However, these kind of studies completely ignore the rising New Age movement, many with a strong flair of what people would classify as religion. Yes, if religion is defined as social movements that must have some sort of clergy and a holy meeting place such a church, then there is no doubt that religion in many Western countries is in decline (on the contrary, the opposite is happening in many Muslim/ex-Communist countries). But people should not count out the New Age movement. I tell you, in a couple of hundred years people will ask what atheism means, where the norm is to perform some type of yoga (particularly the one with the long and complicated name), suggest that the reason why people are ill is because of bad karma and ki levels and that god cannot be dead, since every man and woman is a god.

From this point onward, the review will contain spoilers. If you are not interested in those, I advice to stop reading.

One thing I found hugely disappointing was the escape from Sanctuary. While the world of Sanctuary was quite well-crafted and in great detail too, the book became incredibly watered down past this point. The main characters reach the town of Memphis and suddenly the book changes style – but for the worse. While I had revelled in the misery of Thomas Cale while he was living in Sanctuary, his life took a rather uninteresting turn once he got out of there and by luck managed to become a part of the upper class of Memphis. Memphis seems to be quite inspired by a European renaissance town and got nothing in common with its American counterpart. Now, there are interesting parts here, but most of them just seem to be completely forgotten. Hoffman is incredibly poor with forshadowing; sometimes he highlights certain events and objects as if they bare any importance to the plot to just be forgotten, and sometimes he doesn’t forshadow at all and then it just comes tumbling down on top of the reader that this was actually important – except we never got to know why it was. A perfect example of this is the event that lead to Cale’s escape. By chance he got to see how one of the Redeemers in Sanctuary was dissecting girls alive, and this randomly lead Cale to kill the Redeemer and escape with the girl who was still alive. Afterwards we are told how Cale’s “protector” at Sanctuary, Redeemer Bosco, steps into the room and picks up an object from one of the girl’s intestines, musing whether this is what the Redeemer Cale murdered might have been after. However, we never get to hear anything of this ever again. Here there is also another issue with Hoffman’s inability to properly use the omniscient narrative – instead of properly developing an internal plot at Sanctuary that tells the reader that “this is really important”, he simply just seems to ignore Sanctuary all together most of the time. When he does use the omniscient narrative properly he has shown great ability to create compelling subplots; why did Bosco murder the High Redeemer? However, the plot is then dropped, there seems to be no why than Bosco’s possible sense of megalomania. While I do not mind to let the reader figure out some things on its own, it is one thing to drop clues and another to not drop any clues at all and then expect the reader to figure things out anyway. I have had enough of stories like RahXephon for quite some time, thank you.

Additionally, to continue from the old post, the feeling of haphazardness gets worse. Hoffman seems to mix and mash fantasy and reality as he seems fit, however, the result is often bad. Very bad. Why do you use name the main protagonist Thomas Cale, but one of his acquaintances IdrisPukke? I kid you not, no spacing there. I don’t even know how I am supposed to pronounce it, so I just read it as if it would be Norwegian with spacing. All this simply gives a sense of lack of imagination. When Hoffman doesn’t know what to do or name something, he just picks something from the real world and puts it into his novel. A perfect example is how Jesus is actually featured, but this time he is known for being in the belly of a whale. It has no relevance whatsoever, and it adds no depth since this Jesus is not the same as the Hanged Redeemer, despite their historical similarities. There is also a serious lack of geography. All this fuzzyness just adds more confusion when I instead would just like clarity. I want to know WHY the Redeemers are at with with the Antagonists, and I would like to have another perspectives of the Antagonists that is not related to the Redeemers. I would also like to know why Thomas Cale is important to Bosco beyond the “I had a vision and I think you are the reborn version of the Antichrist”. Which, of course, could have been dropped much earlier. While it is a powerful way to end a novel, again, there is no indication of this. While there is a description of Cale either appearing as a callous, cold murderer or attempting to learn the social norms of the Materazzi (the name of the people who live in Memphis), the readers get no indication of this. Just because a person says something about another character it does not make it true. And this leads to my third and final gripe with “The Left Hand of God”, that of poor character development. There is some, but barely. If the author wants to say that this person is this or that, show it! Show how Cale is so cold and callous. Instead, we in fact get the opposite – that he can be kind and caring and attempts to be despite his cruel upbringing. That Cale killed a man in a duel is not proof, especially when we are told that he is in fact scared for his life during the first part of the duel. Personally, that is now how I expect someone who is cold and callous to act like. That Cale after the duel ended cut off the opponent’s head in a fit of rage does again not show that he is cold and callous, but rather emphasizes his frustration over being an outcast despite that he clearly got certain abilities that should make him recognized, which the duel in fact was about to begin with. It was a schism between him and one of his oppressors in Materazzi who made sure to take a social advantage of their different social classes. And then there are characters who are given some development to just disappear. Like the assassin who was spying on Cale for several weeks to fall in love with him. I don’t know why, but Hoffman got a thing for love at first sight. Anyway, the assassin got murdered, so the time spent on describing her and her way of life was completely thrown away. And scrap that thing about character development being my last issue, my last issue are gender roles. Women are constantly described as sex objects, and useless too. Arbell Swan-Neck is a disgusting example. Supposedly, her nickname Swan-Neck is meant to symbolize her beauty, but I don’t know about you, but a woman with a swan-neck just gives me images of a woman with an unnaturally tall neck. That is not beautiful. Women are also constantly described as delicate, and while Arbell Swan-Neck is certainly of noble status is thus treated as such, it would be nice if she just didn’t you know, act it out. Everytime. She is the damsel in mistress personified. Awful. I thought we had passed that stage in fantasy where women cannot be protrayed in other ways, and when they do, they get killed… by men. That says a lot about the gender roles in “The Left Hand of God”.

