In recent days I have read a great deal in the media about the average Muslim's response to ISIS, and listened with interest to a number of Islamic scholars explaining why they reject the 'Caliphate'. Their response to the excesses of the psychopaths of ISIS/ISIL/IS and one or two other fundamentalist groups is interesting. In fact it suggests, strongly, that the many followers of Islam are getting tired of the agenda being set by those on the extreme conservative end of their Faith. One item which leaped out at me this morning provides a case in point.
A Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet in Leicester (which is one of the 100 or so branches experimentally using 'Halaal' chicken) had banned its staff from issuing alcohol based finger wipes on the grounds this 'might offend their Muslim customers'. Islamic scholars there have reacted strongly, pointing out that their faith does NOT forbid the use of alcohol as a disinfectant, in medical preparations and one or two other applications. They were quite upset that someone, presumably not themselves a Muslim, would make that decision as it simply lends fuel to the fires of anti-Islamic feeling in many quarters. Unfortunately, they are the victims of Politically Correct attempts to meet what outsiders perceive as 'requirements' of their faith. The same thing happens again and again with health and safety matters, and with the same result. All such pettiness does, is stir up antipathy toward what is perceived as a 'killjoy' problem.
Returning to the subject of the response to ISIS, I have noted with considerable interest the assertion of an Oxford based Imam, who points out that the Qu'ran actually forbids forced conversion. Chapter 2 verse 256 is quite specific on this, and is reinforced in Chapter 109 verse 6 which makes clear that everyone should be free to worship as they please. Chapter 22 goes further, and states that Christian and Jewish 'Places of Worship' must be respected and honoured. According to Dr Taj Hargey, the Qu'ran actually forbids killing 'unbelievers' and provides only two reasons a Muslim may take up arms to defend themselves. These are, to 'resist religious persecution' and because they are being driven from their homes. Since no western country 'persecutes' Muslims for their faith, their 'jihad' against the West is rendered invalid.
The Council of Muslim Scholars in the UK has recently issued a 'fatwa' - essentially a 'legal opinion' in Sharia Law - which is echoed by similar declaration from Grand Muftis in several other countries (the Grand Mufti of a country is the senior 'law' expert in Sharia Law) and condemns the beheadings and the war on other Muslims and faiths.
I note too, that there are many younger Muslims commenting in 'social media' that they do not think they should have to continually 'apologise' for their religion, yet that is, in itself, a reaction to the excesses of the extremists. A case of 'they are not acting in my name, therefore I should not be associated with them'. In one way, this is an encouraging sign, but it should also flag up the fact that many in the west do make that association, and think that every Muslim is an extremist. Let's be clear, the vast majority of decent, law abiding, Muslims are not potential terrorists, just as the vast majority of those who belong to and practice the Christian Faith, Buddhist, Hindu or any other religion are likely to become militant terrorists because of their beliefs.
In an excellent article in The Guardian, entitled The myth of religious violence, the author, Karen Armstrong, traces the rise of the present trend in Muslim communities to adopt a 'puritan' style in dress, eating and so on, is a reaction against attempts to push religion out of the public domain by secularists. She mentions Kemal Ataturk's 'secularisation' of Turkey, with his bans on headscarves, burkhas, face veils and so on, citing these as one reason there is now a reactionary swing to the opposite extreme. Western 'imperial' powers fell into the same trap in Muslim lands they occupied, often imposing western models and ideals on cultures completely at odds with them - and no we reap the backlash. You cannot 'impose' change - you have to persuade a populace, and often that takes a lot longer than the 'modernisers' like. So they impose their ideas, riding roughshod over traditions, heritage and cultural issues - and are then surprised when the meet resistance, or outright rejection.
In Ms Armstrong's view, the attempts to impose westernism and liberal secularism in Iran (Persia), Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere, gave the fundamentalists the opening they needed to seize the 'moral high ground' from the moderate voices within their faith. ISIS is the ultimate extreme of that.
The one ray of hope in this is that their extreme behaviour, their blatant use of murder, rape and torture to achieve their ends is turning more and more of their coreligionists away from such behaviour and belief. No, we will not see the collapse of Islam as a world faith as a result of this, but we may, just, have reached what Sir Winston Churchill would have described as 'the end of the beginning'. More and more I see Muslim Scholars sticking their heads above the parapet and denouncing violence, denouncing some of the more fundamentalist utterances and preaching against such actions. Among those who practice that religion there are wider debates beginning to take place as well. Among them many of the practices that have developed under the umbrella of Islam in places such as Eritrea, Sudan, Somalia and others.
