| StoreTags: bear, islam, wtf
Author: owl on November 28 2007 Viewed 4668 times. 25 people liked this blog. You can rate it below if you haven't already.
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When I was in first school I won the highly coveted yearly "guess how many jelly beans there are in this jar" competition. There were 374, and I guessed so. The prize was a teddy bear and a huge jar of 374 jelly beans, I didn't like jelly beans so I gave them all to my friend, which I guess is what led to his downspiral into a world of gambling, drug dealing and male prostitution to aid his obsessive jelly bean addiction, eventually ending in a near fatal sugar overdose and a period in rehab.
I could never bring myself to name the bear, it didn't have a persona, with those vacant eyes, partially concealed with fur, devoid of any form of identity. The only glimpse of character it gave off was a jumper brandishing a healthy school meals slogan and a faint aurora of the irony of being paired with a gargantuan tub of jelly beans.
Initially I nicknamed it after it's wonderful healthy eating message, something like "health bear" or "fruit bear," but I realised at some point that the bear probably wouldn't be to be identified as a bear by the clothes it had had no choice in choosing or wearing, lacking a means of communication, (and most probably, although not certainly, consciousness) as most stuffed toys do.
So, the bear sat nameless for many years, with no sense of identity or self, on the windowsill of my bedroom, temporarily being relocated for dusting and other window activities (there seem to be more in your childhood.)
Until now...
You may have heard of the ridiculous story of british school teacher Gillian Gibbons who teaches (or tought, I should say) at Unity high school in Khartoum being arrested for calling the class teddy bear Muhammad, after a school boy suggested calling the bear Muhammad, after his own name. This is similar but on a smaller scale to the danish cartoons fiasco a few years ago.
Innocent people who were not muslims were killed over cartoons, that's right, cartoons, which nobody outside of Holland would have noticed if they had not been actually added to and hyped up by muslim Imams, sickeningly so.
I wish to pay homage to the wonderful religion of Islam by calling my own childhood nameless bear Muhammad (pbuh). In the eyes of a muslim i'm going to hell for doing this anyway, so please, no violence or threats. | |
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11/30/07
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celibacyclub
hells yes!
11/30/07
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utofbu
im a skeptic about everything that sounds like conspiracy.
But on the notion of Mass thought and the desperation of people without faith or with faith.
-Even when someone believes something, they are divided between the notions of ones own experience, and the conventions of their peers and culture.
-The actions of a mass of people can easily Incarcirate the innocent, murder our loved ones, Stigmatize a race.
-the thoughts of our media reciprocate the echos of our own compulsions. It resonates our fears back to us.
-History both serves to quell and excite the flame of resentment throughout our Epochs
-Politics serve as a way to balance truth against panic
-panic equalizes life on this planet because of the human brain and the destruction we can realise.
-All we really need to do is talk to each other and be willing to be so wrong it makes no sense. Willingness to be incorrect is the key.
12/01/07
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cbit
cc said: "an athiest that calls for the abolition of religion, is fighting a sort of holly war. atheists that seeks to enforce a ban on the practice of religion are trying to fight a belief, same as fundamentalist believers are trying to fight other beliefs."
No one is suggesting that religion should be prohibited or 'stamped out', by the way. Of course that would be a terrible mistake (see stalin). Merely that we should stop pretending that it's respectable for adults to believe in an invisible magical being, when the issue comes up.
12/01/07
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cbit
marklar said: "I think that it's wrong to blame religion for 9/11. Religion may have motivated the actual attackers, but there are decades of history leading up to that point. "
So what? How about this: Identify all the causes that seem relevant to the attack, don't make exceptions, even if it's more politically correct to do so. Of course it would be wrong if we only blamed religion for 9/11, but nobody is doing that.
Its disappointing to see the old canard that religion is 'just a tool' come up again. Here's a question for those holding that view: I'm interested to know, at what point should religious beliefs be considered partly to blame for any undesirable situation? ever? never?
What about the full grown men on the streets of Sudan screaming that honor must be restored through the murder of the british teacher?
How about the Maori girl who recently drowned during a forced 'excorcism'?
Or the JW woman who died after refusing a blood transfusion, leaving two parentless kids?
What do you think about these situations, can religion be legitimately blamed? I think the answer is staring us in the face: religious belief is often the cause of harm, it can, and should be blamed.
12/01/07
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ricemutt
yeah, religion can be the root of really terrible things, and it's hard to see that sometimes, especially in a politically correct climate
I think scapegoating religion is a little too easy though, in the face of very complex situations, and often culture, custom, religion, economics, and history are all mixed up in one big stinking mess that causes a lot of confusion.