To summarize, it got some very interesting ideas but they are never developed. There is some decent writing down there, but it’s usually tossed away. I have very mixed feelings after finishing it. While I think the underlying story is interesting and I want to see where this is all going, I am not sure the sloppy writing can in fact justify to buy the final installments to find out, especially if the writing does not improve, and there is no indication that it will. It can be noticed that Hoffman is a screenwriter, the novel is very “filmic”, but not in a good sense. If “The Left hand of God” had been a 2 hour long film where Hoffman was forced to compress the story to fit this time format, I think it might be great. But this isn’t “The Left Hand of God”. We get a 500 pages long book where most of the content is bland; uninspired and uninteresting. Pure filler, to be frank. And like any person who is not out of their mind, I do not like fillers. I read another comment somewhere that actually describes my feelings of the book pretty well. I don’t want to read it, I just want to read the summary.

I started to read it while on the airplane and the first pages were interesting enough for me to stick around, which is rare nowadays. As the title of the book implies, it’s about religion. Not Christianity however, as we might be lead to believe, but rather a fictuous version of it. The religion of the book is unnamed, but we get a rather thorough description of it. The book starts out with introducing its main character, Thomas Cale, who is a 15-year-or so teenager living at the military training camp/monastery called Sanctuary. Despite its name, Sanctuary is not a sanctuary. It is run by overzealous monks referred to as Redeemers, and they accept abandoned boys to be trained as soldiers that are to be sent into a war against the Antagonists in The East. The boys are referred to as Acolytes, and the monks use any methods they deem necessary in order to keep their Acolytes in check. Torture of all kinds are common, that together with brainwashing is meant to ensure that the boys will stay in check. If they don’t or simply have a mental breakdown, they seem to be taken away from Sanctuary to never return again. Where they are taken is never mentioned this early on, but the book emphasizes that it’s a place of no return – death.

The timeline of the book seems to become more typical of modern fantasy: not quite science fiction placed in the future, but not quite medieval placed in an alternate universe either. My impression is that it’s in fact post-apocalyptic. According to the book, the religion worshipping the Hanged Redeemer (it is called the Hanged Redeemer because the main symbol of faith depicts a main who is being hanged as the perfect example of a man who is being redeemed from sin through pain. It is interesting to note that the Hanged Redeemer changed facial expression over the course of time from being agonized to euophoric – very similar to how Jesus has changed his facial expression) has existed for at least a million years, implying that while it is not Christianity itself, it is a spin-off variant of it. It seems to in particular take inspiration from Catholicism, as there are supposedly more saints than there are days during a year (The Hanged Redemeer’s mother is for example the only woman to be considedered holy – all others are the embodiedment of sin because of their female sexuality of course, and how women’s bodies might tempt men sexually). Another point supporting the idea that the universe in “The Left Hand of God” is post-apocalyptic is that towns like Memphis among other American ones are mentioned, suggesting that the East is most likely Europe and the land in which Sanctuary is situated is a post-apocalyptic variant of USA. This seems a bit odd as the author of “The Left Hand of God”, Paul Hoffman, is British. British English also colors the novel itself; while it is not “too” British, words such as “bloody”, “lardy” among others give the novel a British tone. Hopefully the reason why Hoffman decided to play out “The Left Hand of God” in a future post-apocalyptic USA will be explained, eventually.

The book itself is not the most amazing piece of literature I have read; but it not the worst either. It is certainly passable as easy entertainment, but of course the most striking feature is its anti-religious stance. The Redeemers are often compared to the Inquisition; while the Redemeers themselves often live in wealth, eat good food and live well, their existence stands in stark constrast to the Acolytes who live very miserable lives similar to that of a prison. The book’s target audience lingers somewhere between young and adult fantasy, and can certainly please both age groups. I initially thought it would be more in the veins of Neil Gaiman and/or Robert Jordan, and it is more similar to the latter than the former in terms of style. The backside text seems to actually imply more descriptive violence than what it actually contains, hence also making it passable for a younger audience, even though I think more descriptive violence would be able to give the book a far rawer and brutal undertone which would be more fitting of what the book seems to aim thus far. Something akin to The Sword of Truth might be more appropriate.