Among the things that caught my eye this morning in the article concerning 'alcohol' in Islam, is the fact that many Muslim scholars argue that the Qu'ran does not forbid drinking alcohol - it forbids drunkenness. Many people will not know that until the late 1950s, alcoholic beverages were freely available in almost every Muslim country. Indeed, wine lovers will be familiar with the wonderful flavour of wine made from the Shiraz grape - and Persia was one of the largest wine producing countries in the Middle East. Much of the beautiful poetry of the great 12th Century Persian poet, Umar Khayyam, celebrates wine and the pleasure of drinking it.
If the opening of this and other debates is anything to go by, we may well be seeing the first tentative budding of a refutation of Salafism, Wahabi-ism and other brands of fundamentalist Islam. All I can say, is thank the Lord!
Showing posts with label Gospel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gospel. Show all posts
Tuesday, 30 September 2014
Monday, 21 July 2014
Religion has caused all wars?
Came across an interesting article recently at Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry (CARM), which prompted me to do some digging of my own and I found that my own research accords with what they have published. One frequently reads that 'religion causes wars' or that 'all wars in human history' were caused by religion. But, is this fact?
Let's start with the wars of early human history. What part did 'religion' play in the Egyptian wars of expansion? Or the Assyrian wars of conquest? Or Babylon's? How about the Persian invasions of Asia Minor and Greece? Or Ghengiz Khan's invasions of Eastern Europe, Persia, India and China?What of the Roman conquests? Motivated by Jupiter worship? Hardly. Religion played no part in these at all, though I have seen a claim that, because the Bible mentions some of them, and that God was involved in defending Israel or Judah, they were 'religious' ... Pretty tenuous, especially as the same person was arguing from the position that the entire Bible is a fabrication, a falsehood and therefore not worth reading. From the same argument comes the claim that the conflict between the invading European settlers of the Wild West and the Native American tribes was a 'religious war'. The reason given for that claim is that the various politicians who sent in the army or sought to drum up support from the settlers labelled the Red Indians as 'unbelievers' and 'savages'. Right.
A recent book, The End of Faith, renews the claim that 'religion is the most prolific source of violence in our history', but, as I've just stated, a very cursory look at about a 1,000 year span of pre-Christian history suggests religion had no part in a millenium of wars of expansion and conquest. Again, a survey of the wars in the next thousand years, one finds a similar pattern, with one exception - the Islamic Wars of conquest into the Christian Kingdoms of Ethiopia, Egypt, Libya and the rest of North Africa, and, of course, the Byzantine Empire and the Zoroastrian, Hindu and Buddhist lands of Persia, Babylon, Afghanistan and India. But even these actually represent only a small proportion of all the wars going on at the same time everywhere else.
Once we hit the Crusade period, those with an axe to grind against religion (usually, specifically, Christianity) really have a field day. Those evil Crusaders who attacked the peaceful, inclusive and tolerant Muslims with no provocation. Quite. In fact the Crusades were a response to Muslim persecution of Christians, not very different in some areas to what is happening everywhere in the Muslim world to Christians, and other non-Muslims, today. Though we are presented, by revisionists today, with an image of a peaceful 'paradise' of flowering art and scientific creativity in Muslim controlled Spain, and of scientific innovation and research elsewhere in Muslim lands, what is forgotten is that most of this was built on trades, skills and studies already in existence when they conquered these lands.
The Viking invasions, the Germanic Celtic invasions of Gaul, Spain and Italy were not 'religious' and even the often quoted war on the Cathars had, as an underlying motive, the suppression of a group who threatened the power and authority of the French nobility and Crown. William the Conqueror's wars, and those of his descendants, were certainly not 'religious' and the same can be said of many more. Yes, the Thirty Years War, had religious roots, and Phillip II of Spain certainly had a religious excuse for his attempted invasions of England, but his real motive was to avenge his sister's being 'sleighted' by Henry VIII. Cromwell's wars in Scotland and Ireland had a large religious element, but the primary objective was the suppression of support for the Crown. Other researchers have analysed the causes and motivations of the wars of our history and concluded that only around 6% in total of over 1,700 recorded wars, had any religious motivation - and a little over two thirds of those were Islamic invasions. The defining characteristic of a 'religious' war is that it is waged for the purpose of forcing a group or population to 'convert' or in order to suppress and destroy a rival faith. Those who wish to destroy all faith ignore that, and argue that any mention of 'faith' in any context in any war - or the use of any terminology associated with any 'faith' - makes it a 'religious conflict'.
