Tue 7 Dec 2010

A Preemptive Apology

Posted by Michael under atheism
1 Comment

Dear Everyone,

It could very well be possible that in the future we will see bus ads such as these in my fair city of Vancouver:

The Centre for Inquiry are currently awaiting final approval to bring this ad campaign to the Toronto transit system, and if all goes well on that front then they plan to tour the ads across other Canadian cities, including Vancouver.

I wanted to take this opportunity to apologize on behalf of atheists like me who find this kind of shot across the philosophical bow offensive, low brow, and frankly dumb.  First let me just tear apart what Mr. Justin Trottier  of the CFI said about the ads, because that’s the real source of my ire right now.

“I’d love it if everyone saw the ads and knew the point of the campaign is to emphasize, not the kind of knee-jerk debunking to anything suspicious, but that we’re interested in a genuine debate, a conversation about so-called extraordinary claims. We’re not here to mock people who believe in these claims.”

I don’t know about you, but I don’t see a lot of wiggle room here.  You are comparing the cornerstones of the lives of millions of people to Bigfoot, UFOs, psychics and Zeus.  You are implying, openly and unambiguously, that Christians and Muslims are either crazy, archaic, or share the same kind of mental space as the most typical and archetypal paranormal believer that you can think of.

How is this NOT going to create a knee-jerk reaction?

If you weren’t here to mock people who believe these things, you wouldn’t have run that ad.  There are other ways you could have done this.  The “Millions of Americans can be good without God” or “There probably is no God, so stop worrying and enjoy your life” ads looked like genuine invitations to thought and debate.  You can do this, you have seen that other people have done this, and you decided not to.  But you have outright denied that this is what you wanted to to,  so you are either lying or stupid.  Or both.

The extraordinary claims home page asks:

“Why is belief in Big Foot dismissed as delusional while belief in Allah and Christ is respected and revered? All of these claims are equally extraordinary and demand critical examination.”

Wow, well I guess it’s my turn to apologize.  I had no idea there was such a huge Bigfoot following.  I never noticed the thousands of people in my community wearing the holy symbol, the enlarged foot with five prominent toes.  I was never aware of their daily prayers, wherein they bow their heads and consider their bare feet several times a day.  I was completely unaware of their rich culture, and the way large-footed, hairy members of their religion are venerated and respected for their wisdom and moral uprightness.  I had utterly no idea that major world religions had so much in common with a cryptozoological theory.

I must look terribly ignorant right now.

Religious belief does not boil down to the factual evidence that supports its principal deities or personages.  Sometimes this is how people are convinced, but religions also have rich moral, historical, personal, cultural, aesthetic, existential, philosophical, and theological spheres that help inform believers and enrich their understanding and their lives.

And you just equated that to bigfoot.

You look terribly ignorant right now.

This kind of bullshit does nothing but polarize people, and it’s a dishonest attempt to create press coverage.  I like the idea of religious and philosophical ads, when they are done in a way that encourages thought, discourse, and debate.  And we really do need someone from this side of the aisle to answer stuff like this:

But the proposed ads that may be splattered across Canadian busses don’t answer this kind of ignorance in a well thought-out and intelligent way, it’s just more garbage that makes us look ignorant.

And for that I apologize.

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Mon 4 Oct 2010

Spirituality

Posted by Michael under Uncategorized
[125] Comments

When someone asks me if I’m “spiritual” I always think that what they’re really asking is if I have beaded curtains in my apartment,  or if I adorn my walls with thin abstract tapestries, perhaps subscribe to some kind of new age practice, enjoy incense more than anyone who isn’t a Buddhist really should, or whether or not I am totally 420 friendly.  They probably don’t mean that, but that’s where my head goes.  A spiritual person in my mind is forever going to be that dreadlocked hippie who thinks that every religion says the same thing and whose religious convictions don’t flow much deeper than the discount rack of the closest second hand bookshop.  Granted I live in an area that proudly displays leaflets for meetings with gurus, has no less than half a dozen spiritual centres, and I live just a block away from a metaphysical bookstore called Abraham’s Books.  So maybe I’m in the area of “spiritual” but I’ve never identified with the term.