The problem with the book however seems to be that it is very haphazard. Sometimes you simply don’t know where it’s trying to take you. The most notable examples are the changes in point of view. The book is written from an omniscient third person perspective, and when it changes point of view it feels very forced and unnatural. Instead I think Hoffman could’ve used other literary tools to explain the same thing without having to change point of view.

I will update with more posts as I continue to read the book to see if I change in opinion or if there’s new information regarding the Redeemers.

Several decades later, Hollywood decides to make a movie out of this historical event. The result is so-so. The main part of the film is reflecting the trial against the priest, who helped to take care of Emily Rose, the American recast of Anneliese Michel. He is defended by Erin, a skilled attorney, and a so-called “agnostic”. This alone starts to ring a bell into my head. Why is it that all women you see in these kinds of movies are always people who are no longer believers or are depicted as to not be sure what to believe? I am sure this might possibly reflect the statistics that most of the churchgoers in USA are women, but regardless, it would be nice to see an unfaithful man who would turn back to his faith, for once.

During the first part of the movie, very little happens at first. The events unfold like a typical court case, and most of the arguments brought up against the priest rely on “scientific” opinions about Emily’s condition: she was possibly suffering from epilepsy that later developed into schizoid epilepsy, which, according to the movie itself, is a term one of the “scientists” made up. As I am no expert in this field, I will not argue whether this is a possibility or not, but one thing I DO know, is that the screenwriters have a terrible knowledge of anthropology in particular. This becomes particularly evident when Erin lets an “anthropologist” testify about demon possession in various cultures, which somehow developed into some New Age mumbo jumbo about some people being more susceptible to possession than others, and this could have a possible biological reason. If the screenwriters would have bothered to actually look up what social and cultural anthropologists do, is that we DO NOT make up theories why some people would become possessed by demons. If anything, WHAT we do is that we make third-person accounts of such events and try to put these events into a cultural/social perspective. So yes, I got a huge axe to dig with that part in particular, and most of the movie and its ability to appear realistic were ruined to me, at that point.

Another point which I strongly disliked is that the movie at first seems to attempt to present how the eyewitness testimonies described the event, which ultimately would make the movie neutral on whether demon possession is a possibility or not, but then suddenly changed position and started to support the idea that demon possession is in fact possible, and that demons exist in this world. It’s not like I can buy that, but the setting for such a storyline was completely wrong. I’d understood if it was something like The Exorcist, The Omen or any other fictional setting that doesn’t try to be scientific (an exception would be the X-Files, but I never liked the few episodes they had that explored Scully’s Catholic faith, anyway) but it’s more about telling a compelling story. Now, the problem is that the compelling story in the Exorcism of Emily Rose is supposed to lie in the court case at hand. As such, the movie utterly and horribly failed. Instead of giving different and varied personal accounts of the event and developing the interpersonal relationships between the characters, which would ultimately had made the movie more into a drama that, in my opinion, would’ve been a perfect choice for this kind of setting, it tries to scare by giving the viewer a sense that demons might exist. Besides creating a tingling sensation, that’s all what it did for me. If I wanted to see something actually scary, The Exorcism of Emily Rose would certainly not be on that list.

Neither did I agree with the final verdict of the jury, since the evidence to support his case was mostly based on eyewitness testimonies and emotional retelling of events, as well as some holes poking in the logic of the “science proponents”. (Spoiler: The priest was found guilty but the verdict was changed into his favor, making it far less severe than it initially was.)

With that said, I do not completely dismiss the movie. It’s worth seeing once but some of the aspects are incredibly hard to overlook (particularly, if you study anthropology…) to make it really enjoyable, especially as an unbeliever. It does raise some interesting questions about ethics and philosophy, such as whether it was more humane to let Emily die by her own choice than strapping her to a machine or put her into a psychiatric ward, where she, no doubt, would not have been much better off. However, these things do not make up for the major flaws that ruined the movie to me. If this movie had been a drama, if it had been interested to explore these questions in more detail, if it had been interested to portray an objective stance on the matter, then yes, I think it might have been an outstanding movie.

However, as it is, it did not and thus it is mediocre but works a Saturday night entertainment when you’re bored. I should also mention one more thing which really put the nail into the coffin though, and that was the post scriptum they added when the case was closed. Instead of saying that the events presented in the movie are fiction and that the real person behind Emily was Anneliese Michel, they wrote EMILY, which made it sound like the whole thing happened in USA. Furthermore, the final note added that Erin’s case was based upon information provided by someone who knew Emily from that time. I don’t exactly remember the details. As you can see, however, the implications remain clear: Emily existed for real and so did Erin and this case. Despite that this is all fiction and a retelling of events.

This movie is so incredibly unprofessional I’m surprised it passed the screenwriting status. If I were Anneliese’s parents, I would be terribly offended by the fact that the filmmakers somehow claim that the events Anneliese went through was based on a girl in USA. I mean, give her the proper credit. The girl suffered terribly, after all. If you are going to write a movie about her life, then at least make sure that it doesn’t omit the fact that it was HER and not somebody else.

