03.26.11
The long lost Buddhist revolution
Aryans, Hinduism,
And a Buddhist Revolution
A snapshot history of Indian religion in the context of the Axial Age
The oldest religion?
http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Religion+should+unite+divide/4507238/story.html
Hinduism is NOT the oldest religion, depending on what you mean by the term. It came into existence in a corrupt hybrid of the ancient legacy of India and the Veda-spawning corruption created by the Aryan phase.
The ancient yoga/tantra of primordial Shaivism and Jainism were ripped off by Hinduism and its distortions. Finally Hinduism ended up marginalizing the great creation of Buddhism, one of India’s greatest contributioins to world history.
Religion has been evolving through history, beginning with primal religions, leading to Hinduism, then Judaism, to Christianity, then Islam. Hinduism, the oldest living religion, speaks of atman, the eternal soul, and moksha – devotion to and love for God. Isn’t that the same as Judaism and the sayings in the 13 principles of faith? Or the essential beliefs of Christianity and Islam and Sikhism? Interestingly, the emergence of Sikhism was a consequence of political and social instability in Punjab. Throughout history religion has served as an escape from injustices and inequality – so why is it becoming the root cause of injustice and inequality in our lives today
?
Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Religion+should+unite+divide/4507238/story.html#ixzz1Hj79uIpa
The Indian legacy behind the corrupt “Hinduism”
Colbert: Try Hinduism for Lent
Goldberg’s fetish over Hinduism is a useless New Age set of fictions: we are going to end up losing Indian religion in this situation. The question of Hinduism (keep in mind the often innocent use of the term to refer to the real Indian religiousness) is liable to cripple the understanding of the contribution that is possible from the culture of India. Buddhism, please note, was the original attempt to take Indian religion and universalize it for export to external cultures. The status of Hinduism is hopeless corruption by invented Aryan garbage like the law of caste that has no place in the real tradition. Try explaining that to the idiots who now control the Indian legacy, with help, unbeliebably from Goldberg. (I reviewed his book at Amazon: America Veda, check it out).
Sam Harris’ ‘lost ethics’
Lost ethics indeed. It is important to realize that Harris has no real ethics. His utilitarrian garbage is really a smack on the public’s head: you are stupid, and his scientism forbids any discussion of free will. The result is a toxic brew that will do harm to public understanding.
Keeping creationism and darwinism out of the classroom
Atheist Wants Creationist Teacher Fired
I think that schools should become neutral on Darwinism even as they teach the broad facts of evolution. A similar stance toward creationism can be adopted: keep creationist and Darwinian propaganda away from the simple biological instruction in the chronicle of evolution.
The law demands separation of church and state, but that should be amplified to caution against the separation of atheist religion and the classroom.
Who wants to go through life defining themselves as a ‘non-believer’?
Who wants to go through life defining themselves as a ‘non-believer’?
The question is apt: the New Atheists have made atheism so unattractive that many ‘old atheists’ are unable to remain in place. These fanatics will not even acknowledge the existence of a Buddhist atheist without bias. Ye gods! Time to change labels.
Convergent Similarity
Science Article Acknowledges Convergent Similarity Is “Contrary to Expectations” of Neo-Darwinism
Algae, Bacteria Hogged Oxygen
Algae, Bacteria Hogged Oxygen After Ancient Mass Extinction, Slowed Marine Life Recovery
ScienceDaily (Mar. 25, 2011) — A mass extinction is hard enough for Earth’s biosphere to handle, but when you chase it with prolonged oxygen deprivation, the biota ends up with a hangover that can last millions of years.
Universal Property of Music Discovered
Universal Property of Music DiscoveredScienceDaily (Mar. 25, 2011) — Researchers at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) of the University of Amsterdam have discovered a universal property of musical scales. Until now it was assumed that the only thing scales throughout the world have in common is the octave.
Acupuncture for pain
Acupuncture for Pain No Better Than Placebo – And Not Without Harm, Study Finds
ScienceDaily (Mar. 25, 2011) — Although acupuncture is commonly used for pain control, doubts about its effectiveness and safety remain. Investigators from the Universities of Exeter & Plymouth (Exeter, UK) and the Korea Institute of Oriental Medicine (Daejeon, South Korea) critically evaluated systematic reviews of acupuncture as a treatment of pain in order to explore this question. Reporting in the April 2011 issue of PAIN®, they conclude that numerous systematic reviews have generated little truly convincing evidence that acupuncture is effective in reducing pain, and serious adverse effects continue to be reported.
