Religion Online - Scientology vs. BBC via Youtube.

In case anyone missed this little story on Nightline last night, i thought I'd record it here:

"John Sweeney is famous for confronting despots, championing lost causes and traveling through the streets of Harare, Zimbabwe, in the trunk of a car. But faced with Tommy Davis of the Church of Scientology in Los Angeles, he totally lost his cool.

Today video footage of Sweeney screaming at Davis is on YouTube, taped and posted by the church.

Sweeney was "video ambushed" while on assignment for the BBC in Los Angeles to investigate the Church of Scientology and the accusations from some quarters that it is, or was, a sinister cult."

I think the role of Youtube here is important. It's being given credit as a kind of 'democratizer', of weight and import equal to a BBC documentary... as though the religion in question now has the ability to fight back by presenting its own perspective.
The reality is, I think, the online video sites will never carry the weight of broadcast television, simply because of the makeup and habits of their respective audiences. As an example, I spend many hours online everyday, and heard about this conflict on a news-rag television show.

Unfortunately, the ABC website doesn't include the youtube clips in question. The BBC Site has plenty of useful clips, but not the stuff straight from youtube.

On Youtube, you can find alot of chopped up clips and parodies, the whole thing is as muddy as Hades. What follows is the clearest re-hash of the conflict I could find. No surprise, it's a clip from the BBC news:



Here's the Panorama documentary in 4 parts:









Now, YouTube does make some contribution. It allows me to show this to you, to select what I think is interesting, etc... But so much of this story is created and framed by the television documentary makers, that even the original Youtube clip of Sweeney losing it has become part of the larger story the BBC wants to tell, and not, as the Church may have wished, the gateway to its "BBC-Panorama Exposed" website.

The Scientologists do have their own documentary on that site about how bad Panorama and Sweeney are. It's sort of interesting to watch... like watching one of those infomercials about how the FDA is keeping secret herb remedies off the market or whatever. But I can't imagine anyone is clueless enough to imagine this rejoinder will do anything but highlight precisely the kind of creepy behaviour the BBC documentary discusses.

Anyway, despite all the talk about Youtube's contribution to this conflict, I don't see it has done much to change how this will actually play out. The importance of Youtube manifests itself in quite a different way, allowing every Tom, Dick and Harry to get their own two cents in on the argument by way of video responses and replies.

A Sample:

Confessional

Get Religion has an interesting post on the phenomenon of online confession sites.

The article, Where's the Forgiveness? , cites a recent Miami Herald news item by Jennifer Lebovich and provides links to a number of the better known sites trafficking in sins both large and small.

This is of interest to me, mostly, because it highlights the transformation going on in religiosity in response to modernity and information technology. Confession is a highly charged topic in the history of religions, and a number of different faiths have approached it from a variety of angles. It is interesting to see this most basic of social identity processes (transgression, punishment, repentance, forgiveness, acceptance) playing out anonymously online.

The significance of the alteration is difficult to be confident about. Is it the same if your confession is anonymous, performed in isolation, with an indeterminate audience? I guess it depends what tradition you look at, and whether you consider some opportunity for confession better than none at all, regardless of how flawed or unsatisfying it might be. What kind of isolation and fear would drive a person to pursue some kind of electronic redemption, rather than face their community, family, or the individual they have wronged and make their confession to them alone.

Community and sharing are not the same as absolution.

I think my Roman Catholic is showing.

Idealism, Ignorance and Ridicule in the Critique of Religion

(N.B. this turned into a giant semi-coherent rant. Read at your own risk. The following constitutes venting.)

The enthusiastic rejection of the claims of religion, the critique of historical events, and the debunking of worldviews and religious axioms are all pretty typical in the first few years of religious studies. They usually arise from the lack-of-fit perceived between the confessional perspective the student is familiar with, and the new academic, social scientific perspective they are being introduced to.

As natural as this stage may be, it’s tragic to me that some people never really get beyond it. Not only is it unfair, and unrealistic, I think that it’s personally damaging and dishonest in the long run.