I think religion is here to stay, for a long, long time, and it is more constructive to focus on things like economic disparity and military/economic/cultural hegemony that causes a lot of bitterness and anger.
Because the religions that can turn to violence when a situation is shitty can also help people express a lot of loving and caring when things are nice. It's a strange paradox.
For instance, I think relgion has been partially to blame for a lot of the horrible things that have happened in the world--but also, for instance, I think religion is also responsible for most of the things that I see as beautiful and powerful, like most of the music that I think is truly great--was made my people/cultures that are either overtly religious (bach, robert johnson, son house, mozart, indian music, tibetan music, balinese music) or obviously mystical (messiaen, cage, debussy, riley, and so on..). Beautiful art always has a mysterious mystical/spiritual quality.
In that sense I think what it boils down to--is that humanity can get very very ugly when they are depserate, or can be very beautiful, given the chance. How many educated, economically successful muslims have gone on a suicide bombing mission? Probably none, ever.
I think there is truth to the fact that humans believing in intangibles can lead to massive brutality and bloodshed. But I don't think there would be much beauty left in the world if it weren't for humans believing in intangibles...
12/01/07
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cbit
rm said: "I think scapegoating religion is a little too easy though, in the face of very complex situations, and often culture, custom, religion, economics, and history are all mixed up in one big stinking mess that causes a lot of confusion."
I agree. If the causes are complex and tangled we should acknowledge that. No question. What i find a bit odd though is that this reply keeps coming up because i don't see anyone on this site seriously forwarding the idea that religion is the "root of all evil".
rm said: "I think religion is also responsible for most of the things that I see as beautiful and powerful, like most of the music that I think is truly great--was made my people/cultures that are either overtly religious"
A couple of reasons for this that are worth reflecting on i think:
1. Before Darwin religion was the best philosophical game in town. There was no other serious contender because the question of apparent 'design' could not be answered without invoking god..
2. In previous centuries the best art was almost always commissioned by the church because the church had all the money!
Dawkins' take:
Richard Dawkins said: "If history had worked out differently, and Michaelangelo had been commissioned to paint a ceiling for a giant Museum of Science, mightn't he have produced something at least as inspirational as the Sistine Chapel? How sad that we shall never hear Beethoven's Mesozoic Symphony, or Mozart's opera The Expanding Universe....what if....Shakespeare had been obliged to work to commissions from the Church? We'd surely have lost Hamlet, King Lear and Macbeth."
12/01/07
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cbit
rm said: "I think religion is here to stay, for a long, long time, and it is more constructive to focus on things like economic disparity and military/economic/cultural hegemony that causes a lot of bitterness and anger."
I think fostering critical thinking should be one of our top priorities, which would feed into finding ways to address the problems you mention. Of course critical thinking is not compatible with religious belief.
How many educated, economically successful muslims have gone on a suicide bombing mission? Probably none, ever.
It's not smart to make guesses like that without looking into things a little. The evidence we have flatly contradicts the popular idea that suicide bombers are downtrodden desperate pawns:
Research suggests that today’s suicide bombers tend to be middle-class. According to a study from 2003, where one third of Palestinians live in poverty, only 13 per cent of Palestinian suicide bombers lived in poverty; 57 per cent of suicide bombers had been educated beyond high school compared with 15 per cent of the general population (4). The most notorious suicide attack - 9/11 - was organised by middle-class Arab students based in Germany. Of the four British bombers of 7/7, one was a teaching assistant, another was at college. link
12/01/07
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ricemutt
1. I don't think beautiful art is about philosophy at all. In fact, if you try to make art about philsophy I think you'd make a steaming lump of crap. I think that's happened many times before. And I don't think "design" really has much to do with why people make art and music. People haven't really been making music in honor of the fact that God created the universe. I think beautiful art is about mystery, and spirit, and also real things, like blood, and cum and other nasty human shit... I guess we can't have any sort of a/b comparison of a new, atheistic musical culture compared to what has come in the past. Really, my feelings about spirituality and mysticism all come from music... all great music, for me, and all great musical traditions have their roots in spiritualism, religion and mysticism: western classical music, indian classical music, persian classical music, flamenco, african drumming, sufi music, blues, bluegrass, fado, gamelan music, australian aboriginal music, soul music, native america music, death metal (j/k). And if you listen to almost any great artist talking about their music, even if it isn't religious music per se, you will hear him speaking about it religiously. I don't mention pop music here because I don't know too much about it... but I think many many great pop musicians have a strong connection to a spiritual tradition, or a music that stemmed from a spiritual tradition, and understand it very well.