Calling myself “religious” really doesn’t do it either, it’s all on the other end of the spectrum, someone who reads their holy book every day but doesn’t read New Scientist, who lives a life regimented by a text several centuries out of date when it comes to social laws.  It’s all church groups and inward thinking, and while I’ve experienced a lot of that and it’s often quite pleasant, that isn’t who I am either.

But all that is just an aside about what I really want to talk about.  Today I picked up one of the free papers we have circulating around the city, and what caught my eye was a section on ‘Spirituality.’  Amidst all the advertisements were two articles: a short piece by a local psychotherapist and an excerpt from Eckhart Tolle’s book “A New Earth.”

The first is, well… I’m not sure what that has to do with spirituality.  It’s about racism and how we are all so much better than that.  Pretty much nothing is said about the difficulty of the subject, about it’s history and how it takes it’s form today.  Just, “aw shucks, shouldn’t we all just get along.” Fluff.  But with Eckhart Tolle there was some meat there.

I have avoided this guy’s books and teachings because it sounded like every other self-help, new age, “spiritual” title that comes along every few years.  After reading this small portion, entitled “The Ego is not Personal” I feel safe saying that that is exactly what it is.

All I could see in his words was the stuff he probably cribbed it from- Buddhism, Taoism, a little bit of basic psychology, maybe even a little Dianetics.  At one point he even rips off Nietzsche:

“In certain cases, you may need to protect yourself or someone else from being harmed by another, but beware of making it your mission to “eradicate evil,” as you are likely to turn into the very thing you are fighting against.  Fighting unconsciousness will draw you into unconsciousness yourself. ”

“Battle not with monsters, lest you become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you,” has a much better ring to it.  Granted it may just be a coincidence, but coming from a couple hundred words which sound like Buddhism for dummies makes it all the more suspect.

When I see stuff like this I get agitated, and I can’t really tell whether or not that is deserved.  It could very well be that all Mr. Tolle is doing is re-contextualizing the stuff he studied in college, packaging it for a broader audience.  Buddhists have a word for this- upaya, meaning skillful means.  It means that Buddhist practicioners should recalibrate their message to fit their audience.  Talking to a Muslim about Buddhism can be a lot different than talking to a Christian or an atheist, and so Buddhists can be free to use their own means and skills to introduce different people to the dharma.

Eckhart Tolle’s message is essentially that thoughts and the mind get in the way of our own happiness, that we spend so much time thinking about other things rather than being present, therefore real contentedness eludes us. Instead we should, through various means like meditation, do our best to ignore those thoughts and centre ourselves in the now, in the present moment, and we will discover that that moment can be just as fulfilling and enthralling as that distant goal we are always hoping to achieve.

This isn’t news to anyone who has taken a basic introductory course on eastern religion and philosophies.  This is Buddhism, this is Hinduism, this is Jainism, it is Taoism, heck it could even be Confucianism.

Tolle and I both seem to agree that the point of religion should be the cesation of suffering.  If his books has managed to do that for even a few people then fine.  But people keep calling this guy a spiritual master as if he invented something new, and I haven’t seen any evidence of that.  Further investigation is required, I think.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure I’m getting sore about this because I saw two pieces in a paper dedicated to “spirituality” that could have been written by someone in highschool, and damnit I could rock that job.

Time to write a proposal.

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Thu 30 Sep 2010

Home Turf Advantage

Posted by Michael under atheism
[56] Comments

So the latest bit of religious news making it’s way around the web these days is the “fact” that atheists and agnostics know more about religion than religious people do.  This is a weird thing to deal with, especially given the fact that October is my month of atheism, of “non belief”, my default religi0us position.  Given my experiences so far, I’m not surprised with these results.  While the people I’ve met tend to know a lot about their own religions, they often have a skewed or incomplete view of other people’s beliefs.  I don’t mean to sound damning, most of the time it wasn’t a big deal, a misunderstanding, or they just hadn’t thought about it very much.

On the other hand it’s a poll, and I’m loathe to treat as anything more than an interesting tidbit.  That said, we can perhaps begin to gleam a few interesting things from it, other than atheists are a bunch of smarty pants.

