Atheists: Borrowing from Religion?

Atheist Alain de Bottom has written a new book titled:  Religion for Atheists:  A Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion.  His premise is that religion stripped of the supernatural has elements to offer atheists; that there are some things that religion gets right.

“The error of modern atheism,” he writes, “has been to overlook how many aspects of the faiths remain relevant even after their central tenets have been dismissed.”

Here are 4 things that de Botton feels that atheists can borrow:

• Temples:  As religions have always known, a beautiful building is an indispensable part of getting the message across.  You can construct a temple to anything that’s positive and good.
  

  Le Corbusier's Chapel in Ronchamp, France

• Museums:  The museum should not be a neutral place for displaying works of art; it should be a place to convert you to something noble.

The Guggenheim Art Museum in Bilbao, Spain

• Meals:  To help build a sense of community, there should be weekly, communal meals like those found at the heart of the Catholic mass.
  

  Leonardo de Vinci's "Last Supper," Milan, Italy

• Pilgrimages:  Not to religious sites, but to places of renewal and meaning, such as a place of great natural beauty or silence or a secular retreat center.
  

  Modern-day Pilgrims on the "Camino de Santiago"

The book has received mixed reviews.  David Brooks, columnist for the NYTs praised some of de Botton’s idea–like his suggestion that museums be organized on universal themes, such as compassion, instead of time periods.  He calls others “silly.”

P.Z. Myers, an American atheist and biologist, wrote, “I’m rolling my eyes so hard that it hurts.”

Dilemmas of a “Jack” Mormon

I have 3 married children and 11 grandchildren.  All are active in the LDS Church.  All 3 children were married in the temple, and between the 3 and their spouses, 4 have been on missions.  One of my sons teaches early morning seminary in Virginia.  I am not active and have serious doubts.

The dilemma for me, as a “Jack” Mormon, is church ordinances.  When my kids were growing up, their grandfathers performed them, with me just participating in the circles.  My father-in-law was never very happy about this arrangement, but he went along.  My father was always very gracious.  When my sons were getting ready to go on their missions, my mother and father agreed to take them through the temple.  When my children married, I missed the temple wedding ceremonies.  The only ceremony where I was the voice was when I dedicated my father’s grave.

Now, I have a dilemma with my grandchildren.  There are blessings, confirmations, and ordinations.  I participate in the circles, but should I?

The Circle for a Mormon Baby Blessing

I was recently traveling with a colleague (who is also a Stake President) and I asked him whether it is appropriate for me as a “Jack” Mormon to participate in the circles . . . something that I have been doing.  His answer surprised me, he said “No.”  My colleague is quite liberal in his politics, so I was expecting a different answer.  I guess he is not very liberal in his ecclesiastical responsibilities.

My colleague indicated that you should at least be active to participate, and he implied a temple recommend would be best.  He said he could quote chapter and verse from the bishop’s manual.  Nobody has ever asked me my church status or hinted that I should not participate.  I suspect that my family members would be disappointed if I didn’t.

Five of my grandchildren live in Virginia, and I’ve tried to be at all their church ordinances (I live in Utah).  For me, it is an important family activity and I want to be supportive.  I will probably continue to participate unless officially instructed otherwise.

According to the website lds.org, all that is required for a baby blessing, confirmation, or grave dedication is for the participant to have the Melchizedek Priesthood, which I nominally have.  For an ordination, one must be “authorized by the presiding authority.”

Brain Cripplers in Sub-Saharan Africa

There is an excellent article about mental health issues in Africa at www.ieet.org.  The article, by Hank Pellissier, is titled:  “Six Brain-Damage Scourges that Cripple IQ in Sub-Saharan Africa.”  It is a must read for people with an interest in social justice and sub-Saharan Africa.

Do they really have a chance?

I live part-time in Uganda (my vacation time) working with 3 separate humanitarian groups:  Engineers Without Borders, SeeeMe Foundation, and Interethnic Health Alliance.  Pellissier accurately illuminates a subject that is critically important.

Short Videos on the World’s Water Crisis

There are 4 excellent short videos on the Internet discussing the world’s water crisis.  They are titled:

• The Future of Water:  Fidelity analyst Anna Davydova breaks down the facts and discusses what lies ahead.
• Water Changes Everything:  This video explores how we can help resolve the water crisis.
• More Water Wars:  This clip exposes how regional water shortages can yield conflicts.
• No Reason:  These images illuminate water’s important global role.

