos groups were attractive as intentional experiments in social formation and mythmaking.

(3) Myths are more than fascinating fantasies, fuzzy memories, misguided science, or collective debris.  Myths acknowledge the collective gifts and constraints of the past and create a space for thinking critically about the present state of a group's life together. Myths are good for creating marvelous narrative worlds in which to stretch the imagination and work out theoretical equations.  They are also good for defining a group's place and identity in relation to a larger world.  This view of myth means that early Christians may not have entertained fantastic mythologies because they were overwhelmed by encounters with a god or a son of God, but because they wanted to comprehend and justify the investments in social formations for which only a god could render an account.  That is what myths can do.  So the questions to ask of these early Christians have to do with what social intelectual benefits they got from the way they dared to imagine their pasts and their worlds the way they did.

(4) Rituals are more than divine placations or magical attempts to channel the powers of the gods.  Rituals are the way humans concentrate attention on some activity or event of some significance to a group, and observe its performance apart from normal practice.  Much can happen at a ritual, for rituals are social occasions, require roles, invite attendance, Description Pill Tramadol, display skills, confirm loyalties, trigger commitments, evoke thoughtfulness, and reconstitute the structure of a group.  In the case of Christian origins, then, it will be important to know what activities were chosen for ritual performance, why they were chosen, how they were performed, and what such observance may have achieved for the group.  I can't resist the temptation to remark that, as far as I can tell, the supper texts in the New Testament were not taken as scripts for "reenactment" until the third century.  If so, scholar of Christian origins have a wonderfully elongated process of ritualization to describe and an interesting quest for theory to explain it.

(5) Mythmaking and social formation go together.  In a stable situation, where pressure to chnge a way of life is not serious, a people's myths and social structure may not need constant tinkering.  But when circumstances change and the social fabric tears, Tramadol Side Effects, and especially in the case of a clash of cultures, the pace quickens, for the older plots will need revision and the social structure will need repair.  Experimentation and bricolage mark the ways in which myths get rearranged and groups reform. Except for the case of an obvious pathology, even the most daring social experiments and the most fantastic mythic constructs turn out to be thoughtful and constructive attempts to regain sanity in a social situation that threatens human well-being.  In the case of early Christians, this proposition means that the making of their myths and the processes of forming social groups should be looked at together as constructive and thoughtful human activities.  And whenever there is a chance to catch sight of both mythmaking and social formation happening at the same time in the same place, the relationship of one to the other should be explored.


It saddens me to see so many atheists bashing their heads against the wall, unaware that the processes of social formation and mythmaking outlined above likewise apply to them.  Religion - and Christianity - makes perfect sense when you realize that people believe in these systems in spite of, not because of, logic, reason, and facts; the social benefits of opting in to the mythic systems of a welcoming community overwhelm the benefits of cold, hard, solitary logic.  We are social creatures, Tramadol Hcl 50 Mg Tab, and any "ism" that fails to address the human desire for community will utterly fail, no matter how many facts it has on its side.

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Saturday, November 29th, 2008

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Saturday, November 29th, 2008

Buy tramadol online without prescription, If we want to render a cultural critique, it is the relationship of the Christ of the gospel to the cultures that pattern our social constructions that needs to be addressed. Skirting the narrative gospels to get "back" to the historical Jesus will not work. No reconstruction of the historical Jesus can account for the narrative gospel in the first place, or challenge the narrative gospels and the portrayal of Jesus they present in the popular imagination. The current quest for the historical Jesus does not raise questions about the supposed reasons for the importance of the historical Jesus, Which Is Better Vicodin Ultram. It does not raise questions about the effective difference Christianity makes as a social presence and cultural influence in our world. It has not asked what it is about the Christian gospel and religion that is inappropriate, inadequate, troubling, or even dangerous as we face the social and cultural issues of our time, buy tramadol online without prescription. New Testament scholars have not found a way to broach, much less discuss questions such as these in the public forum. Tramadol Hcl-acetaminoph En, The quest for the historical Jesus actually avoids these questions. It seeks, on the model of the Protestant reformation, to leap-frog over the "wrongheaded" myths and rituals of the Christian churches to land at the beginning where the pure, clean impulse of an uncontaminated Jesus can rectify and rejuvenate Christian faith, 85 Buy Tramadol. That is mythic thinking with an apron-string attachment to Christian mentality. Buy tramadol online without prescription, It will not produce a scholarly account of Christian origins. And it will not produce a rejuvenated (Christian) spirituality unbeholden to the gospel accounts."