First off, it makes it painfully obvious that Blacks and Hispanics are seeing the back end of the American education system, as their responses on average seem to be lower than any other group polled. I’m curious as to why people aren’t making more noise about that.  The poll insists that the numbers remain the same even when “adjusted for levels of education” but then how do we explain their low scores?  Is it a cultural thing, is it because their sample sets were so low?

Second, 45% of Catholics think that the bread and wine that symbolize the blood and body of Christ are just that, symbols, and don’t transmute into the actual blood and flesh of their savior.  This might make a couple of Cardinals red-faced (teehee) but I find it kind of encouraging.  I like to think that most Catholics thought it was just meant to symbolize partaking of the means of salvation, rather than taking it to be the literal blood and body of Christ, as is the Catholic Church’s want.  Honestly it just seems a bit more reasonable.  I try to be a middle of the road atheist, to not stamp my feet up and down when confronted with super naturalism and miracles, but I can’t help feel a little hopeful that most Catholics don’t think they’re partaking in a wee bit of cannibalism every Sunday.

While most people, a startling 89%, know that a teacher cannot lead a public school class in prayer, few people know that the Bible can be used as an example of literature, or that a public school may conduct a course on comparative religions (23% and 36% respectively).  Seeing as prayer in public schools can be a big deal in American politics, this doesn’t surprise me, though it does seem to suggest that because of this lack of school prayer, people may think that schools are completely forbidden to have anything to do with religion, a misunderstanding which may give weight to pro-school prayer crowd in the future.

One commentator on CNN suggested that the reason atheists and agnostics know more about religion is because they are constantly being attacked by religious people, and that they needed to know these things in order to have a basis for arguing their case.  I’ve certainly seen a lot of that, but I don’t think we know more because we’re getting bullied all the time.  If what this poll is saying is true, I would say atheists and agnostics know more about religion because they have a reason to go looking.  We have to search for answers because by and large we didn’t sit through Sunday school or go to a church, synagogue, or mosque.  When we ask questions like ‘what does it all mean’ we don’t have a book or pastor to help us, so we tend to look outwards, and to more than one source, since initially they all tend to have the same weight.

I don’t know whether that means we get better answers, in the end.  It definitely doesn’t mean we turn out to be better people.

Anyway, check out the poll, you can even take it yourself and see how you do.

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Sat 11 Sep 2010

Burn the Qur’an Day and the Ground Zero Mosque

Posted by Michael under Uncategorized
[129] Comments

Honestly, just watch this special comment by Keith Olbermann, or read this piece on the Huffington Post, they say everything I wanted to and more.  My thoughts and summary are after the break.

(more…)

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Sat 26 Jun 2010

Still Faithful

Posted by Michael under Uncategorized
[57] Comments

So I’ve moved into a new place, and I’ve been trying to get some kind of internet connection happening but apart from a dowsing rod made from CAT 5 cable and some twigs or a sizable bribe I’m no closer to that goal. This is why you haven’t been seeing any updates. That and well, other things, but primarily it’s because I have no reliable and convenient port into this great network of tubes. Needless to say, I’m still doing the project, Buddhism was a success, Paganism not so much, and I’m really looking forward to Jainism in July. Something about asceticism is really appealing to me which is why I think Buddhism went down so well.

I’m sitting in a coffee shop near my new place right now, trying to download some TV shows, and catching up on all those pieces of internet that are not easily accessible via my iPhone. Across from me two gentlemen are sitting at a table and going through what look like reiki movements. Waving and shaping the air, one of them folding, molding and gently passing something to the other, who receives it in kind and breathes it in. It’s called energy healing, touching without touching, convincing the mind and the body to to settle, concentrate, think about light, think about compassion, and breathe. It wouldn’t matter if there were something passing between them, the physical and mental components of the act would be enough to have some effect. The is something the Buddha understood, you give the mind half a chance and it will unjumble itself, defrag, untangle, relax. No one’s going to get tense if you give them your undivided attention and engage in an act of kindness. Well, mostly no one.

His friend has left now, and he is giving a demo to the man sitting next to me. He does this all the time, an otherwise unremarkable looking young Caucasian man, carrying on the technique of his teacher. Once that guy has left he moves on to me, and trying to be an ambassador to this strange unknown country, of course I say yes. He waves his hands, and I keep one eye open to watch the movements and try to correlate that with what I feel in my cupped palms.