The short videos could be useful for family home evenings and home schoolers, or just for general education.

LRA, Joseph Kony, and Invisible Children

According to Time magazine (25 Mar 2012), the advocacy group Invisible Children recently hit the big time:

On March 5, a San Diego-based advocacy group called Invisible Children released a 29-minute film on the Internet called Kony 2012.  Invisible Children called on activists to make Kony the most famous war criminal on earth, thus raising the political will to speed his arrest or death.  It was one of many films about the LRA [Lord's Resistance Army] the group has made since 2003, but for some reason Kony 2012 became a phenomenon.  Invisible Children wanted 500,000 views.  According to the group, the film got a million in 24 hours.  After 48 hours, it had a million very 30 minutes.  Six days after its release, 85 million people had watch the film, by then translated into 50 languages.

The LRA is a rebel group that used to terrorize northern Uganda.  Now they are a dispersed group of 150 to 200 rag-tag fighters that exists in the shadows of Uganda’s northern neighbors.  The LRA has been successfully driven out of Uganda.

Joseph Kony is the LRA’s leader, and he was the model for the rebel leader in the hit Broadway musical The Book of Mormon.  In 2005, Kony became the first individual to be indicted by the newly established International Criminal Court in the Hague.  The LRA is universally despised for its use of child soldiers and for using captured girls and women as sex slaves.

In December of last year, in part because of lobbying by Invisible Children, President Obama sent 100 special forces troops to central Africa ”to maintain pressure on the LRA, both militarily and diplomatically . . . specially, the urgent challenges of apprehending or removing Joseph Kony from the battlefield.”  The troops are to assist the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, South Sudan, and Uganda.

As readers of this blog know, I live parttime in Uganda, and have spent several weeks in northern Uganda, mostly in and around the city of Gulu.  Kony and the LRA are no longer a threat there.  Villagers are moving from relocation camps back to their villages.  There is a major effort by humanitarian groups to rebuild the area’s infrastructure.  Additionally, there is an LDS Branch in Gulu and Mormon missionaries from the West are assigned there.

Many Africans have criticized Invisible Children for overstating the LRA threat.  And it would be my opinion that the LRA is no longer a serious threat in northern Uganda.  The much bigger concerns are the instability in the newly independent country of South Sudan (and its current border war with Sudan) and the lawlessness in the eastern Congo.  But one can hardly argue with bringing Kony to justice.

According to the Wall Street Journal (16 Mar 2012), when the Invisible Children video was shown in Lira (northern Uganda), it received mixed reviews.  One criticism:

Lira residents said they were upset the video devotes so much attention to the American filmmakers and Mr. Kony, and relatively little to the conflicts victims.  “The video looks to be more about whites than Ugandans,” said Thomas Okello, a local leader.

When actress and high-profile international activist Angelina Jolie was asked what she thought of the Kony2012 campaign (Time magazine, 9 Apr 2012), she responded”

I believe that [the] group’s intention is pure.  And I think it’s very inspiring that so many young people were so moved.  If people are more drawn to this than to something that is more shallow, then we have to see that as a positive.

Angelina Jolie Striking "the Pose" (aka Joliening) at the 2012 Oscars.

Anthropocene Epoch: The Age of Man

According to a Time magazine section (12 Mar 2012) titled ”10 ideas that are changing your life,” it is possible that we are no longer living in the Holocene epoch:

Human activity now shapes the earth more than any other independent geologic or climatic factor.  Our impact on the planet’s surface has become so powerful that scientists are considering changing the way we measure geologic time.  Right now we’re officially living in the Holocene epoch, a particularly pleasant period that started when the last ice age ended 12,000 years ago.  But some scientists argue that we’ve broken into a new epoch that they call the Anthropocene:  the age of man.  “Human dominance of biological, chemical and geological processes on Earth is already an undeniable reality,” writes Paul Crutzen, the Nobel Prize-winning atmosphereic chemist who first popularized the term Anthropocene.  “It’s no longer us against ‘Nature.’  Instead, it’s we who decide what nature is and what it will be.”

