Science, Civic Life and Religion

September 8, 2015 by Leave a Comment

A nice article in the New Yorker by Lawrence Krauss, motivated by the Kim Davis refusal to grant marriage licenses because her religious faith forbids it.

I see a direct link, in short, between the ethics that guide science and those that guide civic life. Cosmology, my specialty, may appear to be far removed from Kim Davis’s refusal to grant marriage licenses to gay couples, but in fact the same values apply in both realms. Whenever scientific claims are presented as unquestionable, they undermine science. Similarly, when religious actions or claims about sanctity can be made with impunity in our society, we undermine the very basis of modern secular democracy. We owe it to ourselves and to our children not to give a free pass to governments—totalitarian, theocratic, or democratic—that endorse, encourage, enforce, or otherwise legitimize the suppression of open questioning in order to protect ideas that are considered “sacred.” Five hundred years of science have liberated humanity from the shackles of enforced ignorance. We should celebrate this openly and enthusiastically, regardless of whom it may offend.

More on Krauss

And as to the First Amendment, which Davis and her team of lawyers is basing her claim on, seems they know neither how to read, nor to accept decisions over several centuries which speak directly to her argument.

“Freedom of religion means freedom to hold an opinion or belief, but not to take action in violation of social duties or subversive to good order,” In Reynolds v. United States (1878), the Supreme Court found that while laws cannot interfere with religious belief and opinions, laws can be made to regulate some religious practices (e.g., human sacrifices, and the Hindu practice of suttee). The Court stated that to rule otherwise, “would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect permit every citizen to become a law unto himself. Government would exist only in name under such circumstances.”[27] In Cantwell v. Connecticut (1940), the Court held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment applied the Free Exercise Clause to the states. While the right to have religious beliefs is absolute, the freedom to act on such beliefs is not absolute.[28]  See more Right  Here.

Filed under Religion, Science & Technology Tagged with ,

Resisted War, Resisted Racism, Resisted Silence: George Houser

August 21, 2015 by Leave a Comment

Ninety Nine years is only the last accomplishment of George Houser’s amazing life:

  • WW II conscientious objector, 1940
  • Co-founder of the Congress of Racial Equality, 1942
  • Bus rider with Bayard Rustin into the segregated south, 1948
  • South African anti-apartheid organizer, 1952

The New York Times has an obituary.  How can we absorb his conscientious humanity?

“Deeply influenced by the work of Henry David Thoreau and Gandhi, Mr. Houser joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation in 1938, while a student there.

In 1940, he and a group of classmates, including David Dellinger, who went on to become a member of the Chicago Seven, refused to register for the draft as mandated by the Selective Training and Service Act. The act had been signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt that year.

“As theological students, we had an automatic exemption,” Mr. Houser explained in a 2002 interview with The Journal News of Westchester County, N.Y. “But we wanted to protest peacetime conscription.”

Mr. Houser, Mr. Dellinger and six fellow students were sentenced to prison in November 1940. Their story was the subject of a 2000 PBS documentary, “The Good War and Those Who Refused to Fight It.”

After serving a year in the federal prison at Danbury, Conn., Mr. Houser joined the staff of the Fellowship of Reconciliation as its youth secretary. He later moved to Chicago, where he completed his divinity degree at the Chicago Theological Seminary and received ordination.

In 1942, after Mr. Houser and his friend [James] Farmer were denied service at a Chicago restaurant, they, [Bayard] Rustin and others established what became CORE. Mr. Houser served as the group’s first executive secretary.

Bayard Rustin and George Houser, undated, sitting in at Cleveland restaurant

Bayard Rustin and George Houser, undated, sitting in at Cleveland restaurant

CORE soon became a national organization, enrolling tens of thousands of members in dozens of chapters within its first few years. Endorsing nonviolent protest, it convened sit-ins in public accommodations around the country.

In 1946, ruling in a landmark case, Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia, the Supreme Court held that segregation on interstate transit was unconstitutional.

The next year, to test the ruling, Mr. Houser and Mr. Rustin, CORE’s first field secretary, organized the Journey of Reconciliation. They convened a team of 16 men — eight black and eight white — to ride interstate buses through the South.

[Cross posted at All In One Boat]

Filed under Citizen Action, Civil Liberties, Race, Religion

Myanmar Minorities Still Under Attack

October 4, 2014 by Leave a Comment

For all the good thing happening in Myanmar/Burma as the country comes out of decades of military rule, the  vicious turn against the Royinga Muslims, particularly in the coastal state of Rakhine, seems to be getting worse instead of better.  The UN this week, called attention to the situation.