Because of it, I wanted to talk about the sort of mentality that lead to the statement and why it, and Christianity as a whole, should concern Americans more than Islam. While this website isn’t specific to America at all, the world is nevertheless affected by America’s policies—for better or for (in my opinion) much, much worse. Compared to other developed Christian countries, the United States is obsessed with it’s religion. We’re a diverse country, but the majority group—that is, those who practice Christianity—feel that the country “belongs to them”. And they are willing to enforce that belief. That, ladies and gentlemen, makes Christianity a greater threat to “our freedom” than Islam ever was.

Now, I won’t pretend America is the beautiful shining “land of the free” it’s made out to be. We all know better.

The mindset, it’s a rather common one in America and, I’m sure, in much of the Christian world. I imagine it’s a fascinating thing to feel that an entire country and it’s history, laws, and resources belong to you. While as a white, able-bodied person I am privileged, it is one thing to be in a privileged group and another to feel that said group is entitled to something as, for example, white supremacist groups feel. And Christian nationalism is the religious and cultural equivalent of white supremacy, and the two are intimately entwined.

Now: a quick bit of sidetracking. If you don’t care about semantics, just skip this paragraph. To build on ACP’s previous post—What is religion?—I will give my own definition of religion. A definition is possible, as most can agree on which things are religions and which are not, except for when an ulterior motive is involved. One of the problems with definition is that while a religion often acts as a social group, it is possible to adopt the rules and even partially the culture of a religion yet be disconnected from the group. Adding to the problem is that religions rarely follow their own rules, are too organic to be considered organizations (rather, organizations exist within a religion, and religions exist outside of organization). The cultural and often racial aspects of religion are too strong to deny—race and culture go hand in hand, and religions change entirely when adopted by new cultural groups. A religion is looser than an organization and tighter than simply being “like-minded”—it is a loose group of people who share specific beliefs concerning the supernatural, from which extends a shared culture and morality as well as different interpretations of the beliefs, which may be enforced by organizations representing the religion. Anyway, that’s  the definition I’ll be using—mostly I just discussed it because I’d like to encourage the definition to be talked about.

Onwards:

The danger of Christianity in America is twofold. First, it is a negative influence on decisions which affect the entire country and, two, Christian nationalism threatens to turn the country into more of a theocracy than it already is, at the cost of non-Christians in America and around the world. Islam only poses a true threat to freedom in the countries where it has legal clout—for the same reasons Christianity is dangerous in Christian countries. Outside of Islamic governments, Islam poses little threat to the rights of Americans and others. That sounds rather insane to say, but consider that Islam’s only threat to America lies in its few radical extremists’ ability to cause fear by taking lives. Yet the actual number of lives they take is small compared to even the seasonal flu.

To the average American, even the Christian ones who are only moderate or Christian in name, Christianity poses a greater threat. The reason is that as a Christian-controlled government with significant support from certain politically inclined sects, America’s policies are not being decided on facts and reason but on faith, which can fit any preconceived viewpoint. It’s not just an accident of human nature—it’s what Christian nationalists want.

Like extremist Muslims, the Christian establishment (as well as the other Judeo-Christian religions) uses terrorism to enforce it’s morality. Where radical Islamists use direct violence and threats of direct violence, Christian organizations use other methods to induce fear (the threat of Hell, for example). Not a big deal, right, after all, so does every political group. There are a few problems, however. Unlike white supremacy groups and specific political parties, Christianity is not a fringe political group, nor is it’s pull kept to one side of the political spectrum. Christianity exerts a pull over anyone who proclaims themselves to be a Christian, even if they disagree with the specific message. The fear of Hell can influence any Christian.

And Christians have long since declared war on secular America. As Atheist Revolution recently mentioned, America’s top Republican presidential candidates for 2012 have made it clear there is room only for the Christian god in the nation they plan to run. In the documentary Jesus Camp, Christian fanatics train children to be “soldiers of God” in order to “fix this country”. We’ve all heard the rhetoric—“take this nation back for Christ”. Christians have for years been attempting to force religion back into the classroom, and continue to expect shows of faith from citizens. The sense of Christian entitlement in this country is so strong that non-Christians are often told to simply leave the country if they don’t like it—the presumption being that Christians own the nation. All of this leaves an increasingly small amount of space for an increasingly larger group—that is, those in America who desire secular government. History has shown that formerly powerful groups who have lost their power and feel (justified or not) oppressed lash out legally and violently.

Radical Islamists can frighten Americans who fail to put death tolls into perspective. Their real power lies in their ability to frighten critics of Islam—and that is truly terrible—but the overall effect of censoring criticism of Islam does little to really harm this country and much of the world. If Islamists really wanted to destroy America and Western culture—as we are constantly told—they need only give Christian nationalists more power.

“The thing about religion is that it provides a powerful language through which you can justify any ideology.” —Reeza Aslan, author of God Or No God.

No one is allowed to reproduce my thesis without my permission. Any attempts to claim authorship and profit out of my thesis will be strictly forbidden.