Can one argue that the Conquistadores were conducting a 'religious' war on the Aztecs, Incas and others? The answer, if one bothers to check who gained what and why, is a clear 'no'. The much maligned Roman Catholic Church's 'men on the ground', have left a large volume of correspondence to Rome and to the Kings and Queens of Spain and Portugal protesting and objecting to the manner in which populations were being enslaved, impoverished, stripped of wealth and treasures. The anti-religious folk all point to the decoration of churches and claim this 'proves' the church was behind the robbery - but in fact the wealth which went to decorating churches represents about 0.1% of the total that went to secular treasuries and fueled further wars of expansion and conquest in Europe.
Even a cursory look at the causes and motivations for England's external wars of the 16th to 19th Centuries shows no 'religious' motivation, but a strong secular/commercial one. A murderer waving a Bible is no more a Christian than Richard Dawkins - except in the minds of those who wish to see said murderer as 'a Christian'. Hitler, it is often said, was a Roman Catholic and therefore his 'motivation' for the Holocaust and for his war on Russia and everywhere else, was 'religious'. The fact is that he was Roman Catholic by baptism, confirmation and education - it would have been remarkable if he was not in Austria at the time he was born - but he did not practice it post WW1. In fact he was scornful of all religious leaders, mocking them publicly. He never attended Mass, and rejected the suggestion he appoint a 'Chaplain'. Religious motivation? Hardly, but he was influenced by Marx to a degree, and by the ideas of prominent secular and humanist thinkers. It's all in his book if you read it.
Stalin hated religion, dynamited churches, had priests and bishops sent to the Gulags in Siberia - but again, there are modern revisionists who want to argue that he was motivated by his 'religious beliefs'. He himself declared he had none. In fact, he had priests rounded up and shot, and sent elderly bishops to Siberia and labour camps. If that is an example of his 'religious' belief driving him, it is a strange one.
Then there is the question of the Churches making deals with both Hitler and Stalin. Rome (in)famously signed treaties with both Mussolini and with Hitler. Easy, of course, to criticise, but now consider for a moment, the fact that in order to keep the churches open, and allowed to minister to those who remained faithful to the Christian teaching, rather than the twisted Nazi and Communist ideologies, they had no choice but to do deals with the 'Devil'. Again, it is easy to say they should not have, but that begs the question of how you minister to those who do remain faithful, and keep faith alive in a hostile and aggressively anti-faith environment. The charge Jesus left his followers is to 'minister to the faithful' - not abandon them to the wolf packs. As a part of that ministry, many of the faithful became involved in hiding fugitive Jews and other 'undesirables' and the churches provided comfort and succour to those who did so.
Today we see the active persecution of the church in China, where churches are being bulldozed and congregations penalised by the officially atheist regime. I have actually seen ignorant idiots safely in 'liberal' western societies advocating similar actions to be taken to 'destroy Christianity' on the grounds that it is evil, brainwashing, anti-science and, of course, responsible for all wars, conflicts and - to quote Stephen Fry and Phillip Pullman - "responsible for the deaths of billions in the Americas and elsewhere." As I am unable to find any support for their assertion that the entire Spanish (and Portugese) conquest of the Americas was actually driven by the Roman Church (or any other) - whose priests and bishops spent an inordinate amount of time trying to stop the rape, murder and plunder of the Conquistadores and their successors - I find their numbers suspiciously dramatic and a little inflated.
That there have been, and are, some rather nasty and bloodthirsty religions in the past is undeniable. Even the Buddhist faith practiced human sacrifice until it was forcibly ended by the British and others. In Burma the British were horrified by the sacrifice of 200 young men to appease the spirits at the site of the 'new' capital being built in the 1860s - and launched a campaign which ended in the country being made a 'Protectorate' to end it. Mr Fry and his ilk, I suspect, simply ignore the fact that Judaism and Christianity did not, and do not, practice the genocidal system of sacrificing their enemies, and proclaim there is no difference. Ethnic cleansing has many faces, few of them 'religious' (though I'm sure someone will point to the passages in the Bible that command racial purity and the expulsion or murder of non-Jewish wives and offspring. What is more there is NO evidence this was ever actually practiced, then or later.). The fact is that Christianity expressly forbids such practices, and, once again, if you look at ALL the evidence, it quickly becomes apparent that while 'religion' is often used as a cloak, the real motivation is often 'commercial' and nothing whatever to do with any 'faith'.