While this is happening I am reminded of a girl in my high school biology class. She had sensitive hands. She could detect the residual heat of objects with her fingertips- pens, loose change, things like that. When my teacher heard about this he wanted to see her in action, so we set up a line of quarters, and while her back was turned one of us would touch a coin, and she would touch each in turn and point out the correct coin every time. She could even do it when her fingers were floating above the coins, and even when we didn’t quite touch them ourselves. And when, at the teacher’s insistance, we didn’t touch any of them, hoping perhaps to catch her bluff, she would pass her fingers over the coins and then look at us in consternation, catching us instead.

His name is Davin, and as he asks me to imagine golden light collecting in my hands as he finishes waving into them, I wonder if something like that is happening now. Is some ancient, prehistoric part of my brain waking up, like a rickety old trap in a temple full of relics, activated by a presure plate of mystery and myth, forcing me to become receptive? I ask the question beause I don’t believe that anything out of the ordinary is happening in these exercises. I have come to understand that no matter how much I immerse myself in this, no matter how much I give in to all of this, I will only ever see a man waving his hands at me.

But despite that, my hands get warm and begin to tingle, and I imagine a golden light, pouring from me and into every other living thing.

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Fri 21 May 2010

They’ll like us when we win

Posted by Michael under Uncategorized
[98] Comments

I can’t help it.  That last post made me think of this.  One of my favourite scenes from one of my favourite television series.

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Fri 21 May 2010

Draw Muhammad Day

Posted by Michael under Islam
[59] Comments

Today is Draw Muhammad Day.

I wasn’t really aware of it until this afternoon.  I had heard a little bit here and there but I didn’t know it was here until, well, the day of.  Like I said, I’ve been busy, so let’s all get up to speed.

Back in April, a couple of episodes of South Park were going to be aired on Comedy Central depicting the prophet Muhammad in a  bear suit.  Now, images of the Muhammad, or indeed any person or animal in Islam is generally forbidden, as outlined not in the Qur’an but in various Hadiths (sayings and tales from Muhammad recorded by his followers, and generally not thought to be the word of God).  In Islam Muhammad is the perfect Muslim, an exemplar to every follower, and so to even depict him is considered offensive, an affront, a way to belittle something that needs to be taken seriously and respected within the Islamic community.  Depicting Muhammad is already offensive, mocking him doubly so.

Some of the hadiths in question, from Religion Facts:

“Ibn ‘Umar reported Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) having said: Those who paint pictures would be punished on the Day of Resurrection and it would be said to them: Breathe soul into what you have created.” (Sahih Muslim vol.3, no.5268)

“This hadith has been reported on the authority of Abu Mu’awiya though another chain of transmitters (and the words are): Verily the most grievously tormented people amongst the denizens [inhabitants] of Hell on the Day of Resurrection would be the painters of pictures….” (Sahih Muslim vol.3, no.5271)

“Narrated [Muhammad's wife] ‘Aisha: Allah’s Apostle said, ‘The painter of these pictures will be punished on the Day of Resurrection, and it will be said to them, Make alive what you have created.’” (Bukhari vol.9, book 93 no.646)

“Narrated ‘Aisha: The Prophet entered upon me while there was a curtain having pictures (of animals) in the house. His face got red with anger, and then he got hold of the curtain and tore it into pieces. The Prophet said, ‘Such people as paint these pictures will receive the severest punishment on the Day of Resurrection.’” (Bukhari vol.8, book 73, no.130)

“Umar said, ‘We do not enter your churches because of the statues and pictures.’ Ibn ‘Abbas used to pray in the church provided there were no statues in it.” (Bukhari vol.1, chapter 54)

“Muhammad went to Fatimah’s house, but turned back when he saw a figured curtain.” (Sunan Abu Dawud vol.3, book 21, no.3746)

The producers/creators of South Park, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, soon found themselves the subject of death threats from the New York Islamic group Revoluton Muslim, featuring a graphic picture of the corpse of Theo van Gogh, who was murdered in 2004 by a Muslim because of his involvement in a film criticizing the treatment of women in Islamic societies.  Comedy Central pulled the offending section.