(Reuters) – U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s latest report on Myanmar raises serious concerns about ethnic and religious tensions that have led to violence against Rohingya Muslims, though he praises the government’s attempts to press ahead with democratic reforms.

The situation is especially worrying in Rakhine state, Ban said, where deep rifts between the Buddhist and Muslim communities have widened and the conditions at camps for internally displaced persons have deteriorated.

“The deep-seated inter-ethnic and inter-religious tensions that have re-emerged around the country have given rise to further violence, loss of life, displacement of populations and destruction of property,” the U.N. chief said in his annual report to the General Assembly’s Third Committee.

Human Rights Watch says that the government so called action plan will make things worse, instead of better;

A draft government plan would entrench discriminatory policies that deprive Rohingya Muslims in Burma of citizenship and lead to the forced resettlement of over 130,000 displaced Rohingya into closed camps, Human Rights Watch said today

The plan, a copy of which was obtained by Human Rights Watch, does not recognize the term Rohingya, referring throughout to “Bengalis,” an inaccurate and derogatory term commonly used by Burmese officials and nationalist Buddhists. Muslims are only mentioned in the plan with reference to religious schools.

“The long-awaited Rakhine State Action Plan both expands and solidifies the discriminatory and abusive Burmese government policies that underpin the decades-long persecution of the Rohingya,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director. “It is nothing less than a blueprint for permanent segregation and statelessness that appears designed to strip the Rohingya of hope and force them to flee the country.”

The man largely responsible for extremist turn against the Royhinga. a Buddhist monk named Wirathu, appeared last week in Sri Lanka, to address a large rally called by the militant Buddhist sect there, Bodu Bala Sena, promising to join them in fighting the “Islamist threat.”

Aljazeera

 

Filed under Asia, Extremism, Religion

Burma Burns

July 13, 2014 by Leave a Comment

The Buddhist led attacks on Myanmar Muslims has expanded beyond the initial targets of Royhinga, coastal people with imputed and real connections to Bangladesh.  Last week, mobs went after Chinese Muslims in the 2nd largest city, Mandalay.

Two men died.  Died ugly.

 The body of the Muslim man was identifiable by his wife only by a distinctive blemish on one of his toes.

More deaths were prevented by the intervention of a Buddhist monk, urging the club-wielding young men to go home.

A Buddhist monk, Galonni Sayadaw, approached the roving bands of young Buddhist men and urged them to return to their homes. The monk also publicly exhorted the chief of police, who as in previous bouts of religious unrest did not immediately intervene, to disperse the crowds.

In an interesting insight, a few are claiming, this is not simply spontaneous violence, or even something directed by the hate mongering  monk, Wirathu and his 969 movement.

Tin Tin Kyaw (centre) cries near the body of her husband Soe Min, a 51-year-old man who was killed in the riot, at a mosque in Mandalay. Photo: Reuters

Tin Tin Kyaw (centre) cries near the body of her husband Soe Min, a 51-year-old man who was killed in the riot, at a mosque in Mandalay. Photo: Reuters

David Scott Mathieson, an analyst with Human Rights Watch in Myanmar, wrote after the Mandalay riots that it appeared that the “violence was not just an organic eruption of communal resentment” and noted that it may have been linked to a planned visit to Mandalay on Sunday by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader. Burmese analysts have speculated that the violence might be associated with efforts to slow her ascension in politics and ultimately derail her attempts to become president.

NY Times: Fuller

Filed under Asia, Civil Strife, Religion Tagged with , , , ,

Myanmar: Limping On

June 27, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Interesting post about Myanmar in the China Law Blog:

As months go by we become more and more convinced that the biggest harm the military did to the society, the offense that will take the longest to remedy, was the wholesale destruction of the secondary education system that began in earnest in the mid-1990′s. Foreign companies coming into Myanmar are exasperated by the aggregately low levels of skill found in recent college graduates. The short term solution is to work with who you can get, and train the hell out of them, and hope to retain them.

As the writer says, the on-going Buddhist on Muslim violence in the west, and the Kachin rebellion in the North East, aren’t doing much to attract business either.

Intense fighting between the Burmese military and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) has reportedly killed at least four government soldiers this week, Kachin rebel sources say, with hostilities flaring on Tuesday and Wednesday. The Irawaddy

Across the country in the west, in the remote Chin state, the Burmese army has been accused of using rape as a weapon by a brave group of women.

Myanmar Stop Rape

The Myanmar government since 2009 has been accused of abusing human rights and using forced labor in the area.

To keep the pot stirred, the Government recently promulgated a proposed Religious Conversion bill, for public comment — which comment is strongly orchestrated by a group of Buddhist monks called the Organization for Protection of National Race and Religion. According to Human Rights Watch

it meant “any Burmese citizen who plans to change religion must seek a series of permissions from local representatives of government departments, including the Ministries of Religion, Education, Immigration and Population, and Women’s Affairs, and wait 90 days for permission to be granted.”

