Milk

I watched Harvey Milk's biographical film today, at times with tears flowing from my eyes. It saddens me that basic human rights often take several generations and a lot of sacrifice, even bloody human sacrifices, to acquire ... and it made me think that maybe the Christians, when they carried out their hateful anti-gay propaganda and spread lies about gay citizens (both in the seventies and recently in the 2008 elections) provided the fuel that the gay community needed. They made everyone in the gay community feel threatened with the fear of living in an age where we would lose our jobs only for being gay, and made us pull our resources together to really BECOME an organized community.

Without the threat from the Christian Reich, we would not have needed to fight for power and for equal rights. It was an ugly but powerful incentive.

Please watch the movie. Every gay person in this country owes much to the gay activists of the previous generations.

"We stand on the shoulders of those that came before us" - Yoruba proverb

A beacon of liberty

Nobel Peace Price winner Desmond Tutu of South Africa said recently that homophobia is a "crime against humanity" and "every bit unjust" as apartheid.

While most countries surrounding South Africa remain in the dark ages with regards to the rights of African LGBT citizens, this one country shines as an example of democratic values. It is the first country in the continent to give full equal rights, including marriage rights, to its gay and lesbian citizens.

Thank You!

An atheist wrote a letter to the Phelps, of the Westboro Baptist Church.

I am a student at Blue Valley North High school. I was never originally a student from BVHS. I moved here in October 2005 after leaving my hometown of Biloxi, Mississippi. Yes I am a Hurricane Katrina victim. I want to thank you for bringing knowledge into my life.

After Katrina happened I kept asking myself "why did this happen" "how come everything in my grandmother's house have to be destroyed" "how come the government was so ineffecient" "why did my life have to change". Thanks to you guys I am now aware it is because of HOMOSEXUALITY! Not global warming, not the fact that the government is unstable, not the fact that my grandmother wasn't properly prepared, and not because it was a major catastrophe, but because gays are in the world. Hell I can't even blame it on me because I'm an athiest when I have a perfectly good homosexual scapegoat sitting right next to me in one of my classes.

Then came my move to Blue Valley North. Well apperently God hates me there too! Thank goodness I don't believe in God or I would have very low self esteem!

I'm glad you pickett funerals, because when you do die, I will be there, and I will show you no mercy.

You're lucky "God loves" you guys, because no one else seems to. I guess what I wanted to say is that every bad moment that has ever happened in your life was brought upon yourself and if you think it's bad living on earth with all these homosexuals, then I can't wait for whatever hell awaits you.

Love,
Allison the Athiest

(I decided to not post Timothy Phelps' reply. It was too vulgar.)

Verses that didn't make it into the Bible

"Tell Mary (Magdalene) to leave us. For women are not worthy of life." - Peter, in the Gospel of Thomas

"I am afraid of Peter. He threatens me and hates our race." - Mary Magdalene, in Pistis Sophia

Go figure!

"At this stage in my life, I am a loser" - Ted Haggard

HBO will be screening “The Trials of Ted Haggard”, a documentary which details the rise and fall of the closeted evangelical homophobe, who remains married but recently declared he still struggles with sexuality.

The China boycott: an idea whose time has come

During the 1950's invasion and genocide of Tibet by the Chinese, about one million Tibetans were mass murdered by the red army. Tibet, a weak nation with little military power, was robbed of its sovereignty. The 14th Dalai Lama went into exile in India where he has been stripped of political power and serves only as a religious figure.

Tibetan culture is repressed in Tibet and persistent attempts at assimilating the population are in place. The Chinese government is already planning to install the next Dalai Lama. It would be breaking the centuries old tradition by which this functionary was chosen according to Tibetan religious guidelines, not according to Chinese secular and political interests.

We also hear of products being manufactured by Chinese children (slaves?) in sweatshops. We hear of few labor regulations and inhumane working conditions. We hear of toys being built for American children in Chinese factories which contain lead, and of milk and other products which are toxic and can kill American children and consumers.

We hear of violations of animal and human rights, and we hear about how China is now the number one threat to the environment after the United States.

Clearly, the Chinese government lacks moral character. Which leads me to the question: why are we not boycotting China? With what moral authority do we claim to be pro-democracy when the people of Tibet are suffering? Does Tibet have to have oil to be worthy of our concern, like Kuwait was? Is oil sacred now, and is human dignity and freedom not sacred? I believe a non-violent resistance movement needs to be organized, and who would be better suited for that than the 14th Dalai Lama?