In response to this decision by Comedy Central and the death threats against Stone and Parker, cartoonist Molly Norris drew up this poster as a joke satirizing the situation:

The poster found wide circulation across numerous blogs and news sources, and the idea of a Draw Muhammad Day was quickly championed on Facebook.  Norris tried to take back the poster, requesting that it be taken down and insisting that it was nothing more than a joke, and that an actual event like this would be truly offensive.  It was too late, the idea had gone viral, and so here we are.

This day is being championed, by and large, by proponents of free speech and the argument that it was wrong of Comedy Central to back down and give in to the lobby of Islamic backlash.  The day is a protest against those who would seek to limit freedom of speech through violence and coercion.

I’ve been going over this in my head for most of the day.  It didn’t sit well with me, and it has taken me a long time to figure out why.

This isn’t a joke about the beliefs of a bunch of bronze-agers, this isn’t poking fun at backwards beliefs.  You may see it that way, but there is a reason why Muslims can get so very, very angry and uncomfortable when this happens, and assuming that it’s because they’re backwards is the cowards way of dealing with this issue.  It ignores the obvious comparisons, the offensive things that people ought to be considering when they make these drawings.  This isn’t comparable to an edible chocolate Jesus statue, or Buddy Christ.  This is blackface, this is depicting child porn, this is snuff films.  Imagine how you would react to these things, that is what depictions of Muhammad are to Muslims.  It is hitting them in their hearts, in their souls.

When I was learning about political philosophy I was rather taken by the problem of toleration of intolerant groups.  Sooner or later a free and tolerant society will have to deal with intolerant groups, and there comes a questions- do you deny these groups their freedom of speech, and thus show your commitment to toleration?  Or do you instead let them have their say, allow intolerance, risk hypocrisy?  I never figured out where I stood on that.

But this get’s us to why I don’t like the idea of Everyone Draw Muhammad Day.  It is intolerance met with more intolerance.  You’re defending your freedom of speech, and refusing to bow to violence, which is vital and admirable, but you do so at a cost.  You end up offending all kinds of Muslims, not just the ones who send death threats, and some who take this very, very seriously.

So should we have the right to depict images of the prophet Muhammad?  Absolutely.  We need to be able to tell his story, and in a variety of mediums so that it can have the most impact, the most beauty, the most value.  I think that’s something that will happen gradually, perhaps over a very long period of time as Islam grows and changes.  And I think forcing it like this is hurtful and perhaps even shameful.  But I’d be hard pressed to say that it was wrong.

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Wed 19 May 2010

But I Like Stuff…

Posted by Michael under Buddhism
[57] Comments

I feel like I’m juggling a lot of things right now- trying to be a Buddhist, moving, trying to find a place to move to, work, some kind of social life.  Standard gambit, I suppose.  I don’t have a whole lot of time these days, I fight for what I can when I think I need it and booking events on top of others because I have a bad memory.

Neglecting this space always hurts a little bit though, so here I am, at it again.

Buddhism has always resonated with me in a way that I can’t quite put my finger on.  Perhaps I’m prone to romanticizing ascetics, holy men in robes who give it all up in order to find real contentment.  It’s a hard deal to make, especially when I now know that I really, really enjoy the little pleasures of this world.

Let’s start at food.  The Buddha tells us that real pleasure does not come from contingent things, from physical things, that one can train ones mind to find happiness in the moment, in any moment, without the need for extrinsic input.

All I have to do is think of sushi to want to ditch the whole thing.  Seriously, it would be great to be all content and in step with the world, but there are tomes and tomes of knowledge on how to prepare food, whole life times are spent in that pursuit, the fruits of which can be incredible.  In the face of this it is hard to take the proposition that this is not happiness very seriously.  More so with a mouth full of lightly seared tuna with a nice cream sauce.

This goes for anything else you will find in life- movies, art, writing, video games, wine, houses, clothing, anything that you can interact with.  We have spent an awful lot of time investigating these things, making them attractive and smart and fun.  It can be said that the enjoyment they bring doesn’t last, and I think that’s fair, but trying to see the wisdom in turning away from it all is difficult.

Quite difficult.