I don’t think I need to find a boat-load of examples of smarties trying to ridicule religious people for the goof-ball things they believe for you to know what I mean. I have done it myself, when something gets under my skin. A good rant along the lines of “I don’t see how someone can believe something so patently ridiculous” can be a lot of fun. The trick is to have enough self-awareness to realize it’s more of an exercise in ironic self-flagellation than anything else.

The basic problem is that these types of rants are built on faulty logic. It may sound compelling depending on your audience (notably: if it is composed mostly of sycophants) but it’s still irrational. Smarter people than I call this sort of thing an Argument from Incredulity, a form of the fallacious Argumentum ad Ignorantiam. (‘Smarter people than me’ means the people who make wikipedia entries.)

Commonly in an Argument from Personal Incredulity or Argument from Ignorance, the speaker considers or asserts that something is false, implausible, or not obvious to them personally and attempts to use this gap in knowledge as "evidence" in favor of an alternative view of her or his choice. Examples of these fallacies are often found in statements of opinion which begin: "It is hard to see how...," "I cannot understand how...," or "it is obvious that..." (if "obvious" is being used to introduce a conclusion rather than specific evidence in support of a particular view).

Now, when I think of something being ‘proven true’ I, usually, think of something I have proven for myself. My certainty about things, my confidence in how true something is, depends on my experience, my understanding, my values, etc… There’s a sphere of diminishing confidence that radiates out from me, through the people I trust, to the people whose methods I agree with, to the sources of authority I have never thought to question, and out to the matters I don’t personally care about or don’t affect me. This means my knowledge base is in constant flux. The things that I think are plausible or reasonable have changed/will change.

For this reason, there needs to be some room to be wrong and to learn. The things I believe to be true, and the methods I use to justify those beliefs, are imperfect and provisional in regard to certainty. On the one hand, I have all my biases and delusions complicating the clarity of my personal experience, on the other hand, are all the difficulties with authority and responsibility that comes with accepting someone else’s claims about the truth.

So what does this have to do with ragging on Religion for the things it has done? Or the beliefs it promotes?

Well, first of all, these types of discussion usually unfold with two people adopting the roles of ‘Religion’ and ‘Science’ or ‘Reason’ or ‘Heresy’ or whatever, and abandoning their true identities as flawed, mixed-up people trying to figure things out. People defending their personal viewpoints will say things like “Christianity doesn’t promote X”, “History has shown that Y”, “Science tells us that you are full of Z” and so on… Impersonal abstractions replace the flawed individual comprehension of those things, and dishonesty ensues. I realize arguing against the resurrection is a lot easier if you pretend the things you believe are actually the things Science tells people, but are you sure Science told you that? Maybe it was some dude you thought was Science… try to remember, it makes a difference. Not everyone accepts the same sources of authority. Similarly, if you are under the impression Christianity has told you something, you may want to retrace those memories. It was probably a guy in a robe, or something you read in a book written by a guy in a robe.

Idealism is at its worst when abstract universals tell people stuff. I have never found those abstractions trustworthy. So, having made a short point longer than it needed to be, Religion doesn’t do things, or make claims about things. This is important to understand because it unfolds a whole new layer in the history and philosophy of religions for students. Namely, that religion is made out of people, people who screw up, people who get cheesed off, people who lie, people who steal, people with stupid ideas, the whole nine yards. The guys who wrote scripture, ran institutions, wandered around preaching stuff, etc… are no better than the people sitting around you on the bus, or in class, or at the dinner table. The same goes for scientists, they’re no better than you and me, no taken-for-granted reason to substitute their judgment for yours. You need to examine everything, weigh it, finding out who really said what, and why. Frankly, it’s amazing religion and science have accomplished as much as they have…(It’s so easy to slip back into that idealism…) it’s amazing that we have accomplished as much as we have.

I think that covers ‘unfair’ and ‘unrealistic’ and ‘dishonest’.

Now about damaging, pretend you are someone who thinks about things. Just because someone has said something is true doesn’t make it true, right? Even if you’re that ‘someone’, you’ve fooled yourself before, misinterpreted stuff, failed calculus classes, etc… You’re not perfect, but you are moving toward a better understanding of the stuff that interests you. Different people with different skills and interests are all moving along around you pursuing their own junk, at their own speed, and there’re discussions going on where people’s interests collide.