Also, I don't understand what you mean, when you say that nobody has claimed religion as the root of all evil. Claiming ANYTHING as the root of all evil is a little bit silly, but I think humanity is the root of all evil, and the root of everything else that really matters to us ;)
2. I don't think michelangelo's religious art was good because the catholic church gave him money... I think the beauty and mystery in his art has a lot to do with his mystical connection to human nature, not who his money was coming from. I think saying that the greatness of an artist has anything to do with his sponsors/patrons does a great disservice to the artist. do you think that if there was secular sponsors that there would have been good atheist artists? I think that's kind of besides the point.
anyway, fun conversation...
I'm not very religious, I grew up in a religious family and now I think they're freaks, but I think that religion is an important force that people should avoid painting in monochrome colors
12/01/07
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monty
im not into the Science v Religion debate.
i dont really buy this image of Science as this beautiful logical pursuit, its just another expression of mankinds evil mojo.
for every decent drug and useful feat of engineering theres a bunch of toxic gases, bombs etc, etc...
i reckon it all comes back to the poor versus the wealthy.
sure "Science" is great if you can afford the iron lung and the heart transplant, but it sucks when the local chemical plant blows up and everyone in your village dies horribly, then its just an expression of the capatalist shitstem that threatens your exsistence.
religion and science are both flawed, because they are were created by human beings.
If Michaelangelo were alive today he'd probably be doing commisions for some Petro-Chemical Death Machines Head Office
12/01/07
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cbit
rm said: "1. I don't think beautiful art is about philosophy at all."
My first point was simply that we should expect that almost all great art from any time before Darwin (BD ;) ) would have been made by a religious person, working in a religious culture. Because everyone and everywhere was religious then!
rm said: "2. I don't think michelangelo's religious art was good because the catholic church gave him money."
No, but his religious work owes its existence to the fact that the church could commission it. The fact is that we can't say what the world would have been like if the church had not held society in a stranglehold for however many hundreds of years. A collary of that is that: of course there's a lot of great religious art! (we don't know what great art would have been made in a churchless past).
(If, on the other hand, by 'religious' you mean spiritual in a sense that has nothing to do with a set of divine rules then that's a different discussion imo.)
12/01/07
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cbit
monty said: "i reckon it all comes back to the poor versus the wealthy."
I don't see any reason to privilege the marxist narrative over any of the other 'grand scheme' lenses for interpreting history that have been proposed. My hunch is that no sentence beginning 'It all comes back to' is going to be helpful however you finish it.
monty said: "sure "Science" is great if you can afford the iron lung and the heart transplant"
Oh come on! wtf with the scare quotes! "so called science" lol. wait, i'll grab by tiny violin to play the sad violin tune...
monty said: "religion and science are both flawed, because they are were created by human beings."
Science and religion overlap in one area only as far as i'm concerned: they both make a stab at telling us how the world is. And in this respect there's no question about which is superior.
12/01/07
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monty
we see the world differently.
Religion and Science both started out nice and pretty on paper.
Religion: a belief in a supreme being that loves everyone and wants to help so we can all live forever.
Science: the noble pursuit of knowledge to benefit all mankind in every way and make our lives wonderful and happy.
we all know reality is a bit more gruesome.
to me, its two different sides of the same coin.
12/01/07
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monty
what my point is:
if your living on beans trying to fish in a polluted river, Science is something imposed on you by the powerful, whilst Religion is something connected to your surroundings, your ancestors. I can see why people would cling to religion. I feel uncomfertable being dismissive of them.
12/01/07
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cbit
monty said: "if your living on beans trying to fish in a polluted river, Science is something imposed on you by the powerful, whilst Religion is something connected to your surroundings, your ancestors. I can see why people would cling to religion. I feel uncomfertable being dismissive of them."
I can understand reluctance to slam the only thing of value that some people have to cling to. I'm not about to try to rob someone of something that brings them joy as long as it's not harming others (the 'dying grandma' scenario as it's recently been dubbed).
The difference is that in my view science isn't the polluted river, its not the decision to pollute the river, and it doesn't necessary lead to the polluted river. On my view science doesn't tell people what they should do with the knowledge it delivers.
As for what we 'should' do, that's the business of ethical philosophy, and imo the lure of religion and its easy rules is preventing ppl from getting of their collective asses and starting work on the important job of figuring out systems for determining right from wrong that are actually worthy of our humanity.
12/01/07
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Muhammed
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