Abstract for those too lazy to read it on Academia.edu:
Satanism and antichristianity have always had prominent roles in black metal. While most musicians and fans would claim that true evil is organized religion and even more so Christianity, black metal also appears as a new religious movement, making this statement highly paradoxical. One way to understand this is the constant search for an authentic masculine identity, and how the modern consumerist society is perceived to create a social climate that make some groups within the society feel alienated. Such a group includes heterosexual, working class men that made up most of the early black metal scene.
With the help of the anti-aesthetic, which can take such expressions as self-mutilations and in the forms of opinions that it is good for humans to suffer instead of being happy, black metal men attempt to find their True Selves by separating that which they find masculine from the feminine – where Satanism and antichristianity become tools to do this. By idolizing and revering Satan as the perfect man, black metal men have started a war against Christianity to conquer which they think always belonged to them – namely their masculine identity from the on-going “feminization”.

“NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 6, 2010, as a National Day of Prayer.  I call upon the citizens of our Nation to pray, or otherwise give thanks, in accordance with their own faiths and consciences, for our many freedoms and blessings, and I invite all people of faith to join me in asking for God’s continued guidance, grace, and protection as we meet the challenges before us.”

But Mr. President, my (lack of) faith does not have any equivalent to prayer, I don’t have any God to give thanks to, or ask for guidance or protection. You “call upon” me to do what, then?

Even if we put aside the fact that prayer has not been proven to provide a result more consistent than the randomness that would occur naturally, even if we grant that some people “enrich” their lives with it (without questioning exactly how talking to themselves enriches their lives, of course), and even if we acknowledge the role in the history of the United states played by Christianity… I’m sorry, I mean, “a generic concept of religion without referring to any specific denomination or faith but slightly alluding to Christianity, so as not to blatantly exclude or offend anyone except atheists and agnostics”, then it still begs the question, what about those of us who DON’T pray, for whatever personal reason? Effectively, you’ve just told us to participate in a religious exercise, and no matter how much of a “universal” spin you try to place on it, the fact remains that it is not universal. The fact that it is fundamentally unique to specific spiritual worldviews indicates that the government should keep its hands out, or violate the freedoms of those who do not hold the worldview that includes the exercise.

This fact makes these words incredibly hollow:


Let us rejoice for the blessing of freedom both to believe and to live our beliefs, and for the many other freedoms and opportunities that bring us together as one Nation.

Yes, the blessing of freedom to live our beliefs. That implies that no government official ever tells you what you should be doing in your personal, private, spiritual life. EVER. Well, Mr. President, by issuing your Proclaimation “calling the citizens… to pray”, you are doing just that.

He explained that Hare Krishna worships Krishna, the one god. Krishna is generally referred to as “lord”. He said that Vishnu is a great god as well, if I remember correctly an avatar or aspect of Krishna, but according to some Sanskrit interpretations (there are obviously over 600 of them!), Krishna himself said that he is the creator of everything, as well as the end. One thing which surprised me was that Hare Krishna had a great focus on the individual rather than being holistic, which I didn’t expect considering that it’s a sect (here used to refer a branch of a main religion) of Hinduism, and I know that Hinduism puts a great focus on a holistic cosmology. He explained that Hare Krishna has a holistic view too, but the main goal is to create your own individuality so you can finally meet Krishna as a person. There are thus different kinds of stages that occur in the afterlife where you will either retain your individuality or you won’t. Retaining your individuality was thus greater than becoming a part of Krishna, whereas I had thought it to be the opposite. In this regard Hare Krishna thus sounds very similar to Christianity in the personal relationship you are supposed to have with god, or at least attempt to have. Such activities as prayers (repeating certain phrases constantly for a certain amount of time) and performing yoga are all means to get closer to god or create a communication with god. I also asked our “lecturer” about who the first guru was (prophet/apostle in some kind of sense, although the term “guru” just means “teacher”), since Hare Krishna was started by a guru who taught created the Krishna movement in the West. In Hare Krishna, and other forms of Hinduism, there must be some kind of teacher because humans are imperfect and it is thus impossible for a human to suddenly one day just realize all the great mysteries of god. Here too I notice a similarity with Christianity. Gurus are thus needed to spread the knowledge and messages further to the coming generations. Here I had to ask him who the first guru was, since it’s an interesting question. I actually think they solved the problem pretty well, at least when comparing to Christianity. Our “lecturer” explained that the very first guru was Brahma (sp?), and he taught the humans about Krishna. Of course the disconnection is still there, as Brahma is considered a divine being, even though he has a material body. In such a sense Brahma is in fact very similar to Jesus, who too, was sent to Earth to teach the word of god but at the same time being god in flesh. Now that I am writing about it, I forgot to ask if Hare Krishna consider all other deities to be mere parts of Krishna or whether they are entities of their own, but this is certainly an interesting aspect which should be explored further, although maybe not today. I do however know that there is some dispute among the academics whether Hinduism as an official religion should be considered polytheistic or monotheistic. At least the Brahma solution is better than “being inspired by god” or such nonsense. Even if god inspires us, and there is certainly proof that our beliefs in god at least can, it still doesn’t solve the problem that humans are imperfect and thus everything we do will be imperfect. Our “lecturer” did however seem to believe in some kind of perfect spirituality, where one reaches such a spiritual insight that it can be considered perfect to those who do not understand it. The guru who started the Hare Krishna movement was considered such a person for example. Therefore I suppose that it is logical in such a sense that a being such as Brahma can teach humans to reach such spiritual state of perfection that they too can become gurus.