Usually the motivation is 'capital gain' in the form of land seized, slaves obtained, treasure taken, and prime examples are the Muscovite wars of conquest and expansion, China's seizure of Tibet and the removal of ethnic Tibetans and their replacement with ethnic Chinese. Or Stalin's mass removal of Cossacks, Tartars, Ukrainians and Georgians and their replacement with ethnic Russians - the source of much of the problem in the Eastern Ukraine today. As with any ideology, everything can be twisted by those who are clever at manipulating others (and humanity is full of those who never look beyond the exciting message, or the charismatic messenger). When it suited Hitler, he made a point of being photographed with clergy. Stalin ordered some hastily released Bishops and priests to bless banners and the troops heading for the suicidal battles of the 'Patriotic Front'.
Much is sometimes made of the fact that those on both sides of any conflict invoke the protection of God for their side, but this doesn't 'prove' anything other than our natural desire to hope that we will survive - or at least find a path to a 'better place' than the battlefield if we die there. As my grandfather once remarked, "there are no atheists in a shell hole when death is raining down on you".
Despite the atheist, humanist and secularist propaganda, the vast majority of wars are not 'caused by religion'. They are caused by ideological agendas, by human greed, envy, spite and the hope of gain. This is what motivated Argentina to invade the Falkland Islands, what drove the bush wars in Angola, Mozanbique, Vietnam and Korea. The desire for political advantage and power is what drives the various civil wars in Central Africa, in Syria and in Ukraine. These can only be called 'religious' if we are to declare political ideology to be a 'religion'. I suspect that will really cause a few wars.
Propaganda is a powerful tool, and it has been used against people of faith very effectively for the last hundred years or so. Sadly, even though the evidence against the charge that "religion is the cause of all wars in history" is right in front of the vast majority, they will still swallow the lie and not check the facts. A case, perhaps, of 'don't confuse me with facts; my mind is made up'. And that, my friends, is a very sad commentary on the state of western thinking, freedom and access to information. A very sad commentary indeed.
Let's start with the wars of early human history. What part did 'religion' play in the Egyptian wars of expansion? Or the Assyrian wars of conquest? Or Babylon's? How about the Persian invasions of Asia Minor and Greece? Or Ghengiz Khan's invasions of Eastern Europe, Persia, India and China?What of the Roman conquests? Motivated by Jupiter worship? Hardly. Religion played no part in these at all, though I have seen a claim that, because the Bible mentions some of them, and that God was involved in defending Israel or Judah, they were 'religious' ... Pretty tenuous, especially as the same person was arguing from the position that the entire Bible is a fabrication, a falsehood and therefore not worth reading. From the same argument comes the claim that the conflict between the invading European settlers of the Wild West and the Native American tribes was a 'religious war'. The reason given for that claim is that the various politicians who sent in the army or sought to drum up support from the settlers labelled the Red Indians as 'unbelievers' and 'savages'. Right.
A recent book, The End of Faith, renews the claim that 'religion is the most prolific source of violence in our history', but, as I've just stated, a very cursory look at about a 1,000 year span of pre-Christian history suggests religion had no part in a millenium of wars of expansion and conquest. Again, a survey of the wars in the next thousand years, one finds a similar pattern, with one exception - the Islamic Wars of conquest into the Christian Kingdoms of Ethiopia, Egypt, Libya and the rest of North Africa, and, of course, the Byzantine Empire and the Zoroastrian, Hindu and Buddhist lands of Persia, Babylon, Afghanistan and India. But even these actually represent only a small proportion of all the wars going on at the same time everywhere else.
Once we hit the Crusade period, those with an axe to grind against religion (usually, specifically, Christianity) really have a field day. Those evil Crusaders who attacked the peaceful, inclusive and tolerant Muslims with no provocation. Quite. In fact the Crusades were a response to Muslim persecution of Christians, not very different in some areas to what is happening everywhere in the Muslim world to Christians, and other non-Muslims, today. Though we are presented, by revisionists today, with an image of a peaceful 'paradise' of flowering art and scientific creativity in Muslim controlled Spain, and of scientific innovation and research elsewhere in Muslim lands, what is forgotten is that most of this was built on trades, skills and studies already in existence when they conquered these lands.
The Viking invasions, the Germanic Celtic invasions of Gaul, Spain and Italy were not 'religious' and even the often quoted war on the Cathars had, as an underlying motive, the suppression of a group who threatened the power and authority of the French nobility and Crown. William the Conqueror's wars, and those of his descendants, were certainly not 'religious' and the same can be said of many more. Yes, the Thirty Years War, had religious roots, and Phillip II of Spain certainly had a religious excuse for his attempted invasions of England, but his real motive was to avenge his sister's being 'sleighted' by Henry VIII. Cromwell's wars in Scotland and Ireland had a large religious element, but the primary objective was the suppression of support for the Crown. Other researchers have analysed the causes and motivations of the wars of our history and concluded that only around 6% in total of over 1,700 recorded wars, had any religious motivation - and a little over two thirds of those were Islamic invasions. The defining characteristic of a 'religious' war is that it is waged for the purpose of forcing a group or population to 'convert' or in order to suppress and destroy a rival faith. Those who wish to destroy all faith ignore that, and argue that any mention of 'faith' in any context in any war - or the use of any terminology associated with any 'faith' - makes it a 'religious conflict'.