India apparently is unphased by the troubles, however.  The new government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is ramping up relations with Myanmar, with which it shares 1,643 km border.

I particularly liked the mention of a “Buddhist circuit”

The Buddhist circuit could also become an important link in the air connectivity, with services from Yangon to New Delhi and then on to Bodh Gaya in Bihar, Buddhism’s holiest site where Gautam Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment more than 2,500 years ago.

 

Perhaps with more visits to the Gautama’s birthplace the nationalist monks would find their way back into the heart of his teachings.

Beyond that

India is involved in important connectivity projects with Myanmar, including the Kaladan Multimodal Transit Transport Project, building and upgrading 71 bridges on the Tamu-Kalewa-Kalemyo road and construction of Kalewa-Yargyi section of the Trilateral Highway which envisages a seamless link between India, Myanmar and Thailand by 2016.

The India-Myanmar border trade is also picking up. Two border trade points are operational at present — at Moreh in Manipur and Tamu in Sagaing region in northwest Myanmar, and Zowkhatar (Mizoram) and Rhi in Chin state in Myanmar. A third border trade point is proposed to be opened at Avakhung in Phek district of Nagaland with Pansat/Somra in Myanmar.

The border trade between India and Myanmar touched $36.2 million in 2012-13. Bilateral trade stands at $1.9 billion.

Read more: 

 

Filed under Asia, Religion Tagged with , ,

Christians 5 – the Rest of Us 4

May 6, 2014 by Leave a Comment

The long term damage from a Supreme Court largely appointed by Republican Presidents over the past several decades  can scarcely be summarized. Though the recent decisions on Corporate personhood and unlimited political purchasing power are undoubtedly more immediately dangerous to a healthy democracy, yesterday’s ruling that sectarian prayer before governmental business meetings was not unconstitutional adds to the toxic waters rising in the country.

Two [Greece, NY] town residents sued, saying the prayers ran afoul of the First Amendment’s prohibition of government establishment of religion. They said the prayers offended them and, in Justice Kennedy’s words, “made them feel excluded and disrespected.”

But Justice Kennedy said the relevant constitutional question was not whether they were offended. “Adults often encounter speech they find disagreeable,” he wrote. “Legislative bodies do not engage in impermissible coercion merely by exposing constituents to prayer they would rather not hear and in which they need not participate.”  NY Times

So, I wonder, Justice Kennedy, if those who find the invocation of a deity, before talking about pot-hole fixing, to be mindboggling, and were to cover the ears with their hands, or put on ear-muffs during the prayer — would that be OK, too?  Protected?  Or say, a volunteer were to praise the forests and the rivers for three minutes, or perhaps the gnomes that live there — will that be protected?  Do the upstate Buddhists have the same right to offer public prayer before the assemblage as the Christians? Do the Hare Krishnas?

When they see an opening, they drive a wedge into it. Perhaps!  Maybe!  We can have an eastern Ukraine situation right here in the US of A….

Filed under Religion Tagged with ,

The Pope Jawbones the Power Elite

December 12, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Pope Francis said in the first peace message of his pontificate that huge salaries and bonuses are symptoms of an economy based on greed and inequality and called again for nations to narrow the wealth gap.

In his message for the Roman Catholic Church’s World Day of Peace, marked around the world on January 1, he also called for sharing of wealth and for nations to shrink the gap between rich and poor, more of whom are getting only “crumbs”.

“The grave financial and economic crises of the present time … have pushed man to seek satisfaction, happiness and security in consumption and earnings out of all proportion to the principles of a sound economy,” he said.

“The succession of economic crises should lead to a timely rethinking of our models of economic development and to a change in lifestyles,” he said.

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Last month, in a document seen as a manifesto of his papacy, he attacked unfettered capitalism as “a new tyranny“.

Since his election in March as the first non-European pope in 1,300 years, the Argentinian has several times condemned the “idolatry of money” and said it was a depressing sign of the times that a homeless person dying of exposure on the street was no longer news but a slight fall in the stock market is.

You Go, Pope!

Filed under Poverty, Religion Tagged with ,

Luang Brabang, Laos Celebrates the End of Monsoon Season — in driving rain

November 5, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Fire Boat Festival in Laos

Fire Boat Festival in Laos

In one of the nicest places I’ve ever visited, Luang Prabang, Laos, the October full moon marked the end of the seasonal monsoon.  The folks pour out into the streets and into the Mekong and Nam Kahn rivers to let the spirits free.

