The view from our front deck this morning shortly after the early morning fog lifted.  No ice on Long Bay (Lake of the Woods) yet, but some of the smaller lakes have frozen over.

More on the Charter of Values

I've been thinking about this thing, and listening to what many people had to say on "Cross-Country Check-up" on CBC Radio.

I haven't changed my fundamental viewpoint, but I am more convinced than ever that this is something that the Government should'ntt be meddling in. Sure, when the question of Shira Law comes up, it should be squashed quickly and completely. The same with other threats to our way of life.  But, religious symbols in themselves, (or, more accurately, cultural symbols), don't do us any harm and trying to suppress them will merely cause bitterness and strengthen their resolve to uphold their faith.

Better to just ignore what doesn't interfere with us, and eventually, the human race will grow up and leave these myths called religions behind it.... at least I hope so, otherwise we are destined to forever live in the shadow of the cave.

Quebec's Charter of Values

The current debate in Quebec is interesting.   I suspect that it is a response to what is happening in many European countries, where Muslims are hijacking religious and cultural values in their adopted countries.

That certainly is a very valid concern. Islam, while not unique in this regard, is nevertheless one of the few religions that takes the view that if the religion is valid, then you cannot let it live only in the mosque, but must allow it to permeate your whole life.  Christians don’t take this view.  They seem to realize, whether they admit it or not, that their religion has no validity in the real world.

However, the Quebec response is a curtailment of civil rights for everyone,  exactly what they are afraid that Muslims would ultimately do.  It’s a natural response to bullies, hit back (not a bad idea actually), but in this case they are hitting back at everybody.

A better tactic, I think, would be to put in place laws and policies that make sure that each and every person can pursue their own beliefs but are prevented from imposing them in any way on others. That is, after all the real concern, and it is a valid one, concerning what is happening in England and other European countries, where Muslims have virtually taken over some districts and are verbally and physically attacking anyone that violates what they consider to be Muslim values.

In general, I don't agree with a general restriction of rights. The burka, however, is a more complicated issue. Total face covering provides anonymity, which fundamentally hides or conceals your identity or individuality. I suppose that, if that is your desire, the state should not deny you the right to do so, but, you must be ready to accept reasonable consequences of your actions, such as loss of some rights and services.

I think that shop owners, for example, should be allowed to deny service, or even access, to those wearing a burka, after all, how could you be sure it isn't a suicide bomber in duisgise?

Some services offered by the state simply cannot be provided anonymously, services such as passports, drivers licenses, etc., where identification is essential. Similarly, many of the rights individuals have in a court of law should also be denied.  In general, if you do not wish to interact with society as an individual, society should not have to treat you as one.

This approach would be more in keeping with Canadian values.  After all, our country is founded on freedom for everyone and we must make sure that neither religious fundamentalists nor fearful governments erode those values. So I find it incongruous that the Quebec Government should call this misguided legislation a "Charter of Values" when it so obviously is in opposition to Canada's values. But then, the current Quebec Government doesn't consider themselves to be part of Canada does it.

My "belief"

Ignosticism or igtheism is the theological position that every other theological position (including agnosticism and atheism) assumes too much about the concept of God and many other theological concepts.

It can be defined as encompassing two related views about the existence of God:

1. The view that a coherent definition of God must be presented before the question of the existence of God can be meaningfully discussed. Furthermore, if that definition is unfalsifiable, the ignostic takes the theological noncognitivist position that the question of the existence of God (per that definition) is meaningless. In this case, the concept of God is not considered meaningless; the term "God" is considered meaningless.
2. The second view is synonymous with theological noncognitivism, and skips the step of first asking "What is meant by 'God'?" before proclaiming the original question "Does God exist?" as meaningless.

Some philosophers have seen ignosticism as a variation of agnosticism or atheism,^[1] while others have considered it to be distinct. An ignostic maintains that he cannot even say whether he is a theist or an atheist until a sufficient definition of theism is put forth.

From Wikipedia 

NEWTOWN TRAGEDY

The news bulletins tell you that a “gunman” has entered a school and killed 20 children and 6 adults.

Simple statistics but not so to assimilate as they crash into your uncomprehending brain.

The details trickle in.  The children are very young; 5 to 10 years old. (Would it have been less tragic if they had been older?)

You learn that he used two hand guns and a 222 Bushmaster, a semi-automatic assault rifle that can be purchased in US gun stores for under $400. A rifle with a muzzle velocity of 3200 ft/sec, and an effective range of 600 meters.  A very effective weapon for killing 5 year olds.