Continued Government Complicity in Torture
Published on Saturday, March 26, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
Bradley Manning Treatment Reveals Continued Government Complicity in Torture
by Marjorie Cohn
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/26-0
Iodine releases
IEER: Japan Radioactive Iodine Releases May Exceed Three Mile Island by 100,000 Times
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2011/03/25-3
ADHD and diet
Kristin Wartman: ADHD: It’s The Food, Stupid
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/25-4
Cut the deficit?
Deborah Burger: Want to Cut the Deficit? Restore Fair Taxes on Corporations and the Wealthy
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/25-13
GE the tax dodger
Chuck Collins: General Electric: King of the Tax Dodgers
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/25
Economic democracy
Dennis Kucinich: Creating Economic Democracy
http://www.commondreams.org/video/2011/03/25
Momentum against nukes
Public Momentum Builds Against Nukes
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/03/25-5
Vermont bill
Vt. House Passes Single-Payer Health Care Bill
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/03/25-1
What is Social Ecology?
RG mail
http://greenfrombelow.wordpress.com/murray-bookchin-what-is-social-ecology/
green from below
Murray Bookchin: What is Social Ecology?
By: Murray Bookchin
This article was originally published in Michael Zimmerman, ed.,
Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology (Englewood
Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1993) and has been slightly revised for
publication here.
03.25.11
Secularism: the best soil for (post-) religion
The debates over ‘religion’ (meaning Xtianity) and ‘atheism’ have missed the point: any student of world history and the Axial Age will suspect that the Axial period’s religions will phase themselves out as the world system goes through another cycle, no doubt starting with ‘garbage disposal’ transient cults like the New Atheists. The question of religion is two edged, with (at least) two meanings, a ‘cult’ association, which should be undermined, and a set of philosphical abstractions about reality. The latter can prosper better without the cult, and can actually thrive in a secular environment. The irony here is that the pseudo-secular substitute of the New Atheists and of the devotees of scientism is actually worse than what it tries to replace.
A look at world history shows that the issues at the core of religion as man’s evolutionary self-consciousness (seen in the path to Enlightenment) and theistic mainline, which can evolve into an intelligent Kantiian wariness about theism/atheism,…
Ignorant of history of atheism?
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/03/25/o-noes-atheists-ignore-history/
The charge that the New Atheists don’t study the history of atheism is correct, although here the critics are no doubt equally ignorant.
Atheism, so-called, predates monotheism and the Axial Age and is a primordial perspective visible in Jainism and then Buddhism. It is a mixture with agnosticism, sensibly, and distinguishes one-god theism and polytheism.
Berlinerbrau:
In fact, what is fascinating about the New Atheists is their almost complete lack of interest in the history and philosophical development of atheism. They seem not the least bit curious to venture beyond an understanding that reduces atheist thought to crude hyper-empiricism, hyper-materialism, and an undiscriminating anti-theism.
Hoffmann:
It is almost as though they believe that to the extent atheism has a history (i.e., that it has been hanging on the bough for several hundred years, probably longer if you go back to classical adumbrations), it is too easy to explain away its radical, exciting, and mind-blowing newness.
Does Futuyma understand evolution?
Textbook writer speaks on evolution
Futuyma has misunderstood distinction of macro and microevolution.
Futuyma spoke on changes in populations based on natural selection and DNA mutations before describing the ways evolutionary science is not just concerned with the past, but is useful in studying current issues as well.
“We’re getting very rapid evolution of resistance to drugs – antibiotics – in pathogenic organisms, bacteria and viruses of all kinds,” he said. “This is one of the major, major issues in infectious disease control. As you know, one of the major problems of controlling HIV is that the population of viruses within an individual person is rapidly evolving.”
‘Feathered Helmet from Beyond the Clouds’
Remarkable Fossil: 525-Million-Year-Old Discovery of ‘Feathered Helmet from Beyond the Clouds’
ScienceDaily (Mar. 24, 2011) — Researchers from China, Leicester and Oxford have discovered a remarkable fossil which sheds new light on an important group of primitive sea creatures.
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