Now imagine you get into a discussion about something you are interested in, with someone who believes things that are completely ridiculous to you. It’s not pure chance that the argument from personal incredulity is also an argument from ignorance. Those beliefs are ridiculous to you because you are ignorant, you don’t understand the person you are talking to, you don’t understand the beliefs they are trying to share, or something…there’s a disconnect.

Now is a good time to ask yourself why you are engaged in this discussion. If you want to learn more about the thing you are interested in, there’s apparently a whole new, wildly different, perspective you could find out about if you engage this person honestly, keeping in mind your own uncertainty, your history of being wrong and the learning that arose from it.

Letting your incredulity act as a sign of dismissal is seriously damaging to your learning opportunities.

On top of this is the damage you do to yourself by ridiculing someone else’s beliefs. The person might be wildly wrong, illogical, with bad grammar, and it’s still kicking yourself in the teeth if you ridicule them for it. What’s important is that you are able to continue to learn, and to do that you need to be wrong, you need to work on your logic, and your communication skills. Every student needs that space to be wrong and grow. Don’t think you are ahead of some people or behind others. That’s not possible without shared goals. Our individual growth isn’t headed in a unified direction.

Learn what you can and let them be wrong, you can’t learn for them.

That’s about as close to stream-of-consciousness writing as I’ll ever get.

Secularism and Canada

I've been engaged in a number of (ill-advised) online discussions with people in the past few months on the issue of the decline of religion, the growth of secularism, etc...

I became involved in these discussions because I noticed the term 'secular' being used in tandem with a description of the materialist, atheistic worldview. Whether the author was making positive or negative comments about 'secularism' in question, I feel it's a significant error to make the jump from 'secularist' to 'atheist' without marking the potential issues that arise between the two philosophical positions.

The largest problem that arises is the conflation of an increase in secular views with the decline of religion in society. Secularism, as a social movement, reduces the necessity of inhabiting any particular religious identity in civil society. The central idea is that public discourse, justified by non-religious arguments allows full participation to people of diverse backgrounds and private commitments. Secularism should contribute to the decline of religion in the public sphere, but it is not, in itself, an anti-religious movement.

Religious people, from any tradition, benefit when civic and religious identity are separate. Religious beliefs motivate and guide political, economic and social participation among adherents, but the possession of non-religious language creates a common ground for discourse on important issues that is absent in confessional language.

My argument about the benefits of a pro-religious view of secularism is strongly influenced by my own society. It’s useful to look at Canada as an example of type of transformation religion undergoes when societies become more secular.

In his brief article on Secularism in Canada , William Stahl discusses what he calls the ‘disembedded’ nature of religion in Canada.

“Until the 1960s, however, the Dominion Census or Statistics Canada did not allow a response of “no religion.” Since then, the “religious nones” have grown from 4 percent in 1971, to 7 percent in 1981, 12 percent in 1991, and 16 percent in 2001. The GSS puts the figure at 19 percent of Canadians over 15 in 2004 (see Table 1). In addition, 25 percent of Canadians reported they had not attended services in the previous year, up 5 percent in the past two decades. People in these two categories are disproportionately young (see Figure I), disproportionately live in British Columbia (see Figure II), and are more likely to be native born Canadians than immigrants, or if an immigrant, to be from China or Japan. In part, the low levels of affiliation in British Columbia are affected by the disproportionate numbers of immigrants who are from China and Japan in the greater Vancouver area. Also, note the anomaly in Quebec, which in 2004 had the largest number of people who never attend services (35 percent), but the lowest number of people who claim “no religion” (9 percent).”

His theory is that the relationship between individual and institutional religion has changed, that the decline was in meaningful affiliation with religious institutions, not in religiosity itself. Thus leading to a form of religious belief and practice not embedded in recognizable community groups. His conclusion returns me to my original point: “The number of people in Canada who would fit the “classical” definition of being secular is quite small.”

As far as I’m concerned, the number of people who would fit the ‘classical definition’ is quite large, going beyond those who claim to have no religious affiliation but still believe in God and have personal religious practices, and including many of those who recognize their religious affiliations but promote the division between their private religious identity and their public identities as Montrealers, Quebecers, and Canadians.