Can one argue that the Conquistadores were conducting a 'religious' war on the Aztecs, Incas and others? The answer, if one bothers to check who gained what and why, is a clear 'no'. The much maligned Roman Catholic Church's 'men on the ground', have left a large volume of correspondence to Rome and to the Kings and Queens of Spain and Portugal protesting and objecting to the manner in which populations were being enslaved, impoverished, stripped of wealth and treasures. The anti-religious folk all point to the decoration of churches and claim this 'proves' the church was behind the robbery - but in fact the wealth which went to decorating churches represents about 0.1% of the total that went to secular treasuries and fueled further wars of expansion and conquest in Europe.
Even a cursory look at the causes and motivations for England's external wars of the 16th to 19th Centuries shows no 'religious' motivation, but a strong secular/commercial one. A murderer waving a Bible is no more a Christian than Richard Dawkins - except in the minds of those who wish to see said murderer as 'a Christian'. Hitler, it is often said, was a Roman Catholic and therefore his 'motivation' for the Holocaust and for his war on Russia and everywhere else, was 'religious'. The fact is that he was Roman Catholic by baptism, confirmation and education - it would have been remarkable if he was not in Austria at the time he was born - but he did not practice it post WW1. In fact he was scornful of all religious leaders, mocking them publicly. He never attended Mass, and rejected the suggestion he appoint a 'Chaplain'. Religious motivation? Hardly, but he was influenced by Marx to a degree, and by the ideas of prominent secular and humanist thinkers. It's all in his book if you read it.
Stalin hated religion, dynamited churches, had priests and bishops sent to the Gulags in Siberia - but again, there are modern revisionists who want to argue that he was motivated by his 'religious beliefs'. He himself declared he had none. In fact, he had priests rounded up and shot, and sent elderly bishops to Siberia and labour camps. If that is an example of his 'religious' belief driving him, it is a strange one.
Then there is the question of the Churches making deals with both Hitler and Stalin. Rome (in)famously signed treaties with both Mussolini and with Hitler. Easy, of course, to criticise, but now consider for a moment, the fact that in order to keep the churches open, and allowed to minister to those who remained faithful to the Christian teaching, rather than the twisted Nazi and Communist ideologies, they had no choice but to do deals with the 'Devil'. Again, it is easy to say they should not have, but that begs the question of how you minister to those who do remain faithful, and keep faith alive in a hostile and aggressively anti-faith environment. The charge Jesus left his followers is to 'minister to the faithful' - not abandon them to the wolf packs. As a part of that ministry, many of the faithful became involved in hiding fugitive Jews and other 'undesirables' and the churches provided comfort and succour to those who did so.
Today we see the active persecution of the church in China, where churches are being bulldozed and congregations penalised by the officially atheist regime. I have actually seen ignorant idiots safely in 'liberal' western societies advocating similar actions to be taken to 'destroy Christianity' on the grounds that it is evil, brainwashing, anti-science and, of course, responsible for all wars, conflicts and - to quote Stephen Fry and Phillip Pullman - "responsible for the deaths of billions in the Americas and elsewhere." As I am unable to find any support for their assertion that the entire Spanish (and Portugese) conquest of the Americas was actually driven by the Roman Church (or any other) - whose priests and bishops spent an inordinate amount of time trying to stop the rape, murder and plunder of the Conquistadores and their successors - I find their numbers suspiciously dramatic and a little inflated.
That there have been, and are, some rather nasty and bloodthirsty religions in the past is undeniable. Even the Buddhist faith practiced human sacrifice until it was forcibly ended by the British and others. In Burma the British were horrified by the sacrifice of 200 young men to appease the spirits at the site of the 'new' capital being built in the 1860s - and launched a campaign which ended in the country being made a 'Protectorate' to end it. Mr Fry and his ilk, I suspect, simply ignore the fact that Judaism and Christianity did not, and do not, practice the genocidal system of sacrificing their enemies, and proclaim there is no difference. Ethnic cleansing has many faces, few of them 'religious' (though I'm sure someone will point to the passages in the Bible that command racial purity and the expulsion or murder of non-Jewish wives and offspring. What is more there is NO evidence this was ever actually practiced, then or later.). The fact is that Christianity expressly forbids such practices, and, once again, if you look at ALL the evidence, it quickly becomes apparent that while 'religion' is often used as a cloak, the real motivation is often 'commercial' and nothing whatever to do with any 'faith'.