Hundreds of foreign tourists were among the thousands watching the parade of “fire boats” that followed the races in Luang Prabang. The nighttime event is a highlight of the three-day race weekend: Handcrafted bamboo boats adorned with fruit, candles and paper serpents are carried to a Buddhist temple and then floated on the nearby Mekong as a way of honoring ancestors and empowering the Naga, a serpent like deity in Buddhist and Hindu mythology.  NY Times

Individual villages and temples create large elaborate boats using bamboo, coloured paper, leaves, flowers and candles which they then light up and carry along the main street in a large candlelit procession down to Wat Xieng Thong, where they are displayed and judged before being taken down the steps of the temple to the Mekong river and released downstream. Falang Brabang

Before the festivities begin, everyone cleans their home to rid bad spirits which may have taken up residence during the rainy season. Families then walk down to the river carrying beautifully carved wax candles in the shape of temples or boats, which they light and set adrift on the mighty Mekong, a ceremony which is thought to give the person releasing the craft very good karma for the coming season. – See more

Filed under Asia, Religion Tagged with , ,

Anti-vaccine-preaching Texas megachurch linked to measles outbreak

August 27, 2013 by Leave a Comment

This is the way things ought to turn out — that those who live by ignorance are bitten by it.

 11 of the 16 measles cases had been linked to church attendees.

The pastor, against her father’s preaching, threw some information at the congregation

In a marked shift in the church’s message, Pearsons went on to inform the congregation that the church was setting up free vaccination clinics, and urged those who chose not to participate to voluntarily quarantine themselves at home for two weeks.

DeadState.org

Now if only massive hurricane and wild fires would only hit those who didn’t believe the climate was changing….

Filed under Religion, Science & Technology Tagged with ,

South East Asia

July 26, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Keeping a closer eye on South East Asia than I used to, after a fine 5 week trip through 5 countries in Feb/March this year.

Burma/Myanmar

Today marks Burma’s Martyrs’ Day, a holiday commemorating the anniversary of the assassination of anti-imperialist revolutionary Aung San, father of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and newest member of Burmese parliament Aung San Suu Kyi. Recognized as the architect of Burma’s independence from Britain, the young leader was gunned down in a government building on July 19, 1947 along with six of his cabinet ministers, just six months before his country would achieve independence. In Burma, today is a day of mourning, both of the leader and the principles that would have likely become manifest in Burmese society if his life had not been cut short. Tricycle

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Officials announced this week that the controversial copper mine project worth $1 billion, which locals and activists have been protesting for months now  will resume operation,  Quartz

&

Cambodia

Prime Minister Hun Sen — who maintains a difficult-to-defeat political machine — faces what analysts describe as a formidable contest, tougher than the governing party is accustomed to and one that features starkly competing political priorities.

…The rallying cry of the young opposition supporters in Phnom Penh is “change.” They campaign throughout the city on motorcycles, emblems of greater mobility and incomes than their parents knew.

The opposition was galvanized by the return last Friday of Sam Rainsy, a former finance minister who fled Cambodia in 2009 rather than face charges in a highly politicized trial. Mr. Sam Rainsy, who was greeted by tens of thousands of supporters at the Phnom Penh airport… NY Times + photos

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Marvelous photos by David Butow of Buddhist ceremony around the world.

A monk praying at Angkor Wat, Cambodia

A monk praying at Angkor Wat, Cambodia

&

Vietnam

4 decades after war ended, Agent Orange still ravaging Vietnamese

Ly is … very different from other children. Her head is severely misshapen. Her eyes are unnaturally far apart and permanently askew. She’s been hospitalized with numerous ailments since her birth.Her mother, 43-year-old Le Thi Thu, has similar deformities and health disorders. Neither of them has ever set foot on a battlefield, but they’re both casualties of war.Le and her daughter are second- and third-generation victims of dioxin exposure, the result of the U.S. military’s use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, when the U.S. Air Force sprayed more than 20 million gallons of Agent Orange and other herbicides over parts of southern Vietnam and along the borders of neighboring Laos and Cambodia

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Bearing a copy of a letter from Ho Chi Minh to Harry S. Truman, the president of Vietnam met President Obama on Thursday and pledged to deepen trade and military ties with the United States even as they tangled over human rights.

Mr. Obama referred gently to the [alleged human rights] abuses, saying: “All of us have to respect issues like freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly. And we had a very candid conversation about both the progress that Vietnam is making and the challenges that remain.”

Mr. Sang, sitting next to him in the Oval Office, mentioned the legacy of the Vietnam War and said that “we still have differences” concerning his country’s human rights record.

NY Times

Filed under Asia, Religion Tagged with , , , , ,

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