You learn that aside from three children who were still alive, the police needed no medical assistance....all the others were dead. All struck by more than one bullet.

You learn that he first killed his own mother, that when he got into the school the first person to die was the very brave principle who put herself between the madman and her children

The details pile up. You try to assimilate them all, to understand, to make sense of it.  WHY? Is the thought that first come to your mind.  Why kill children?  If he wanted to end his own life, why take children with him?

Slowly, however, your mind recovers somewhat from the initial shock and you begin to think about what must have taken place in those classrooms.  That is when the real horror begins to dawn on you.

That’s when you express admiration for the police for having the foresight to have the surviving children hold hands and close their eyes are they were led out of the school.

But the horror doesn’t end there.  You learn that the gun lobby response is to suggest that the answer to guns is more guns, that had teachers been armed, the death toll would have been much less.  No suggestion that maybe, just maybe, the average citizen doesn’t really need a high-powered assault rifle. Of course, he still could have killed them all with the two registered handguns, couldn't he.

But gun control isn’t the real answer anyway, is it? If people want to kill, they will find guns.  And it’s when you finally hear the “good people”, even the President, who should know better, suggesting gun control as the answer to these tragedies that the real horror becomes apparent… because in that moment, you realize that this is not the last tragedy you will hear about, that there will be more… and you wonder how long it will take for people to wake up to the fact that its their very way of life, their “culture” that is fundamentally sick.

This is a culture in which individual freedoms and profit trump all other concerns. This is a culture that idolizes greed and selfishness, a culture that has been well trained by members of the Rand Corporation, among others.

And the really sad part is that this miasmic culture has spread its poisonous, selfish economic attitudes throughout the world.  Their tentacles probe into every society on earth, corrupting and poisoning whatever they touch.  It’s doubly sad to realize that this country, that considers itself to be the world’s policeman, behaves very much like an immature, selfish, spoiled child... not the kind of policeman I would like to see on my block.

When is a religion a Hate Group?

I have often thought that one of the differences between Christianity and the Muslim faith is that Christians, by and large, are able to ignore the nastier bits of the bible whereas many Muslims are unable to ignore the nastier bits in the Koran, and, believe me, there are plenty of nasties in both books.

However, I'm beginning to think I was wrong, that Christians, at lest some of them, are quite willing to take the nasty bits to heart and actually act upon them.

The really sad part is that these people can avoid being labelled a "hate group" because its their "religion". Well it's religion to the fundamentalist Muslims too.

Here is a very disturbing article published in the Guardian.

• Katherine Stewart
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 30 May 2012 15.15 B

The Bible has thousands of passages that may serve as the basis for instruction and inspiration. Not all of them are appropriate in all circumstances.

The story of Saul and the Amalekites is a case in point. It's not a pretty story, and it is often used by people who don't intend to do pretty things. In the book of 1 Samuel (15:3), God said to Saul:

"Now go, attack the Amalekites, and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys."

Saul dutifully exterminated the women, the children, the babies and all of the men – but then he spared the king. He also saved some of the tastier looking calves and lambs. God was furious with him for his failure to finish the job.

The story of the Amalekites has been used to justify genocide throughout the ages. According to Pennsylvania State UniversityProfessor Philip Jenkins, a contributing editor for the American Conservative, the Puritans used this passage when they wanted to get rid of the Native American tribes. Catholics used it against Protestants, Protestants against Catholics. "In Rwanda in 1994, Hutu preachers invoked King Saul's memory to justify the total slaughter of their Tutsi neighbors," writes Jenkins in his 2011 book, Laying Down the Sword: Why We Can't Ignore the Bible's Violent Verses (HarperCollins).

This fall, more than 100,000 American public school children, ranging in age from four to 12, are scheduled to receive instruction in the lessons of Saul and the Amalekites in the comfort of their own public school classrooms. The instruction, which features in the second week of a weekly "Bible study" course, will come from the Good News Club, an after-school program sponsored by a group called the Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF). The aim of the CEF is to convert young children to a fundamentalist form of the Christian faith and recruit their peers to the club.

There are now over 3,200 clubs in public elementary schools, up more than sevenfold since the 2001 supreme court decision, Good News Club v Milford Central School, effectively required schools to include such clubs in their after-school programing.

The CEF has been teaching the story of the Amalekites at least since 1973. In its earlier curriculum materials, CEF was euphemistic about the bloodshed, saying simply that "the Amalekites were completely defeated." In the most recent version of the curriculum, however, the group is quite eager to drive the message home to its elementary school students. The first thing the curriculum makes clear is that if God gives instructions to kill a group of people, you must kill every last one:

"You are to go and completely destroy the Amalekites (AM-uh-leck-ites) – people, animals, every living thing. Nothing shall be left."