As the “conversation” continued, it was unavoidable that we would eventually be touching such subjects as women’s rights and how women are treated in India and inside the Hare Krishna movement. It was explained that there have been female gurus, but they were no modern ones that our “lecturer” knew of that existed today, and not within the Hare Krishna movement, but there had been one 400 years ago. He further explained that women were never asked to take upon such a position, but when they wanted to no one stopped them. This was slightly surprising as well considering how patriarchal India is still today, even though it’s changing and has been changing rather rapidly throughout the past years. Within the Catholic Church female priests are forbidden and even in Sweden which is considered one of the most equal countries in the world, some male priests frown upon female priests. The “conversation” then went onto discussing the polygamy versus monogamy issue, and what view the Hare Krishna movement has on taking many wives. Our “lecturer” explained that it’s very uncommon for men to marry more than one woman today, but it happens often in the more rural parts of India, where having many wives might even symbolize a man’s social status. The more wives a man can afford to sustain the higher social status he has. Generally speaking though, no one’s looking down upon a man if he takes more than one wife, but the question is whether he can afford to be married to more than one. Naturally children were brought up after that. Hare Krishna believes that a parent should teach their children to be as good citizens as possible, and this is in fact the only reason why a member of Hare Krishna would have children, and thus didn’t fit too well with me. While I can understand that a member of Hare Krishna may consider their way of life to be the best one, and there are certainly aspects that I don’t mind at least, I do not agree with teaching a child that their way of living would naturally be the best one. However, our “lecturer” also said that it is not a failure for a parent if the child doesn’t follow the way of Krishna but takes a different path, and almost retorted to something like “god’s way is mysterious”. He didn’t express it in such a sense, but that our consciousness together with karma can more or less influence our lives both directly and indirectly. This also includes the religion or lack thereof we may follow.

At this point I had to ask what he thought about other religious beliefs or even making up your own, or what it meant to lead a “pious” life but yet not worship any god. To that he retorted, loosely quoted from memory, “that it’s like a road with many mailboxes, where some never received any mail to pick up”. He thus seemed to believe that some religions (most probably the ones he knew of and which shared similar ideas to his own) have more legitimacy than others. Some religions don’t worship any gods, Shinto being a more well-known example, but on the other hand, is it important if there would be some “answer” on the other side if you aren’t expecting any? Atheism and humanism comes to mind. I wasn’t asking it straight out because I didn’t think of formulating it in such a way, but I was of course thinking of the morality issue that many Christians throw around with in atheist/Christian discussions. I do think that he did believe that people can still lead pious lives though, without actually believing. There was no patronizing or threats such as “…but this will happen when you die!” sort of deal, just a simple answer that if you aren’t expecting anything of the religious or metaphysical nature, then probably nothing will happen. I think this is very interesting because it shows how important it may be for us to actually believe without there being anything to necessarily believe in. The belief itself is somehow more important than the worship, and I do believe it still boils down to what ways that works for each individuals that can help them to their self-empowerment, which I wrote about in a previous article here at the ACP. One of my classmates asked him whether he would’ve picked another religion, would it have been introduced to him in another environment, but she also said that he had answered it already in that he thought that Hare Krishna had all the right answers (that fit with him). But what I disagreed with here is that ultimately he believed that there must be some great divine authority that carries the knowledge over to humanity. We are ourselves unable to form our own answers to our existence. I do not believe in authorities, and people who know me well will probably also know that I like to form my own answers, not be given any. This is very true when it comes to my “spiritual” beliefs as well, as I do not share any ideas that move into the metaphysical and even if metaphysics would be true, I also ultimately believe that metaphysics is merely physics. I also do not share the sentiment that there would be a great divine being that controls all. I suppose that for some people it might give them relief knowing that they are not in control of everything and thus the cause of every action they take, in a way becomes some kind of excuse or crutch to say that “well, at least it wasn’t my fault it happened this way it happened”. I believe I am in control of my own life in that I can directly affect the world around me according the actions I take, or for the actions I choose not to for the matter. The free will versus causality is a tricky question. While I believe in free will in such a sense that I believe that we are free to decide our actions to a certain extent by becoming aware of our options, we are also controlled by causality because we are all part of a causal flow. When I feel hungry I feel hungry because my stomach just sent information to my brain that it’s empty, so my brain generates some signal substances that makes me feel hungry, but I at that moment I also got the option to eat and not eat, or if looking back into a previous moment in time, I could’ve eaten later to avoid becoming hungry, since I can calculate the causal flow that I will become hungry at a certain point. Eating before that point will thus change the causal flow. However, I am digressing; this is about my study visit at the Hare Krishna, not about the problems with Cartesian dualism.

