There seems to be a massive controversy about building a mosque near the site of the destroyed World Trade Center in New York City. This is bothering people so much that somebody has asked the president to say something.
Well of course the man said something. And of course his words were “measured.” People seem to have forgotten that the country was founded on religious freedom. This bit about the Founding Fathers (and mothers — yes they did as much as they could) intending the USA being only for Christians is pretty much rubbish.
Was George Washington a Christian? Thomas Jefferson wrote in his private journal, Feb. 1800 — “Gouverneur Morris had often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system (Christianity) than did he himself.” Read more on Politics, Religion and Sports: Forbidden Topics…
Filed under politics, Religion by on Aug 23rd, 2010. Comment. 
An administrator of a clinic where I worked long ago and far away once told me how he had to go to an orthodox (Jewish) rabbi and get some sort of a special document in order to satisfy his community (and mostly his wife) when a cardiac surgeon decided to put a pig valve in his heart to keep him alive.
I was not as impressed with the gravity of the situation as he wanted me to be. Sure, I know that Jews aren’t supposed to eat anything that comes from a pig because it wallows in the mud and is thus “dirty.”
The prohibition against consuming its flesh is often credited with saving generations of (religious) Jews from getting sick with trichinosis. Medicine has, however, advanced considerably since Biblical designs.
Whatever people believe about our Creator, there is no way that he or she is going to introduce information to the world that we can’t understand because our technology is not advanced enough. Nobody told about genetic recombination on Mount Sinai. Nobody talked about transplantation in the era when the Gospels were being written.
The obvious conclusion is that it is time to stop worrying about right or wrong in religious doctrine and start living as fully and joyously as our medicine and technology will permit. Instead, I find that people whose spiritual beliefs seem associated with organized churches, seem to be given easily to generalizations and even name-calling: blatant intolerance. Read more on Animal Rights vs. Human Progress…
Filed under Research by on Mar 26th, 2010. Comment.
How could anybody think it was justified by their religion to stick sewing needles into a child’s body?
Now according to the news story, the (obligatory) academic expert said there were no potentially harmful rituals in Candomble, the most popular of the Afro-Brazilian religions. This statement ranks right up there with, “Hey, Columbus – don’t go too far or you’ll fall off the edge of the world!”
Someone is obviously worried about prejudice against the Afro-Brazilian religions. Me, I am more worried about the sanctity of human life. Read more on Can We Protect Children From Their Parents?…
Filed under abuse by on Mar 3rd, 2010. Comment.
All of this balderdash from opponents of so-called “Obamacare” health care reform about “Death Panels” that will come and put your grandparents to sleep like an injured Chihuahua makes me think about the patients I’ve had to counsel regarding end-of-life issues.
I have a wonderful patient who is still struggling, after many years, with her father. He is, like many men of his era who spent a fair amount of time in the military, the kind of guy who speaks little. He has outlived his wife, which is statistically unlikely, for she was very ill for a very long time. He is tired, just plain tired, of medical interventions. He had a hunk of colon taken out some years ago, and there was something somewhere between normal and cancer on it. Who knows when he tells his daughter. Her confusion is expressed to me through tears.
Filed under End Of Life by on Jan 14th, 2010. Comment.
We want religious freedom, which is good. We do not want prejudice that is unfounded. We do not want people to preach or incite sedition. We have no interest in disguises of sedition as religion.
We have problems with anything that gets in the way of freedom. We love popular votes, and want to see the president of the United States elected directly some day, so the people have the sovereignty that Jefferson had in mind. Radical factions corrected by some sort of wisdom, perhaps divine in origin, that flows down among honest and intelligent and diverse groups, so that they somehow exercise a sort of internal control, and radical factions cancel each other out.
I have no idea how a referendum about minarets made it to the Swiss ballot. It seems that most people there don’t want these public symbols of the Islamic faith. There is a nice photo in the Wikipedia article of a plastic minaret of Turkish construction that someone put on a cultural center in Switzerland for what I suppose are religious reasons.
Read more on Minarets in Switzerland: Can’t We All Get Along?…
Filed under Prejudice by on Nov 30th, 2009. Comment.
I have sat silent for a long time, waiting for the news to come in from Fort Hood, waiting for people to understand and explain. Now, I have read and seen enough that I think I understand.
As always, my own life and experiences have been so rich and so diverse that I have an overwhelming memory or vision.
It was a California state prison; I have worked in a few. Religion was always especially popular within the prisons where I worked. I assumed, as did the mental health personnel in general, that it was because inmates felt so dehumanized and downtrodden that they could be expected to grasp onto anything that made them feel good. We knew and understood this.
I certainly maintained friendly associations with all chaplains. I considered them a bit idealistic, a bit naive, but I also considered myself that way. And in that feeling, that belief, that “give them the extra mile” feeling, I got some peace.
Still, I remember the day I was scared. I rarely ventured into the areas of religious worship, but once, just once, I happened to be out crossing the yard during one of the five daily times of Muslim prayer. I could not count the number of inmates, as they covered the yard.
Filed under Religion by on Nov 30th, 2009. 2 Comments.