-- Burton Mack in Christian Myth: Origins, Logic, Ultram Detoxification, and Legacy, pp. 39-40

Amen. The existence or non-existence of a historical Jesus does not address the shortcomings of the vast majority of people of Christian faith in falling short of the ideals of their leader, and neither does it speak to the acts of goodwill and generosity and sacrifice that have been made on his behalf, Tramadol Ultram. It most certainly does not speak to the relevance and holy insight of the red words in the New Testament; in fact, it utterly distracts from and profanes them. We're all just human beings, and some do a better job than others.

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Thursday, November 27th, 2008


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Thursday, November 13th, 2008

Bill Maher: Religulous

Order tramadol bars, For some interpreters, such as philosopher Daniel Dennett and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, science reveals religious beliefs to be malignant memes gnawing their way through believers' brains, diseases needing to be cured. Yet for many of the researchers closest to this work, the recognition that religion has biological roots only makes it harder to talk about severing it from ourselves.

This must have come as a disappointment to comedian and Real Time host Bill Maher, who traveled the world making fun of religious people for his documentary Religulous. Standing at the prophesied site of Armageddon — 

Meggido, Israel — 

Maher indicts religion as a "neurological disorder" that causes the afflicted to wish for apocalyptic death.

Maher interviewed Dean Hamer and Andrew Newberg, Can Ultram Give You Seizures, two scientists who study the biology of religion, to back up his anti-religious polemic; neither says much of substance in the film. Hamer, a geneticist at the National Institutes of Health, is the author of The God Gene, which posits that human beings are genetically predisposed for "self-transcendence," the feeling that there is something beyond ordinary experience, order tramadol bars. In other words, we're hard-wired to believe in a higher power. In his research, Hamer noticed a correlation between personality survey data and different alleles of the gene VMAT2, What Is Prescription Ultram, which codes for an emotion-regulating brain chemical. In the course of human evolution, he suspects, this gene helped foster "an innate sense of optimism" that had adaptive benefits.

Since the NIH doesn't sanction Hamer's religion research, Maher interviewed Hamer at a lab at American University. Order tramadol bars, During the interview, "[Maher] really kept on pushing me to say that science proves religion is wrong," Hamer recalls. "And I kept on trying to push back and say, 'Science proves that people have an innate desire for religion.'"


from Seed Magazine, Acetaminophen Tramadol Hcl, via 3qd.

My takeaway from seeing Religulous was that Maher was, on the whole, more even-handed than someone like Dawkins has been in his documentaries; he was able to treat people with whom he disagreed with a modicum of human respect, even as he made fun of their beliefs.  But the film was light on science and research from experts in fields like neuroscience and psychology, and heavy on unfounded opinion. Hcl Tab Tramadol, Likewise, Dawkins, in his recent crusade against Harry Potter, is cited saying: "I think looking back to my own childhood, the fact that so many of the stories I read allowed the possibility of frogs turning into princes, whether that has a sort of insidious affect on rationality, I'm not sure. Perhaps it's something for research."  But Dr, sample tramadol online cheap. Dawkins, there is already plenty of researchReams of it.  It just doesn't say what you wish it did.

There seems to be a pattern emerging: secular fundamentalists like Maher and Dawkins seek to use the cover of science to advance their foregone conclusions, rather than looking objectively at what the evidence presents; there's a deadly certainty here that is the actual culprit of radical fundamentalism.  In Dawkins' words: "Always look at the evidence.".

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Thursday, October 30th, 2008

Buy tramadol online cheap, In case you haven't seen, irony is apparently not dead:

Jesus People Pray to a Golden Calf

"They have quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them. They have made for themselves a molten calf, and have worshiped it and have sacrificed to it and said, 'This is your god, O Israel, purchase tramadol from canada, who brought you up from the land of Egypt!'"

The LORD said to Moses, "I have seen this people, and behold, Purchase tramadol online without prescription, they are an obstinate people.

...
It came about, as soon as Moses came near the camp, that he saw the calf and the dancing; and Moses' anger burned, Snorting Tramadol, and he threw the tablets from his hands and shattered them at the foot of the mountain.

He took the calf which they had made and burned it with fire, and ground it to powder, Tramadol Tablets, and scattered it over the surface of the water and made the sons of Israel drink it.

Then Moses said to Aaron, "What did this people do to you, that you have brought such great sin upon them?"

Aaron said, "Do not let the anger of my lord burn; you know the people yourself, Ropinirole Hydrochloride, that they are prone to evil.

-- Exodus 32:8-9, 19-22


via Wonkette.

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