"That was pretty clear, wasn't it?" the manual tells the teachers to say to the kids.

Even more important, the Good News Club wants the children to know, the Amalakites were targeted for destruction on account of their religion, or lack of it. The instruction manual reads:

"The Amalekites had heard about Israel's true and living God many years before, but they refused to believe in him. The Amalekites refused to believe in God and God had promised punishment."

The instruction manual goes on to champion obedience in all things. In fact, pretty much every lesson that the Good News Club gives involves reminding children that they must, at all costs, obey. If God tells you to kill nonbelievers, he really wants you to kill them all. No questions asked, no exceptions allowed.

Asking if Saul would "pass the test" of obedience, the text points to Saul's failure to annihilate every last Amalekite, posing the rhetorical question:

"If you are asked to do something, how much of it do you need to do before you can say, 'I did it!'?"

"If only Saul had been willing to seek God for strength to obey!" the lesson concludes.

A review question in the textbook seeks to drive the point home further:

"How did King Saul only partly obey God when he attacked the Amalekites? (He did not completely destroy as God had commanded, he kept the king and some of the animals alive.)"

The CEF and the legal advocacy groups that have been responsible for its tremendous success over the past ten years are determined to "Knock down all doors, all the barriers, to all 65,000 public elementary schools in America and take the Gospel to this open mission field now! Not later, now!" in the words of a keynote speaker at the CEF's national convention in 2010. The CEF wants to operate in the public schools, rather than in churches, because they know that young children associate the public schools with authority and are unable to distinguish between activities that take place in a school and those that are sponsored by the school.

In the majority opinion that opened the door to Good News Clubs, supreme court Justice Clarence Thomas reasoned that the activities of the CEF were not really religious, after all. He said that they could be characterized, for legal purposes, "as the teaching of morals and character development from a particular viewpoint".

As Justices Souter and Stevens pointed out in their dissents, however, the claim is preposterous: the CEF plainly aims to teach religious doctrines and conduct services of worship. Thomas's claim is particularly ironic in view of the fact that the CEF makes quite clear its intent to teach that no amount of moral or ethical behavior (pdf) can spare a nonbeliever from an eternity in hell.

Good News Clubs should not be in America's public elementary schools. As I explain in my book, The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children, the club exists mainly to give small children the false impression that their public school supports a particular creed. The clubs' presence has produced a paradoxical entanglement of church and state that has ripped apart communities, degraded public education, and undermined religious freedom.

The CEF's new emphasis on the genocide of nonbelievers makes a bad situation worse. Exterminist rhetoric has been on the rise among some segments of the far right, including some religious groups. At what point do we start taking talk of genocide seriously? How would we feel about a nonreligious group that instructs its students that if they should ever receive an order to commit genocide, they should fulfill it to the letter?

And finally, when does a religious group qualify as a "hate group"?

Snake bite anyone?

Here's one to brighten up your day:

A pastor in West Virginia who apparently takes (took) Mark 16:17-18 very seriously was bitten by a rattle snake and died. Not his first bite apparently, but the first that was fatal.

Now, these people, (apparently there are lots of them down there) believe that the bible mandates people to handle poisonous snakes to test their belief in God, and if they are bitten, God will heal them (see Mark 16:17-18 below)

One suspects that their numbers would be shrinking. 

Several facts make this incident really stand out however:

1. The pastor's father, who also was a paster, died the same way in 1983.

2. When this chap was bitten, no attempt was made to obtain snake bite antidote. (you would have thought that he would know whether or not he believed in God and therefore know whether or not he needed antidote.... apparently not)

3. Instead, when his followers realized he was actually dying they prayed to God to heal him...apparently not understanding  Mark 16: 17-18 at all (it says that if they were true believers, all they had to do was lay their hands upon him and he would have recovered... apparently no one touched him and he died).

You'd think that a bit of simple logic training would benefit people like this.  It really is quite simple... if you are not sure of your belief in God, stay away from snakes. And, if you do encounter one, make sure you are with a friend who does believe in God and is willing to lay his hands on you.....very simple survival rules.

Mark 16:17-18 :

“And these signs will follow those who believe: 

in My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; 

they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, 

it will by no means hurt them; 

they will lay their hands on the sick, 

and they will recover.”-- 

The Washington Post article is at:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/serpent-handling-pastor-profiled-earlier-in-washington-post-dies-from-rattlesnake-bite/2012/05/29/gJQAJef5zU_story.html