The 14th Dalai Lama has never stopped preaching non-violence and calls for a solution to the Tibet problem where 'all parties can benefit'. This is a good beginning, we all know that the problem is a moral one. But it's not enough.

The idea of non violence has a glorious history. One of the criticisms of Buddha to the brahmanic system of his day had to do with animal sacrifices in Vedic religion. When Buddhism flourished, this caused a counter-reform in Hinduism and today animals are all considered sacred by Hindus. A huge amount of unnecessary suffering has been averted.

Ghandi used this idea and tradition of non-violence in his boycott of the British, thanks to which he won freedom for India from British domination. His movement not only promoted tolerance and focused on the common good, but was highly effective and practical. He demonstrated that the idea of non-violence was a powerful one and that it could be used to implement tangible change for the common good. He helped the world understand that non-violence does not mean being passive when indignities and injustice take place.

Martin Luther King Jr followed in the footsteps of Ghandi. The non-violent resistance movement that he organized birthed the civil rights movement in the US. An idea that originated in the mind of an enlightened one in India 2,500 years ago had spread, flourished and civilized the entire planet. It had been demonstrated to be an efficient, dynamic idea and not about passive submission.

This is what saddens me about the 14th Dalai Lama's inefficiency. He is about 73 years of age and has not effectively organized a non-violent resistance movement against China, has not called for or organized a boycott of China, and if he dies without Tibet having gained its freedom, the Tibetan people will most likely lose faith in the non-violent teachings of Buddhism and become demoralized. They will easily turn to violence.

Past non-violent resistance movements have proven effective if effectively organized, even if they required sacrifice. The Dalai Lama is a Nobel Prize winner, he is a celebrity and every word that he utters resounds throughout the entire planet. He is perceived as a major planetary moral authority and has the power to easily organize such an effort. We should hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

I send forth loving energies to Tibet. May peace prevail forever in that sacred land, and may dharma always be practiced there. I pray for the peaceful conclusion of Chinese hegemony over Tibet, hopefully by means of a plebiscite and a democratic process of emancipation.

The conclusion of the scholars of the Jesus Seminar, for example, was that only 16% of the sayings attributed to Jesus in the gospels are actually authentic, accurate portrayals of what Jesus really said. The other 84% are words read into the Jesus of history by an interpreting community during the oral period. Much of what the gospels call the acts of Jesus fall into a similar statistical spread.

- Bishop John Shelby Spong

Fortune cookie wisdom :~)

I surrender the HOW
and let my YES
be enough
and I allow my YES
to inform, fund and guide me

- The Chicago Center for Spiritual Living, a progressive New Thought community

Pancha Ganapati

The murti (form of God) that was chosen for this video is known as Ganesha Panchamukha (Lord Ganesha of the Five Faces). This is a very auspicious form of God. Ganesha is the son of God in his form as Lord Shiva and Mother Parvati. He is the Owner of Obstacles (Vigneswara, or Vighnaraya) and is the first to be invoked in every Vedic ritual, as he is the one who opens the way for spiritual aspirants so that they can make advancements. He personifies Opportunity.

He is also the God of the intellect, culture and the arts, the divine scribe who compiled the Vedas and the Lord of all knowledge. He is the word of God, and is known as Omkaram or the very Form of Om, which is the original creative vibration of this universe.

In the scripture of Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna says "Out of all the sacred syllables, I am OM". Therefore, Ganesha is understood to be non-different from the Supreme Personality of Godhead.

He likes offerings of sweets, coconut, sandal incense, fruits and sweet balls of rice known as modakas. Ganesha is strictly vegetarian! He practices non-violence.

The reason why his five-faced form is worshiped in December has to do with the Hindu diaspora in the Western world and how every religion and culture has its own version of a winter solstice or Yuletide celebration: Christians have Christmas, Jews have Hannukah, African Americans have Kwanzaa, and often Hindu children feel left out and so diasporic Hindus decided to create a new tradition so that children could enjoy gifts, have a good time, eat sweets and learn about their heritage during the winter solstice.