Usually the motivation is 'capital gain' in the form of land seized, slaves obtained, treasure taken, and prime examples are the Muscovite wars of conquest and expansion, China's seizure of Tibet and the removal of ethnic Tibetans and their replacement with ethnic Chinese. Or Stalin's mass removal of Cossacks, Tartars, Ukrainians and Georgians and their replacement with ethnic Russians - the source of much of the problem in the Eastern Ukraine today. As with any ideology, everything can be twisted by those who are clever at manipulating others (and humanity is full of those who never look beyond the exciting message, or the charismatic messenger). When it suited Hitler, he made a point of being photographed with clergy. Stalin ordered some hastily released Bishops and priests to bless banners and the troops heading for the suicidal battles of the 'Patriotic Front'.
Much is sometimes made of the fact that those on both sides of any conflict invoke the protection of God for their side, but this doesn't 'prove' anything other than our natural desire to hope that we will survive - or at least find a path to a 'better place' than the battlefield if we die there. As my grandfather once remarked, "there are no atheists in a shell hole when death is raining down on you".
Despite the atheist, humanist and secularist propaganda, the vast majority of wars are not 'caused by religion'. They are caused by ideological agendas, by human greed, envy, spite and the hope of gain. This is what motivated Argentina to invade the Falkland Islands, what drove the bush wars in Angola, Mozanbique, Vietnam and Korea. The desire for political advantage and power is what drives the various civil wars in Central Africa, in Syria and in Ukraine. These can only be called 'religious' if we are to declare political ideology to be a 'religion'. I suspect that will really cause a few wars.
Propaganda is a powerful tool, and it has been used against people of faith very effectively for the last hundred years or so. Sadly, even though the evidence against the charge that "religion is the cause of all wars in history" is right in front of the vast majority, they will still swallow the lie and not check the facts. A case, perhaps, of 'don't confuse me with facts; my mind is made up'. And that, my friends, is a very sad commentary on the state of western thinking, freedom and access to information. A very sad commentary indeed.
Tuesday, 29 April 2014
Doomsayers; Past, Present and Future?
Every now and again you are reminded that you have seen something somewhere at some time in your stumble through life and knowledge, and I had such a moment recently when clearing out some boxes I have carried around from house to house and even country to country. Opening a book at random I found myself rereading a current meme - only this is something from one of the oldest religious texts. From the Hindu Vishnu Purana, come the following prophecies: -
- promiscuity will increase everywhere and marriage will decline,
- lies will become the road to success,
- causes of devotion will be confined to physical well being of self,
- the only bond between sexes will be passion and the rites of marriage will cease,
- men will be terrified of death and fear scarcity,
- the wealthy will control men whose only interest is the gaining of wealth, however dishonestly,
- the earth will be valued for its treasures only,
- leaders will arise who are violent men who will seize the goods of their subjects,
- the ice caps will melt,
- oceans will rise,
- droughts will become normal and famine will prevail ...
Welcome to the Kali-yuga, the last of the four "Ages" set out in the ancient texts of the Vishnu Purana, which, according to the Hindu Calendar, we are currently living in. I first read this in the 1970s, and ever since the whole 'Climate Change' argument started, I have been wondering where I had heard or read the IPCC 'predictions' before. The rediscovery of the book, an otherwise amusing book which explores the world of predictions, prophecies and general 'doomsday' predictions is now long out of print I suspect, but some of the information in it can be found in the 1997 produced book "Predictions for the Millennium" published by Island Books (who I suspect are now out of business as well).
According to the Hindu text, this will be the shortest of the four 'ages' and though it will be troubled by violence, hardship, deceit and all things nasty (it is ruled by Kali, mother goddess and ruler of the night, and probably the nastiest of the Hindu goddesses), it is supposed to lead to 'rebirth' of a new and perfect world. This is a meme most prominently shared in Buddhist teaching which has a similar 'Great Year' (25,290 years) cycle in its holy books. I suppose it is a 'comfort' to know that the Kali-yuga is the shortest of the four 'ages', only a mere 2,500 years in length and we are now supposedly entering the final years.
Anyone else recognise the meme?