The author of the article, Brian Walsh, continues:

. . . Managing the Anthropocene . . . will mean promoting the sort of technology that environmentalists have often opposed, from nuclear power–still the biggest carbon-free utility-scale energy source, despite the risk of accidents and the problem of radioactive-waste disposal–to genetically modified crops that could allow us to grow more food on less land, saving precious space for wildlife.  It will mean privileging cities, because dense urban developments turn out to be the most sustainable and efficient settlements on the planet.  And if we prove unable to quickly reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, we may be required to consciously fiddle with the climate through geoengineering, using artificial clouds or other planetary-scale technology to reduce the earth’s temperature directly.

Curses . . . Here We Go Again

In Tuesday’s The Washington Post are the musings of BYU associate professor Randy Bott trying to justify the LDS Church’s historic Black priesthood ban.  Bott makes an ass out of himself and embarasses the Church.  His comments are based on Mormon folklore which has been discredited.  In the Post article, reporter Jason Horowitz, paraphrases Bott:

According to Mormon scriptures, the descendants of Cain, who slew his brother Abel, “were black.”  One of Cain’s descendants was Egyptus, a woman Mormons believe was the namesake of Egypt.  She married Ham, who descendants were themselves cursed and, in the view of many Mormons, barred from the priesthood by his father, Noah.  Bott points ot the Mormon holy text, the Book of Abraham, as suggesting that all of the descendents of Ham and Egyptus were thus black and barred from the priesthood.

Bott goes on to make serious racist and bigotted remarks, something unworthy of an instructor at BYU.  The reaction on the bloggernacle has been overwelmingly negative, as was the official reaction from the LDS Church.  But despite official comments, according to Joanna Brooks writing on religionsdispatches.org, ”racist rationale[s] for the priesthood ban . . . persist and circulate, generally unquestioned and unchallenged.”

The Bott scandal points to a serious issue with contemporary Mormonism: our unwillingness to deal with the issue of curses.  When the Black priesthood ban was lifted, there was no explanation for why it ever existed.  Thus, the issue of a curse was allowed to continue in Mormon folklore.  This issue needs to be dealt with now in a forth-right manner.

We have a similar issue with Native Americans.  With the LDS Church now suggesting that The Book of Mormon is only a record of a small percentage of those who lived in the Americas, what does this say about the curse of the Lamanites?  According to Michael Vinson writing in the December 2011 Sunstone:

So if the Americas were actually populated for thousands of years prior to the arrival of Nephi and Lehi this might explain the population explosion among the Lamanities.  It is entirely possible that after the famous family break-up, Laman and Lemuel and their descendents found and integrated themselves with native peoples, marrying and having children with them.  Perhaps when the Nephites later encountered the Lamanite descendants (whose children would probably have acquired the native brown skin coloring), they assumed the darkened skin coloring was a curse of God.

If we believe the BoM to be a literal record, this is a very plausible explanation.  Again, the alleged curse is no longer a curse.  We can quit being condescending and patronizing toward our Native American brothers and sisters.

There is also the curse of Eve.  Daniel Peterson, professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic at BYU, writes on his blog:

There is no question that there are many worthy women who could fulfill priesthood callings at least as well as their male counterparts do, if the priesthood were conferred upon them.  My wife is certainly one of them; she is superior in every relevant quality of spirituality, service, and righteousness (and I’m entirely serious about that, not merely engaging in some sentimental but empty gesture of placing her, and womanhood generally, on a pedestal).  Yet God has not authorized the conferral of priesthood upon women.  Why not?  I have no idea.  I’ve heard various hypotheses, but I find none of them convincing.  The Lord hasn’t explained himself on this one.

There is also the curse of being gay.  It is okay to be gay as long as one doesn’t act on his or her need for love.  In other words, you are denied the sacred right (or rite) of marriage (and temple marriage).  Much like the Blacks were denied the right to hold the priesthood.  And please don’t quote the OT to me.

Peterson’s recommendation to his fellow BYU staff member Bott is:

So the proper answer, when asked to explain discrimination–and it is “discrimination,” in the sense that it distinguishes between individuals and groups–is and should be, simply, “I know not, save the Lord commanded me.” (Moses 5:6)

The justification for three of the four curses goes back to the Torah.  Since these five books aren’t really history and filled with questionable doctrine, they should not be used to justify contemporary discrimination.

Brooks sums up the Bott situation nicely:

. . . [let's] hope that someone will finally articulate the most credible explanation for Mormonism’s historic discrimination against Black people:  WE WERE WRONG (emphasis mine).