The tradition of Pancha Ganapati (meaning, "The worship of the Five-faced Lord of the Hosts") was born. Since Yule is a time to prepare for the coming of a new year, it would be an auspicious time to worship the Lord of all beginnings. Pancha Ganapati is a five day festival which is celebrated in the home from December 21 through December 25 in worship of the five qualities that Ganesha embodies in this form. The details on how to celebrate the festival can be found here:

http://www.hinduismtoday.com/archives/2004/10-12/13_panchaganapati.shtml

Through this festival we strengthen and promote happiness and success in the five areas of family, neighbors, business relations, arts and culture, and finally in the whole world.

Ganesha is also a meditational deity. His one tusk symbolizes concentration. His bija or root mantra is GAM. Some of the mantras used to salute him are:

Om Sri Ganeshaya Namaha
Om Gam Ganapataye Namaha

The song that was chosen for this video is by Bhagavan Das. It is from his CD 'Now' and the salutation used is 'Gam Ganapataye Namoh Namaha'.

Doubting Thomas

Thomas Jefferson actually made his own Gospel by removing the fabulous and mythical elements in the Gospels and keeping only the ethical teachings of Jesus. The resulting Jefferson Bible, or The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, remains to this day a document which is actually revered by many secularists and non-religious (cultural) Christians.

Behind this book, however, and coupled with a profound respect for the man Jesus of Nazareth and his sophisticated ethical philosophy, lies a profound distrust and antipathy toward organized religion. It's very illuminating to read what this founding father had to say about the Christian Church, especially in light of the current attacks that our secular, liberal and democratic values are suffering by religious fanatics. Here are some quotes:

"The Christian God can be easily pictured as virtually the same as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel, evil and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed, beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of the people who say they serve him. The are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites." - Thomas Jefferson

"Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man." - Thomas Jefferson

I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. - Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Hopkinson

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes. - Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt

The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills. -Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. - Thomas Jefferson, letter to Horatio G. Spafford

My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest. The artificial structures they have built on the purest of all moral systems, for the purpose of deriving from it pence and power, revolts those who think for themselves, and who read in that system only what is really there. - Thomas Jefferson, letter to Mrs. Samuel H. Smith

Priests ... dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live. - Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Correa de Serra

Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him [Jesus] by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being. - Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Short

And the day will come, when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason, and freedom of thought in these United States, will do away all this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors. - Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to John Adams

Feminist critique of the legend of Sodom and Gomorrah

I read the book Shekhinah: She Who Dwells Within some years back. The author Lynn Gottlieb is a rabbi and a feminist. The book is a manifesto where a revised, contemporary, re-envisioned expression of Judaism is presented from her perspective.

The main thing that this book did for me was it opened my eyes to the long history of dissent that exists in the Jewish tradition, out of which the Americanized Jewish Reform movement was born. This westernized Jewish tradition is a brilliant, progressive, liberal expression of Judaism. It is what Judaism should have been from the beginning.

This admirable tradition where old ideas are challenged constantly in order to produce more intelligent expressions of religion has unfortunately not yet taken root in the Islamic world, although some Christian traditions have taken part of this same process.

Conservatives generally take for granted (in error) that scriptures were written for all eternity to remain unchanged, that they are set in stone and are not changeable. Gottlieb presents us with a challenge to this notion which not only makes sense, but is a much more dynamic insight than it seems and it carries the possibility of forever transforming Biblical patriarchal presumptions.

One of the most revolutionary (and commonsense) ideas that Gottlieb's book presents is the fact that the Bible was written by men, from men's perspective, and that if it had been written by the women, from the women's perspective, it would have been a completely different document.

She cites the laws in Deuteronomy 22 concerning the stoning of women, even if they were raped, and the fact that women were to be sold to their sexual predators and the Bible even sets a price for them. She asked: How would the women of Biblical times have related their experience of these laws, if they had not been silenced and made invisible? What version of this paradigm would they have presented in scripture? It was a brillant argument.

Jewish women found a voice during the Middle Ages in the midrashic tradition. The midrash were Jewish legends which were passed down orally, usually by the women.

Gottlieb produced several midrash in her book where she envisioned the women of the Bible telling their own stories for the first time. She emphasized the importance and the need for women to speak up and tell their own stories from their own perspective. I think members of the gay community should also do the same within their churches or synagogues, so that our sacred history will not continue to be told by our oppressors as it was in the past.

