Tag Archives: religion

Wiley Drake’s “imprecatory prayers” as autoterrorism

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Still thinking about Wiley Drake long after his notorious pronouncement of imprecatory prayer upon Obama’s life.  

I’m wondering, though, about how befuddled the immediate reaction against Drake’s announcement became, as the reaction varied between "This is Abrahamic religion in the raw" to "well, he’s not encouraging others to pray the same prayer, but it still could inflame violent opinion or reaction against Obama".

Now let’s think about it: Drake was officially entitled by the 1st amendment to pray this prayer for himself as long as he didn’t communicate this as a desire for other people to act upon (which could be described as "incitement to murder", or if there is a monetary incentive, "solicitation of murder"). However, that the reaction against the idea of an imprecatory prayer – where you pray to your preferred imaginary friend or imaginary surrogate parent to wreak havoc upon another individual’s life or livelihood so that you don’t have to – tends to exhibit the continuing fear within the public of incitement of the supernatural to harm a mortal individual.

But if, from an atheist standpoint, such incitements of imaginary beings are only being directed to a memory or concept within one’s mind, and that the violent thought is only involving the burning of an effigy within one’s mind rather than a public effigy burning, then maybe this burning or killing of one’s enemy within one’s mind counts as "autoterrorism", or terrorism against one’s own self.

It can be considered an act against the self because it dedicates the mind’s resources to killing one’s own concept of a living being through incitement of the imagination to that effect. Since this does not involve any mock killing of an effigy in public or the solicitation/incitement to the public to kill a living person, then the act of terrorism only takes place within the mind against an externally-influenced product of the mind. This playout of terroristic acts by the mind against its own production can only be described as terrorism against the self if the skeptical outside observer ignores or denies the existence of supernatural beings.

So prayer, when directed toward the solicitation of murder by a supernatural being, is meant as a reinforcement toward the mind’s own action of terrorism against its own concepts of an individual or group. Imprecatory prayer (including curses) can be best described as autoterrorism. 

Enemies lists: or, “The world is going to hell, YAY!”

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Whether its DiscoverTheNetworks, Masada2000’s (s)hitlist, the Nuremberg Files, or Nixon’s (or Scientology’s) Enemies list, any public, Internet-accessible list of names of personalities who are categorized as agents and foot soldiers of the list compiler’s "true enemy" tends to invite general public scrutiny concerning the purpose or intended use of that list. However, a public hit list is not often designed in a similar fashion as a solicitation to murder (such as that lobbed by the Iranian clerical regime against Salman Rushdie in the 1980s), as these lists can serve as invitations to general intimidation of the mentioned individuals. These databases of names, at best, are a sort of non-governmental "know your enemies" directive which are intended to influence and direct the minds and actions of fellow ideologues against specific targets which are perceived as the most tender joints and tendons of the larger body of that most fearsome "conspiracy" against the pet ideology of the list’s compilers.

I cannot say that enemies’ lists, (s)hitlists and rogue galleries are an effective means of ensuring the success of the list compiler’s ideology, but it is interesting in how such lists are used by non-governmental, non-commercial organizations and social-religious movements. Should such lists be compiled?

More on editing the Jefferson Bible: de-geographization

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I edited a copy of Jefferson’s Bible to remove the words "Jews" (replaced with "the people"), "Israel" and "Judaea" (replaced both with "the land"), and "Jerusalem" (replaced with "Great City"). I’m still thinking about replacing other notable cities in Israel with non-descript synonyms.

The reason for that is my recent idea that Christianity’s doctrinal obsessions over Judaism, Israel and Jerusalem are manifested both in anti-Judaic/anti-Semitic and Christian Zionist/apocalyptic extremes, both of which de-humanize the Jews into tools for Christian eschatological machinations; the same treatment is afforded regularly to Israel and its cities, especially Jerusalem. 

In fact, what helped me come to this conclusion is a documentary on Jerusalem syndrome which I watched a long while back. The syndrome, which has been documented by psychologists as happening primarily among both adherents to, and former subscribers to, Christianity in its more established forms and denominations, is an affliction which manifests itself in a number of ways ranging from tripping out (as in coming to the idea that you are a reincarnation of King David) to falling out (as in running around in the street, claiming that you are a prophet for "God’s imminent coming", or trying to blow up the al-Aqsa Mosque in order to hasten the aforementioned eschatological event). 

Perhaps, by removing all explicit references to landforms and extant human settlements in Israel and nearby areas, Jefferson’s Bible can be further removed from the precipice of absent-minded bigotry and inanity which has been occupied by various translations and versions of the New Testament for over a thousand and a half years or more. 

My edit of Jefferson’s Bible is designed, in my opinion, to resemble the Book of Job – sans the supernatural content – in its non-localization; basically, the less that people know of the whereabouts of the land of Uz, the better chance that Christians won’t desire a Crusade to gain it back for Christendom. The same approach should be used for explaining Jesus’ concepts on ethics – that he was simply a guy who lived in such-and-such place who demanded a reform of the ethical system of his culture and pissed off the cultural leaders enough that he was accused of apostasy and was executed. No depiction as a prophet, no virgin birth, no miracles, no blaming a specific extant people and religion for the problems in society, no mentioning of a specific target people. Just the facts and no more.