Since I am already on the free will versus causality, Hare Krishna shares some peculiar ideas on the subject matter. First of all, every human being has a consciousness. It is something we can learn to control with increasing spiritual awareness. Our consciousness is thus similar to our normal mental processes and Descartes’ formulation “cogito, ergo sum” comes to mind, in a very literary sense. This is an idea strongly shared within Hare Krishna, and is also reflected in such terms as “civilized animals”. I can either learn to control my consciousness and become closer to god by doing so (read leading an ascetic and pious life) or I can be like an animal and merely act on my instincts. Consciousness is thus something that we can control with our “free wills”, and it may even be able to affect the environment around us. An example was when one of my classmates asked if our “lecturer” believed in Astrology, and he said he did, although “99% are fake”. He told us a story about one of his father’s coworkers who got his fate read by a local Astrologist whom he claimed was good at reading when people had bad luck. So this coworker got his fate read, and the Astrologist said that on a certain Monday he would be hurt by a very sharp object. So the coworker refused to go outside on that Monday, hoping that by limiting his movement that day he would reduce the risk of getting hurt. However, he had forgotten the antlers of a deer that hang on the wall above the sofa he had decided to sit in, and the antlers fell down and penetrated his chest. To this my classmate retorted that it could’ve as well actually been his consciousness that had been so focused on not getting hurt by this sharp object this very day that he actually got hurt. So in a way it’s like cognitive psychology where they speak about self-fulfilling prophecies. If you think something bad will happen, something bad will in fact happen because you will unconsciously expose yourself to such risks and may even cause them yourself without being aware that you are doing so. Then lastly there is karma. Most people are probably accustomed with the term that if we do good actions, we get good karma and if we do bad actions then we get bad karma. Depending on what kind of karma we have, it will also affect the environment around us. Karma also accumulates among a group of people so if a group of people do a lot of bad actions, the karma within that group will be generally bad. Karma is some kind of higher power of justice. If a person leads a very pious life but goes through many struggles, he or she may ultimately be rewarded thanks to karma; similarly, a person who leads a bad life might get punished. At this point asking about Haiti felt very natural, knowing that some Christian groups are so avid exclaiming that the earthquake in fact was caused by the god as punishment because of the Haiti people being so sinless or some equally silly nonsense. To this our “lecturer” explained that there are two things that can cause an earthquake. There are some demigods that control such things as the weather, and thus naturally also earthquakes, but earthquakes can also be caused by too much accumulated bad karma. I do not know which answer he believed was the right one here, but I felt he was treading very carefully in this matter considering how touchy the subject is, hence the vague answer.

At this point however, my two hours were up and we had to leave. It had been an interesting evening and I am really looking forward to the Scientology study visit in two weeks.

Full article below the jump:

On another note, I have been thinking a lot in the past few days about this topic, after a rather heated conversation with my dad on our drive from the airport. As he still doesn’t “officially” know about my stance on the whole “God Question”, he saw no problems complaining to me about a display put up at a state courthouse by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, while taking the Bill ORLY point of view that such displays were offensive and should not be displayed at Christmastime. Naturally, I pressed him on the issue, receiving the all-too-predictable response that “Atheists need to realize they live in a Christian Culture and Christmas is a Christian Holiday”, “Atheists would get more respect if they weren’t shoving their beliefs onto others”, and so on. Yes, yes, we’re all going to go crawl into a hole, hold our tongue and plug our ears for the holiday, and of course–all year by extension! Then we’ll certainly get the support we need to stand our ground politically, after all, “the reason gay marriage is being so strongly opposed in some states is because they’re so loud about it.” (This is an actual quote from the conversation…)

Additionally, tonight I performed my yearly duty and attended Christmas Eve Mass with my parents. No blow by blow account this year, but the homily was worth mentioning. The priest, who I did not recognize, gave the yearly guilt trip, but put a frustrating spin on the whole affair. Broken down to its core elements, he railed against “taking Christ out of Christmas”, which was quite expected, but in the process made some quite illogical and even insulting leaps. First, he went through a series of “Christmas is supposed to be about X, if you believe Y”, where X was some warm/fuzzy or fundamentally secular message (Santa, family, etc), and Y was a series of sources (the media, advertisements, stories, songs, etc). Then, he went through a sequence of devaluing the X messages, such as eroding the message about families being together by making statements about dysfunctional families, awkward gatherings, jealousy, and so on, or gifts/Santa with rampant commercialism. If we end here and want to be cynical and pessimistic Scrooges, this is not an unreasonable view. After all, I’m sure everyone can relate to awkward family gatherings and disgust over the transition of a domestic holiday into a commercial one. The core of the Christmas experience is not always the shiny package under the tree, but it can be quite different and even dark when opened.

However, this is not where it ended. He continued by inserting the expected religious message, where we accept the baby in the manger (“His arms are open, will yours be?”), then went the extra step by asserting that if we did NOT embrace the Christian side of Christmas we would be stuck with the devalued, pessimistic side of all the X messages. This is implied as opposing the idea that if we do accept Christ’s half of Christmas we’ll be blessed with the optimistic sides of the X messages? I see what you did there, way to set up a false dichotomy. The train of logic here has not simply broken down, it’s become a failtrain.