This takes me to the subject that I originally wanted to address: the women in the Sodom and Gomorrah legend. The problem of how this legend is used to legitimize attacks on gay monogamous relations, besides being demoralizing and comparing a relationship between two consenting adults to gang rape, presents us with another, equally obscene problem: Lot, who is presented by the authors of the Bible as a model of hospitality, offers his own daughters to his neighbors to be raped ... and then gets drunk and he himself rapes them.

The daughters of Lot were children. According to the story that is told in the Bible, THEY were the ones who got him drunk and tempted him. Lot was apparently not expected to abstain from drinking and having sex with his daughters. It really seems as if the commandment to breed and multiply was more important than the universal taboo against incest.

The moral dilemma is, in the end, comparable to what we find in Deuteronomy 22: fundamentalists who attribute moral authority to the authors of this legend apparently fail to be disgusted at the fact that the aggressor is praised and the victims of the aggression are blamed for being raped, and they fail to observe the twisted effects that this legend has had in our culture. The same dynamic was seen in the Catholic Church's sexual abuse scandal in recent years, where the victims were minors who were manipulated through guilt by the religious authorities.

In these passages the women were raped, abused, murdered, sold to sexual predators by their own fathers, victimized and silenced while the men made the laws and wrote the scriptures. No one thought of asking them what they wanted or what they thought, and no one allowed them to articulate their ideas.

Here, it would be wise to apply Lynn Gottlieb's technique of telling the stories from the perspective of the women. What if Lot's daughters had written the legend of Sodom and Gomorrah from their perspectives? What would it sound like, using today's verbiage?

"Strangers came to our city and our neighbors tried to rape them. Dad wanted to hand us over to our neighbors to be raped. Then dad waited for mom to die and then dad used to get drunk and rape us, and that is how we came to have dad's children."

Is this an ideal father? Is this how a revered patriarch should act? Is this a healthy model for family values? It is justifiable to attribute moral authority to the authors of the Bible, in view of the fact that they wrote this legend in defence of Lot? Is it fair to focus on the very real problem of gang rape when we read this legend, and to ignore the other very real problem of how a man can offer his own daughters to be raped, and how a man can drink himself into such a stupor that he forgets that he is having sex with his own daughters?

If we can learn something from this legend, it's that the authors of the Bible had a profound hatred of women and that this is evidence of an absolute lack of human values, in particular when it comes to how women are perceived, especially when they are victimized. This is just one of the many reasons why I believe that the Bible should be amended, re-written, edited, or updated.

Arguments against Paul

Argument 1: Paul's immoral views on slavery, women and gays

In Ephesians 6 Paul told slaves to be loyal to their masters, comparing slave-masters to Christ. In 1 Timothy 6, he again advised submission, praising his own teachings by saying that they were a 'sane doctrine'.

Jesus said by their fruits we shall know them. Paul's teachings on slavery were used by the Portuguese crown in Brasil when they commissioned Antonio Vieira, a Catholic priest, to produce a slavist theology and to teach slaves to submit to their white Portuguese masters. The theology that Vieira produced was absolutely obscene. He promoted the 'mark of Cain' doctrine, whereby blacks were the children of Cain and blackness was a curse. Africa was compared to hell, and servitude to white Christians was the only way to salvation.

Paul also promoted a Taliban-ish attitude toward women: they had to cover themselves up, sit in the back of the church and never speak or teach.

And then of course there's the long list of false witness that he bore against gays in Romans 1, where he even called gay people assasins, and then he concluded in verse 32 with his stance that gay people deserve to be murdered, as well as those who enable gay people. This is not coming out of the mouth of Reverend Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church, but out of the pen of Paul: it was Paul who first wished gays would all just fall dead. There is still consensus among conservative Christians that it is okay to question gay people's right to exist, although many refuse to admit this problem. But in the dark ages, gays were cooked alive in public and no one experienced guilt, thanks to Paul the Bigot.

Paul's homophobia was the first thing that made me raise an eyebrow with regards to who he was and what he was doing writing epistles supposedly in the name of Jesus, whom he never met. I would like to share some of the facts that we can glean from scripture on this character, and let each person come to her or his own understanding and conclusion with regards to Paul.

Argument 2: "The lot fell to Matthias", says the Bible

I believe that the first and most important verse to ponder is Acts 1:22 where Paul's status as an apostle is flatly denied. When Judas was no longer considered an apostle, the disciples cast lots. Two candidates were considered, none of whom was Paul, and Matthias was chosen as the new twelfth apostle.