Furthermore, if neither the Jews nor any part of Israel are mentioned in the New Testament, then perhaps it will finally exempt Judaism’s subscribers and associates from those special "tender mercies" and "caring love" which Christians and ex-Christians, for millenia, have desired to shower upon the Jews in particular (and, with just as much fervor, LGBT people). The Jews won’t be that group of people upon which so much is blamed (issues in Southwest Asia, blood libel, world domination, being too smart – for which I had fallen a few years ago and have yet to shake off – and so on).

It doesn’t mean that I will convert to a customized Christianity or identity as a Christian; too many hangups from years past, so I can never fathom returning to it. I COULD convert to Reform Judaism or anything left of that (the more conservative Judaic denominations tend to wax more authoritarian and chaotic against their members and competing sects), but I fancy the more ancient (semi-)polytheistic – or even (semi-)polyDEistic – folk belief systems, at least more for their ability to not rule out other fellow deities with as much fervor as Abrahamic monotheism.

Of course, if I were to identify with a religion now, I’d say Buddhism mixed with a fondness for Pagan and Neopagan traditions.

But if I’ve only made one contribution to the world for which I can have no regrets, it is to help de-supernaturalize and somewhat de-bigotize the scriptural basis of a religion which holds sway over a sixth of the world’s population. 

Religion, descent and the one-drop rule

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This morning, I thought about how religion uses patrilineal or matrilineal descent as a means of indicating whether one has been born into the religion of his or her most immediate ancestor(s), and how, in the case of Judaism and Islam, such stipulations have been contorted by both adherents, non-adherents and detractors from a simple Abrahamic membership inheritance issue into an ethnoracial issue in those societies which observe an Abrahamic religion on a majority basis.

Continue reading Religion, descent and the one-drop rule →

Freemasonry, religion and Furry fandom, race and culture

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Reading Lewis Lofkin’s writings on American Deism, I thought over the night about how English (or "Regular") Freemasonry maintains a ban on religious or spiritual discussion – save for (upon initiation) whether an initiate believes in any Supreme Being – inside a lodge. I think that this ban on religious elaboration places a mask on possible religious expressions, intrigues and possible bigotry.

Maybe it is a good idea, and perhaps this is comparable to how the furry fandom has placed such a heavy and long-standing emphasis on disguising one’s own ethnocultural or ethnoracial identity under a fursona (be it manifested on a furry media archive via an avatar or in the average real-life furry meetup/convention via a fursuit). By hiding such distinctions under the furry equivalents of tribal initiation masks and nomens mysticums, the more divisive flareups around race and ethnicity are, theoretically, avoided or subsided.

Multiculturalism, cultural integrity/sovereignty, and social progression

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In light of both

  • the Swiss referendum-based ban on further building of minarets on mosque edifices in Switzerland
  • the European Human Rights Court’s ban on displays of the crucifix in Italian public schools

I think that it is time to highlight the growth of an strong pan-European movement of anti-triumphalism and laicite, one that doesn’t ignore any religious or spiritual belief system in its wake. Furthermore, I would also recommend to the Europeans (and even the Turkish people, if Kemal’s legacy is to be continued in that country) a further logical expansion of a further pervasive regulation of religious triumphalist displays in public:

  • church bells and bell towers
  • stripping explicit references to unique churches or religions from constitutions and other public documentations

But ultimately, the argument in the Global North over the clash between the religions of Christianity and Islam (and Islam vs. Judaism) and secular Humanism is cultural, as the ideas of law and custom which are embedded within the cultures whose members also subscribe to the religions tend to widely differ on their views (or their capability to modernize their views) regarding concepts of rights and liberties.

I’ve come to the conclusion that multiculturalism – a well-intentioned idea – is very much pinned, in its current implementations, between the rock of social progression and the hard place of cultural integrity/sovereignty. Multiculturalism, as it stands, has not been engaged in a significant attempt at demonolithization that let’s at least one school of multiculturalist ideology try to remove itself from attempting to actively embrace claims to cultural integrity or sovereignty.

I think it would be better to say that multiculturalism respects the rights of multiple cultures to exist, but does not respect the right of a culture to make claims or moves for "integrity" or "sovereignty" against those – within or outside the culture’s main grouping – who syncretize with other cultures or interpretations. Instead, those who do syncretize should also receive the same support and standards of judgement as any other culture if they so apply for such treatment.

Hence, I agree more with Anne Phillips’ book Multiculturalism without Culture, particularly in its feminist angle (since feminist and LGBT organizations have had the hardest time with current multiculturalist models).

After California and Maine, why not go to the churches?

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Maine repealed state recognition of same-sex marriage equality by popular vote yesterday, becoming the 31st state in the union to legally prohibit marriage equality.

But at this point, as the pro-LGBT equality groups wonder about how to turn this situation around – perhaps through more lobbying, more speeches, more marches, perhaps the most (or least) seasoned veterans in this struggle are realizing what their compatriots in California have observed since Proposition 8 last year: it’s the religious congregations which are at the very heart of ideological opposition to marriage equality in any part of the country, any part of the world.

So why can’t the churches be integrated?

Continue reading After California and Maine, why not go to the churches? →