Certainly, we are able to recognise the breakdown indications in any given society as being among those listed in this and, it must be said, many other 'prophecies' in a wide range of scriptures from an equally wide range of religions. many Christian 'Pentecostalists' and scriptural literalists, argue that this is what the 'Revelations' is all about and put forward their case for a final 'doomsday' and the Second Coming from their interpretation of passages from that book - which, though it does not carry any of the Hindu or Buddhist imagery, is being interpreted in the light of their teaching. Does this prove all such religious books, philosophies or scriptures to be 'false' as some would claim?
In my view, no. What it does demonstrate is that ideas have been an interchangeable and influential currency across many cultures and across millennia. We can recognise strands of this and other 'Eastern Mystic' religious thinking in Greek philosophy, ancient Egyptian texts and in Hebrew writings - and in the Bible in spirit if not in concept. Even now it has currency in 'modern' writing and thinking. Take the current 'Climate Change' debate. Is it any surprise that the leader of the IPCC at the UN is from India? Even if he is not a Hindu, he will be familiar with their sacred texts, since some of this even crops up in the Quran, and in the Gnostic writings that provide a 'source' for much of that. Hence, if one reads the Vishnu Purana and the IPCC reports one can identify several parallels. Not least the fear of the melting ice caps and the rising seas. Then there is the emphasis on 'warming', increasing severity of storms, catastrophic events carrying off thousands of lives, famines, droughts and so on. The only difference is that the Hindu text says it is unstoppable, the IPCC says we can stop it.
Rereading this made me think about where else these (and a few other predictions) crop up today. Surprise, surprise, the same meme comes up in Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, WWF and several more 'Green' proponents. It crops up in the ideologies promulgated by several left-wing political movements as well. Even some of the more radical evangelical Christian movements have eagerly espoused some of these, claiming 'it's in the Bible', which requires a bit of re-interpretation of some passages taken in isolation and out of context. The odd ones are the atheist figures who have taken it on, and I find some parallels among various humanist, secularist and 'New Age' neo-paganist utterances. I'm sure my friend Josephus will be able to suggest a few parallels from some of the fringes of Masonic offshoots from the 19th and early 20th Centuries.
So we have an ancient text which some would claim is 'validated' by the 'proof' that the 'Global Warming' is 'real', that the breakdown we think we see in our society is evidence of its accuracy. On the other hand we have those who will deny that they are influenced by any of this 'religious stuff' and only believe in the 'science' that proves it. OK, if that 'floats your boat' it's fine by me. From my perspective, the most interesting factor is to ask the question; Just how much of our current doomsday thinking on Climate Change, societal collapse, rising crime, poverty and political chicanery is coloured by 'something we heard' or 'something we read' at school, university or at points in between? How many of today's Doomsayers, are simply re-interpreting something they read in a religious text?
It seems to me that some things make more sense, and others less sense when reread after a gap of 40 years, and this book certainly is one of those. Today the Kali-yuga is dressed up as 'Catastrophic Global Warming/Climate Change' and we are told that if we do exactly as the IPCC and its Green supporters tell us, we will emerge into a 'new world' with a better future which looks remarkably like - you guessed it - the Krita-yuga of the Vishnu Purana.
Rereading this after forty years has been an amusing experience, partly because I have now recognised some things uttered by leading figures over that period that I am pretty sure they would deny come from this source. I've also recognised how some of my own thinking may have been influenced by some things I have read, experienced or been taught.
Perhaps the Ancient Greeks had a point. They believed humanity was here for the amusement of the gods ...
Sunday, 20 April 2014
Easter and the empty tomb ...
Today is Easter Day, the day the women visiting the tomb of Jesus to finish the burial preparations, in other words, the proper embalming of the body hastily wrapped and laid out in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea on the eve of the Sabbath or Passover. To their horror, the body was gone, so were the guards the Sanhedrin had posted to ensure no one took and hid the body in order to claim exactly what they feared - that Christ had indeed 'risen from the dead'. But the curious thing here is that the 'thieves' had apparently unwrapped the body - though they left them in a position which suggested it had simply been 'extracted' from the wrappings, leaving them empty. The single item not where it had originally been placed, was a 'napkin' (KJV translation) that had been used to cover the head and face.
That had been carefully folded and placed in a place apart. That is, in itself interesting, since it was, and is, a signal given by the head of the household at a Jewish meal, that the food may be cleared - the meal is finished.
Why is this 'curious'? It suggests that, if it was the work of 'grave robbers' they were extremely well prepared, and had no fear of being disturbed. Since the Sanhedrin had taken the precaution of posting guards - veterans unlikely to be frightened off by a handful of grave robbers - something else must have occurred to do so. Interestingly there are independent accounts in existence that say the Sanhedrin later paid the guards to say they were attacked and the body stolen, a story picked up in recent years every time an ossary is found bearing the name 'Yeshua' and touted as 'possible' proof that the Sanhedrin story is true. Since 'Yeshua' (Jesus in Hellenised form) was a very common name at the time of the crucifixion, these 'discoveries' actually prove nothing.