Then they cast lots, and the lot fell to Matthias; so he was added to the eleven apostles. - Acts 1:26

Argument 3: "But do not ye be called rabbi", says Jesus in Matthew 23:8

It is clear in the Bible that Paul was no apostle, however he claimed to be one in 2 Timothy 1:11. I wonder how Matthias felt ... and the people who chose Matthias.

"And of this gospel I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher (rabbi)." - Paul

This verse is also an instance where Paul directly contradicts Jesus, who said: "do not have yourselves called teachers". By having himself called "teacher", he was challenging and contradicting Jesus. He clearly did not know that Jesus had said this.

Can someone who contradicts the Christ be considered a Christian prophet or apostle?

Argument 4: "They gave me nothing"

The mutual animosity between the apostles and Paul is evident in numerous verses of scripture: from Acts 9:26 we see that many did not trust or believe in Paul from the beginning. He had this to say about the apostles in Galatians 2:6

"As for those who were considered important in the church, their reputation doesn't concern me. God isn't impressed with mere appearances, and neither am I. And of course these leaders were able to add nothing to the message I had been preaching."

Let's brush aside the air of arrogance and jealousy in this verse (which we will see again in 2 Corinthians 11:5) and look at what he is saying. Other translations say 'they gave me nothing'. The Spanish versions say they 'taught me nothing'. Now, in those days the only way to learn the good news was hearing it from those who had heard it from Jesus because the Gospels had not been written. We know that Paul never met Jesus. This explains why Paul does not, ever, not even once mention one single teaching, one parable, or one event from the life of Jesus. If the disciples and apostles 'gave him nothing', then this can only mean that he basically made up his own gospel.

Argument 5: The vision on the road to Damascus

The claim that he had a vision on his way to Damascus has 3 different versions which all contradict each other in Acts 9:7, 22:9 and 26:14. In one version he falls to the floor, but in 26:14 they all fall to the floor, not just Paul. In one version the others hear a voice and see a light, in another they see nothing. One would think they would remember exactly what they saw and heard. It does not sound like a believable account. Furthermore, this is Christ's veredict in the Gospels:

"... if anyone says to you, 'Look, here is the Christ!' or, 'There he is!' do not believe it." - Matthew 24:23

Argument 6: Paul's confession

Paul himself, in his own letters, attests to his own dishonesty. This is as revealing as Jeremiah 8:8!

"Yet, crafty fellow that I am, I caught you by trickery!" - Paul, in 2 Corinthians 12:16

Argument 7: The church in Ephesus

... I know that you ... have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. - Revelation 2:2

Here we see that at least one of the authors of the Bible mentions that there were false APOSTLES. Notice that it is not false 'prophets' but specifically 'false apostles' that are mentioned here. We should then ask ourselves: who claimed to be an apostle without being one?

Revelation 2:2 mentions that at least one church will speak openly about this false apostle: the Church of Ephesus. In 2 Timothy 1:15, Paul himself admits that he had been rejected in Asia ... and he concludes this chapter specifically mentioning that it concerned the Church of Ephesus.

The fact that Revelation 2 praises those who rejected Paul (I can't think of who else they may have been refering to) is even more important and shocking if we consider the fact that this chapter concerns the final judgement. In other words, whoever wrote this was hoping that these verses would be diluscidated in the last days.

Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. - Lord Yeshua, in Matthew 7:15

Benjamin is a ravenous wolf; in the morning he devours the prey, in the evening he divides the plunder. - Genesis 49:27

... I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin. - Paul, in Romans 11:1

Starseeds

There are many New Agers who claim to be starseeds, beings from other worlds who have taken a birth on Earth at this time in order to help usher in the Age of Aquarius. They claim that distant flashes of remembrance are being awakened within their cellular memory.

I believe this to be true, but I believe we are all starseeds. We of the human race are all descendants of the first mammals, who are all descendants of the first saurians, who are all descendants of the first single celled organisms, whose chemical compounds originated in stellar debris, which originated in super novae: stars that exploded billions of years ago. Ultimately, we are all made of refined stardust.

The Burning Bush

A recent dig site in the Gobi desert has revealed the oldest marijuana stash in recorded history. It belonged to a shaman who lived 2,700 years ago. The shaman also had a leather medicine bag.