Construction of Religion

My favorite bible/lego site: the Brick Testament














The site was created by the Reverend Brendan Powell Smith as a fun way for kids to learn about the Bible:

"Rev. Smith has stated that the goal of The Brick Testament is to give people an increased knowledge of the contents of The Bible in a way that is fun and compelling while staying very true to the original versions. To this end, all stories are retold using direct quotes from The Bible."

But really I think it's much more than that. Some of the depictions are beautiful examples of that old saw: 'the medium is the message'

Tibetan Photo Project

For anyone interested in photos of Tibetan Buddhism, an interesting site: Tibetanphotoproject.com

The creator does have close ties to the Dalai Lama, and the site is part of a larger political movement, as one might expect. Still there are some nice images, and some video, too.

Tibetan_Buddhism
Uploaded by TibetanPhotoProject

Playing Cards - Popular Scripture

From the fifteenth century on, people have found meaning in the combination of symbolism and numerical values represented in the humble playing card deck.


.queen.of.the.eternity. by =noah-kh on deviantART

The Queen of Hearts, the Ace of Spades, the Trumps and Jokers. I recently found an interesting site, trionfi.com, with several good articles on the cards, their history, and iconography.

It's interesting to me as a former card game player and tarot deck user, to think of the hold some of the ideas present in the deck still have on our imaginations, the trump suit, in particular, absent from modern playing card decks apart from the joker/fool.

Anyway, there are a number of ways of parsing the meaning of these games/divination practices. They might be expressions of Jungian archetypes, records of aesthetic transmutation, testimonials on the human love of chance and order or maybe rituals of inclusion.

For some reason they remind me of two other medieval practices:

Stain Glass Windows, like this 13th century one from Speyer displaying the temptation of Adam and Eve:


















And the images from the spiritual exercises of Ignatius of Loyola:



It's more than just the style or composition that reminds me of trump cards... There's something about the theory behind the imagery. I think it has to do with a personal experience of the sacred, some unmediated access in a time when the record of revelation was still withheld from the lay people of Christian Europe. There is something different about art that has to stand in for a withheld document, a mnemonic link in the form of an experience of art.

The Spread of Religion

I found a nice animated map over at Maps of War showing the spread of religion over the globe.



I found the Judaism element kind of funny for some reason.

Tolerance and Religion

In a society with a fluctuating commitment to secularism, the promotion of tolerance is usually the highest practical moral stance reasonable people can be expected, or expect others to adopt.

Ina secular community, diversity is protected by the creation of strong boundaries between the public and the private domains, and granting privilege to private belief. Also required is the creation of parallel civic identities that the individuals in the community can assent to regardless of their religious affiliation, or lack thereof.

This means a person should have access to a public identity that does not depend on any religious beliefs or practices, and allows for full and equal participation in all public life.

For people with a wide variety of religious beliefs and practices to all live together without economic or social discrimination they must see others, and be seen by them, as fellow citizens rather than as members of particular religious groups.

For religious people, secular democracies are a mixed blessing. A minority group protects itself when it seeks to strengthen the separation of church and state. By promoting secularism, the minority prevents the imposition of the majority belief on its members. The requirements of secular identity, however, mean recognizing the possibility of a full and equal life without their particular religion, or any religion at all.

It is possible that religious people participate fully in a secular public sphere while maintaining the necessity of their religious beliefs internally. They can create supportive links between non-religious public identity and private belief. This strategy, however, undermines the religious persons ability to communicate the justification for their public positions to people who do not share their faith.

Any public policy or legal issues in a secular society must be justified through secular argumentation, with non-religious language that all citizens should be able to assent to or reject regardless of their religious beliefs.

In time, as moral and social discourse is defined publicly by more elaborate non-religious language, the non-religious civil identity becomes pernicious: secular authority becomes more compelling, carries more weight, than religious authority, non-religious philosophical and scientific interpretations become more useful than traditional perspectives, etc… In time, the irrelevance of religious beliefs and practices to society must become a problem for the individual believer.

How can a person hold one private identity with significant religious beliefs and practices justified by faith, while simultaneously holding a public identity in which the same beliefs and practices are justified by some secular authority?