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Fri 7 May 2010

Gradients

Posted by Michael under Buddhism
[53] Comments

Could you imagine being someone on the other side of the palace walls, watching as Siddhartha climbed over with his friend, Channa, in nothing but a beggar’s robe, stealing into the night?  What would an ordinary man think, walking in the night, trying to figure out how to procure a fraction of the wealth the prince had in order to provide for himself and his family, seeing Siddhartha throw it all away?

I think that I  would be frustrated, probably a little angry too.  I spend more and more time these days counting coins, keeping track of my spending, mitigating debt, questioning purchases- all to afford a rather basic life, as Western first-worlds go.  So to see a man with everything just up and walk away, if I was older, had kids, had a wife, a house?  Damn right I’d be annoyed.

But that only lasts until you consider what he went out to do, and what he went through. His studies and investigations led him to do one of the most difficult things that any one person may attempt.

He sat.

This is meditation’s first requisite, and it’s most basic form.  Just sitting, that is what it is, and that is what Siddhartha Gautama, who would one day become the Buddha, set out to do.  Now to be fair, there is significantly more to what he did than this.  He went through all of the major schools of Hindu thought at the time- spoke with many gurus and sages and anyone who thought they may have a cure for… well, life.  Eventually he left all of these intellectuals behind, with their yogic practices, and hung out with some hardcore ascetics for a while- guys who would eat only a few grains of rice a week, and would stay standing for days without sleep, all in an attempt to break their minds from the here and now.

But in the end what Siddhartha did was sit under a tree.  Sat, thought, and breathed.

A typical introduction to meditation goes something like this- sit comfortably, back straight, eyes either closed or half-closed, hands folded in your lap with thumbs together, focus on your breathing.  Counting breaths helps, or focusing on a point just in front of your nose, or in the center of your chest.  Basically you want to try to focus on that and nothing else.

No, don’t think about meditating, or about that annoying guy at work, or about what you had for dinner, or that movie you just saw, or about how you’re not focusing.  Eventually you will forget about your breathing, your mind will default to what it normally does in this situation. When it is left idle it will wander- it will ruminate, reminisce, wonder.  And then you will remember what it was you were trying to do, and come back to your breathing.  No, not that song you have stuck in your head, not about your plans tonight, not about how terrible you are at this.

Not that.

Not that.

And not that.

Don’t worry, it’s impossible.  No one gets it right the first time, our heads aren’t built this way, were aren’t trained to be this way, they really, really really don’t want to be left with nothing to do.  Yet this is the kind of thing that Buddha did, for days.

And it isn’t like it remains impossible.  Yesterday I had my first meditation session, at a local Buddhist centre.  Not my first one ever, but my first in a while.  We meditated for about 20 minutes, had a half-hour talk, and then another 20 minutes of meditation.  It was guided meditation, so the monk leading us would drop little reminders to relax and let go of our thoughts, or to think about the topic at hand, but the overall goal was the same- to clear and focus the mind.

All it took was those brief sessions to remember why I like meditation.  It makes me feel good.  I rode a steady wave of contentment and clear-headedness for at least an hour after that.  I was zen as a mother fucker.  And all it took was sitting and meditating poorly for less than an hour.  At one point I’m pretty sure I dozed off.

That is one side of the spectrum of meditation, one side of a tradition and practice that existed before the Buddha, and continues on, enriched thanks to his teaching and the experience of all the Buddhist monks, nuns and laypeople that came after him.  On the other side of this spectrum, we have Thic Quang Duc.  He was a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, who died on June the 11th 1963 while protesting the persecution of Buddhist monks in Vietnam under the Ngo Dinh Diem government.  You will probably know him better as “the burning monk.”

This is one of my favourite images, because it demonstrates, totally, and without question, the results of the Buddha’s mission.  This monk burned himself to death, and during the process, which lasted about 10 minutes, he did not move and he did not cry out.  Thic Quang Duc made no sign that he was in any pain whatsoever.  He was able to completely bypass how any normal person would react to such a situation, close his mind from his body, control exactly how he would react.

These are the fruits of meditation.  From the briefest of encounters, you can leave feel elated and contented, and if you give your life to it, then you can burn to death and be fine.

All from just sitting.

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Mon 3 May 2010

Affirmation

Posted by Michael under Uncategorized
[104] Comments

Just because I’m not writing here doesn’t mean I’m not writing.

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