Now, I was poking around the internet tonight, reading some articles about the new Atheist Guide to Christmas book to lift my spirits from over an hour of a bizarre, illogical attempted guilt trip when I stumbled across this article: “Merry Christmas vs. Happy Holiday” (linked from “An Atheist’s Defense of Christmas”)

This ties in quite well with the above two problems. Both my father and the priest, representatives of a much larger population, want Christmas to remain a holiday with a primarily religious focus, despite rampant commercialism and increased secularization. Both claim that by keeping “Christ in Christmas”–partly by promotion of Christian symbology and terminology, partly by suppression of alternative views–all the “true meanings” will shine through, everyone will be happy, and family gatherings will be warm and fuzzy and full of love (if you follow the priest’s twisted logic, that is). Maybe that is true, maybe it isn’t, but following Justin Bills here, I think the real question we need to be asking is slightly different. He says:

But I was faced with a stark question in this debate. “Is saying ‘Merry Christmas’ really putting Christ back in Christmas?”

In a word: NO. And we can extend that, not only will Christian terminology not reclaim your holiday, but suppressing the nontheist voice won’t either, or even attempting to follow the fail-logic of the priest’s sermon. Justin Bills understands this, and answers his own question quite well:

As a Christian, I understand that Christmas is a beautiful celebration of God sending His Son to for the salvation of all. I believe it is “Good news” as the angels put it. I want everyone to know about the “good news”. But I also recognize that for some this “good news” doesn’t come off as “good” at all. It’s a reminder that Christians at times don’t look anything like Jesus. “Merry Christmas” can be another reminder of the history of pain and oppression Christians have put people through.

That’s right, Justin. The Jesus story is not “good news” to everyone, and frequently Christians look nothing like Jesus, and shame his story with their bigotry. And for nontheists–as well as other religions currently oppressed by Christianity–it is not just a reminder of the past, but of the present. Every time we see a religious representation of Christmas or have to listen to Christians use this opportunity to lash out against those who don’t think like they do, nontheists are painfully reminded that we are still a marginal minority, still struggling to be heard.

Christmas may have religious roots, but stronger than those religious roots are the cultural underpinnings, which even predate the religious connotations. There is no reason nontheists can’t celebrate a cultural holiday–just as there is no reason theists can’t steal holidays from other cultures and mold them to fit their own ends (Just don’t expect us to honor them as such!). Culture is fluid, it grows and adapts. NOTHING will reclaim this holiday to be a purely religious holy day. Theists can shout Merry Christmas until they’re blue in the face, vandalize FFRF signs, set up elaborate manger scenes, or claim the shifting terminology is part of a secular progressive agenda, but one fact remains. Culture has already moved on, and Christmas has become a holiday for everyone, not just Christians.

Time to accept this fact and move on, striving for the optimistic X messages. Despite what many religious might have you believe, you can realize these values without buying into the Jesus-half of Christmas, just try it. After all…

I’m having a Happy Holiday, and I hope you are too.

It appears to be more important to rail against a preconceived notion of a concept rather than engage the idea itself.  What do you think this ad is saying about those children in the image?  Why are they so happy?  Is the message based on who the children are?

No, its not.  It doesn’t matter who those kids are, the point is that they’re kids.  They could be happy, sad, cute, or ugly, and the message would stay the same.  It also stays the same regardless of what religion their parents are members of… which happens to be Christianity.

The  idea that somehow the fact that these kid’s parents are Christian undermines the message of the advertisement is absolute nonsense.  It wouldn’t be reinforced if their parents were atheists.  The fact is, those kids are way too young to really choose whether or not they believe in any religion, so as the ad says, DON’T LABEL THEM.  They are not “Christian children”, they are children of Christian parents.  It is not ironic in any way that their parents are Christians.  This ad is not about their parents, its about them.

Additionally, they probably chose happy looking kids not to make any statement on religion itself, but because a picture of a smiling person is better suited to advertising.  Why do you think soap and underwear and laxative advertisements have “smiling” people?  Same reason this ad does, it grabs attention.  Also, look closely at their faces, they’re not *really* smiling and happy–just like every other lame ad photo, they’re being told to smile for the camera.  Their smiles are insincere zygomatic-only smiles, not the sincere Ducenne smile, which also entails the involuntary contraction of the orbicularis oculi, which creates “crow’s feet” at the corners of the eye. Due to the fact this muscle contraction is completely involuntary and unable to be recreated at will (short of artificial stimulation with electricity) when people are genuinely happy, they can’t help showing it, and they can’t force themselves to appear happy when they’re really not.

So they didn’t REALLY choose genuinely “happy and free” children.  They chose children who LOOKED “happy and free” because they possess the ability to “smile” on command… just like every other model in advertising.  Look closely at the next few ads and magazine covers you see with “smiling” models, you’ll find this phenomenon of not-really-smiling universal.

(And before the inevitable accusation–it would be exactly the same if the parents were Muslim.)