In a study that was made public by professor Benny Shanon of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem earlier this year it was also revealed that there is a likelihood that Moses was also high at Mount Sinai, and that his experience there may have been a sort of vision quest.

Many people don't know (and Rastas are quick to educate us) that the scientific name for the herb, cannabis, actually originated in the Bible in Exodus 30:23, where qaneh bosm is one of the ingredients of a sacred oil with which items and priests were consecrated. In Victorian era Bibles this was translated as aromatic herb, aromatic cinnamon, or aromatic cane. No version of the Bible uses the more obvious verbiage, cannabis.

Prophet Samuel in 1 Samuel 9:9 also later admitted that there was originally no difference between seers (shamans) and prophets. This means that the use of the sacred herb cannabis may even precede Biblical times, as we know that many of the traditions of the Levite priests had Sumerian and Egyptian roots.

You ARE what you eat

A new study suggests that sugar may be addictive. It even says,

A "sugar addiction" may even act as a "gateway" to later abuse of drugs such as alcohol, Hoebel said.

Visit allaboutagave.com for more information about agave nectar, a healthy, vegan alternative to traditional sweeteners. Because it is not derived from bees, proposers of animal rights are the main consumers of agave since we are not stealing the food that bees harvest for themselves. Agave is derived from cacti.

People who suffer from diabetes, obesity, high colesterol and other health problems may also benefit from consuming agave nectar instead of sugar and honey.

Jesus on the Main Line

I humbly place this gospel song & video at the holy lotus feet of one of my Gurus, Lord Sri Jesus Christ.

Although I have abandoned conventional Christian beliefs in favor or Eastern spirituality, I still am deeply thankful to You, beautiful and compassionate Lord Jesus, for having educated and sanctified my ancestors over so many generations and given them a basic spiritual foundation. I honor your teachings of non violence and social justice.

May your holy name be glorified forever. Thank you. I love you, Jesus.

(The song is by Krishna Das, it's entitled 'Jesus on the Main Line')

The need for a New Treasure

As I read the article Our Mutual Joy, a Gay Marriage cover story from Newsweek, I was reminded of how asfixiating this fixation on Biblical accuracy or literalism can get in the Christian churches. It's as if people's (presumably God-given) neurons were of no use. At what point do people emancipate themselves from tradition and begin to think for themselves, or choose reason over superstition or blind tradition?

I believe that it is time for Christians to do something revolutionary, since they are a religion of scripture and the importance they attribute to a book is so vast - even when the Bible itself gives testimony in regards to the fact that 'the letter is dead: only breath quickens'. I believe Christians of the various progressive traditions should write their own testament, covenant or sacred text, either as an addendum to or as a replacement to the more obsolete books in the traditional Bible.

This is not so difficult. People wrote scripture in the past and people can rewrite scripture, or write new scripture again. Joseph Smith invented his own scripture only less than a couple of hundred years ago, thus producing the modern vibrant and huge Mormon community. The Bahá'í Faith is another example of a religion of the book which has only existed for about a century and now has six million followers, thanks mainly to its scriptural approach. The fact of the matter is, scriptures lend legitimacy, strength and stability to religious movements, traditions and ideas.

The Sikhs of northern India, no doubt influenced by the Muslims who invaded their country, and having turned to monotheism but having rejected the fanaticism of Muslims, decided to do just that only about 500 years ago. Over several centuries, ten of their Gurus wrote many religious works which were cherished by the people, and were compiled by the tenth Guru into a volume known as the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh Bible. The Sikhs had become a monotheistic people of the book, the first such religion that ever came out of India, and their scripture, the Adi Granth, became and remains to this day their final Guru and authority.

In the Gospels Jesus himself instructs his followers to take the good things from old scripture and discard the rest, and to produce new scripture that reflects their new understanding of spirituality based on the kingdom of God that he had preached. This is the Matthew 13:52 teaching:

And he said to them, "Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old."

Scribes were the writers and transcribers of scripture. In the wisdom books of the Bible, whenever treasures or riches are mentioned it refers to the collective wisdom of religious communities, often in the form of education or advise from elders. This is an implicit instruction to write new scripture containing new insight.