It is often also claimed that the resurrection chapters of the gospel accounts were added two or more centuries later. That claim falls when the author style is examined for Matthew, Luke and John. Those books display the same 'author style' throughout, and all three were written in the form we have them today by 80AD. How do we know this? Quite simply because papyrus fragments exist which show that later copies were accurate. The exception is the Gospel of Mark - probably the earliest of the four, and probably based on the memories of Peter himself, and filled in by the observations of Mark, the 'youth who ran away naked' from the Garden of Gethsemane, in whose parents house the Last Supper took place. The final chapter of that is different, and was added later. Why? Largely because the scroll from which the present version was copied had been damaged, quite possibly in a fire, and the ending destroyed. Legend has it that the original was damaged in the fire at the time of Nero. It is that 'reconstruction' which has become, courtesy of the Internet, 'proof' that all the resurrection stories are false.
What do I believe? I believe that Jesus of Nazareth did leave the tomb. What remained were the grave clothes, the pain, the wounds and the blood. What came forth was a new being, the forerunner of what we are all to become. His friends didn't recognise him, and we are not able to judge why on the evidence available. Though the way the story is written we can draw the conclusion that there was no sign of his wounds or suffering (remember he'd been flogged and then crucified - the flogging alone would have left some serious wounds on his body, even without the wound inflicted by the soldiers spear, or the nails going through his hands and feet), and that something else about him had changed dramatically. The fact he 'appeared' to several people who knew him well and wasn't recognised is strongly suggestive of this, but one thing had not - the way he 'broke the bread' he shared with them.
I believe, therefore, in the Resurrection. I believe that in Christ, we see what is to be. This is why I have no hesitation in saying with Christians everywhere - Christ is Risen. Hallelujah! He is risen indeed. Hallelujah.
That had been carefully folded and placed in a place apart. That is, in itself interesting, since it was, and is, a signal given by the head of the household at a Jewish meal, that the food may be cleared - the meal is finished.
Why is this 'curious'? It suggests that, if it was the work of 'grave robbers' they were extremely well prepared, and had no fear of being disturbed. Since the Sanhedrin had taken the precaution of posting guards - veterans unlikely to be frightened off by a handful of grave robbers - something else must have occurred to do so. Interestingly there are independent accounts in existence that say the Sanhedrin later paid the guards to say they were attacked and the body stolen, a story picked up in recent years every time an ossary is found bearing the name 'Yeshua' and touted as 'possible' proof that the Sanhedrin story is true. Since 'Yeshua' (Jesus in Hellenised form) was a very common name at the time of the crucifixion, these 'discoveries' actually prove nothing.
It is often also claimed that the resurrection chapters of the gospel accounts were added two or more centuries later. That claim falls when the author style is examined for Matthew, Luke and John. Those books display the same 'author style' throughout, and all three were written in the form we have them today by 80AD. How do we know this? Quite simply because papyrus fragments exist which show that later copies were accurate. The exception is the Gospel of Mark - probably the earliest of the four, and probably based on the memories of Peter himself, and filled in by the observations of Mark, the 'youth who ran away naked' from the Garden of Gethsemane, in whose parents house the Last Supper took place. The final chapter of that is different, and was added later. Why? Largely because the scroll from which the present version was copied had been damaged, quite possibly in a fire, and the ending destroyed. Legend has it that the original was damaged in the fire at the time of Nero. It is that 'reconstruction' which has become, courtesy of the Internet, 'proof' that all the resurrection stories are false.
What do I believe? I believe that Jesus of Nazareth did leave the tomb. What remained were the grave clothes, the pain, the wounds and the blood. What came forth was a new being, the forerunner of what we are all to become. His friends didn't recognise him, and we are not able to judge why on the evidence available. Though the way the story is written we can draw the conclusion that there was no sign of his wounds or suffering (remember he'd been flogged and then crucified - the flogging alone would have left some serious wounds on his body, even without the wound inflicted by the soldiers spear, or the nails going through his hands and feet), and that something else about him had changed dramatically. The fact he 'appeared' to several people who knew him well and wasn't recognised is strongly suggestive of this, but one thing had not - the way he 'broke the bread' he shared with them.
I believe, therefore, in the Resurrection. I believe that in Christ, we see what is to be. This is why I have no hesitation in saying with Christians everywhere - Christ is Risen. Hallelujah! He is risen indeed. Hallelujah.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