There is another place in scripture where Jesus hints at the idea of writing new scriptures: when he puts his own life on the line in order to save the lady who supposedly commited adultery, John 8:6 says that he "stooped down and with His finger wrote on the ground, as though He heard them not".

My own interpretation of this passage is as follows: anyone who is spiritually civilized and who lives in a society where women are stoned to death on the streets, even if they were raped (as per Deuteronomy 22), has reason to hate his society and want to change it. Because the instructions on stoning women were found in scripture, only scripture could redeem that tradition. When he stooped down and wrote on the ground, this was a cue that he wanted scribes to take notice and he wanted a new breed of progressive scribes to write about what Jesus was seeing, saying and doing in order to challenge and change tradition.

If Jesus hadn't given the scribes permission in this way, the Gospels probably would not have been written, we wouldn't have heard of his teachings, and these barbaric, fanatical Bible-based practices would not have been challenged.

Time and time again, Jesus said that in order to manifest the kingdom of the heavens on Earth people had to be morally superior to Moses and his Law (the Old Testament). This is the true sense of the commandment 'be thou perfect as your Creator is Perfect', if read within its context. Or as Martin Luther King Jr. once said, 'if we still lived by the rule of an eye for an eye, we would all be blind'.

When I read the relatively progressive ideas in the book of Isaiah, one of the first things that stood out is the fact that, from the get-go, the book begins with harsh criticism of the practices of the Levites, in particular animal sacrifice. In Isaiah 1:17-18 the reader is then invited to "reason with God", to forget his past crimes and to articulate spiritual truths with a fresh perspective. This is an example of the appropriate use of scripture: to abrogate previous verses in order to bring progress and evolution to our society. The book of Isaiah appeals not to tradition or faith but to our reason in this process.

Isaiah does not only have one author. According to Bible scholars, there were three main generations of scribes and prophets who worked together before, during and after the Babylonian exile to write the book of Isaiah. And so it is more accurate to speak of a school of Isaiah, or a group of like minded religious communities who collectively reinvented their tradition and put together a piece of scripture out of the organic experiences and insights that they collected.

Not only did Isaiah and other books of the prophets update the traditions that the Levites had established, but even in more recent times the Jewish rabbis brought Judaism into new relevance after the temple had been destroyed by compiling the Talmud over many generations, without which Judaism would have retained the primitive feature of animal sacrifices, which required a temple and a mediating priesthood, and which created inequalities and promoted superstitions that are today considered to go against the spirit of equality that monotheism is supposed to promote, in addition to being unnecessary.

In doing this, instead of remaining enslaved to their past, Jews chose to reassert themselves as a religious and cultural civilization with its own history which is progressing towards a more just and rational ideal.

Perhaps a similar process is needed today. The Bible should not only update its teachings on homosexuality to better reflect the availability of facts about the subject, and its policies regarding women's equality, but it should also update its teachings to reflect the moral imperative and challenge that environmental issues have become to our generation. It should also do away with the superstitious and mythological elements found in books like Genesis and affirm science as a legitimate and worthwhile enterprise, which also presents us with peculiar ethical questions that the authors of the Bible never even imagined we would ever face.

All these issues should be addressed by a progressive school of Christian thinkers in a new, much needed update to scripture, perhaps in the style of Isaiah or of the letters of the apostles.

This is my argument for an update to the Bible.

Wooly Mammoth making a comeback

I had read that scientists were going to try to bring back the wooly mammoth by implanting DNA from fossils that had been found in Russia in the wombs of elephants. Over a couple of generations, one could conceivably produce a new, modern branch of the wooly mammoth.

Then I saw this video of a baby wooly mammoth fossil that was found in Siberia almost completely intact. In theory, they should be able to extract enough DNA from this specimen to be able to clone him.

I would argue that cloning should be considered moral and entirely appropriate, perhaps even the right thing to do, if the species is extinct or in danger of becoming extinct, perhaps in part due to hunting done by humans.

As a side note, there is also talk of bringing back dinosaurs by using large flightless birds known as emus, from Australia, and arresting their avian development, in effect producing a more primitive, saurian version of it.

Genetically engineered pets are also not just a matter of science fiction anymore. I was shocked to see the genpets.com webpage ... and relieved to find out it's a hoax (or, as the webpage author calls it, it's art).

At Last

This is, I believe, Christina Aguilera's best performance ever. It's a cover of Etta James' classic, At Last.