Politics and Prose: Dr. Eric Motley- Interviewing Elaine Pagels: ‘Why Religion’

Source:Politics and Prose– Dr. Eric Motley, interviewing author Elaine Pagels at Politics and Prose in Washington 

Source:The Daily Review

As someone who is Agnostic and proud of it who believes in reason, science, facts, and only has faith in people, things, institutions that I trust based on the evidence that I’ve seen from being around them and talking to them, I can actually see why people would be attracted in religion. As someone who believes in the First Amendment which includes the Freedom of Religion in America, ( sorry Hippies, I’m not spiritualist and I’m not a Communist either ) I can see why people would want religion, be involved in America, and even need it. I guess the difference between an Agnostic and an Atheist, especially a fundamentalist Atheist ( and yes, there is such a thing ) like a Communist to use as an example.

Source:Good Reads– From author Elaine Pagels 

This is not an official definition, but that might only be because there isn’t any official definition of religion, but my personal definition of religion is basically basic set of moral values that people believe and follow, as well as the belief in God. Now, depending on what religion you are a member of determines what moral values that you believe in and follow that helps you in your life. I can easily see how people can get positive benefits from being a part of a religion and get positive benefits from attending church and listening to their religious leader every week give a sermon, especially when they’re going through rough times and need help getting through those tough times. Even though religion is not for me and I prefer to use evidence and reason to get through those tough times in our lives.

Source:C-SPAN– Author Elaine Pagels, on C-SPAN 

Elaine Pagels, lost both her son and husband in the span of a year back in 1987-88, apparently wasn’t very religious before those tragedies in her life, but found religion after that and I can understand someone who goes through those tragedies especially in such a short period of time would feel the need to get help from religion and learn about that and try to figure out for themselves why they’re being put through those tragedies one following by another. Religion, has been used by alcoholics to get over their alcoholism. It’s been used to help career criminals who are doing long-term prison sentences get their life going on a positive track so once they’re finally out of prison they can become positive members of their community once they’re free. As much as I might hate religious fundamentalism in all forms, ( and trust me, I do ) people should also understand and beware of the positive aspects of religious life as well.

Politics and Prose: Dr. Eric Motley- Interviewing Elaine Pagels: ‘Why Religion’

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Anders Jacobson: George Carlin- On Some Cultural Issues

Source: Anders Jacobson– George Carlin in 1996 

Source: The New Democrat

I like George Carlin’s point about motivation because it would be one thing if you had someone advising to do the right thing because of these reasons and they know what they’re talking about because they work in that field and you’re a narcissistic, egotistical, arrogant asshole, who believes the planet evolves around you and you’re so damn smart you see things in the future that no one else does. ( Take Donald Trump to use as one example )

Source: I Am Awake– The Great George Carlin 

And let’s say you’re being sued or are under criminal investigation and your lawyer is telling you, “you know what Joe, I really don’t think it would be a good idea if you testify and go under oath. Sometimes I’m not sure if you’re telling me the truth and I’m your damn lawyer, for God sake! Hell, I’m not even sure if you’re being honest with me.” And your lawyer motivates you to do the right thing and not take the stand. But it’s another thing if you’re a pro athlete lets say and you’re in a big game perhaps even playing for the championship and you know exactly what the consequences are if your team wins lose. Someone in that position will either play their best game or play very well or not. It depends if they’re good enough to win the game or not and how badly they want to win that game.

As far as religion

I’m an Agnostic, so don’t even think about thinking that you can blame me for either the religious fundamentalism in America from the Christian-Right or Islamic fundamentalism from the Middle East and other places around the world, because I’m Agnostic and I simply don’t give a damn about religion.

As a Liberal I believe free choice, free will, free speech, free thinking, individuality, individualism, personal responsibility, the opposites of what even a moderate or social democratic religion would believe in, because religion almost by definition is very collectivist. “This is what’s right and wrong, this is how you should live your life, and this is what you should believe.” I’m just not down with that ( to use a 1990s expression ) and my idea of morality is about how people treat each other, not about how people treat themselves and live their own personal lives. Those are my moral values which is about treating people the way you want them to treat you.

Stupidity

I just wish this George Carlin performance was ten years later instead of coming out in 1996 and we could see what Carlin thinks about our reality TV and celebrity culture, well culture and seeing reality TV and celebrity culture not just dominate American culture, but now have invaded our politics and government. I believe a lot of stupidity in America comes from faddism and the need to feel like you’re cool ( I’m sorry, I mean awesome ) that need to be popular and hip consumes practically everything else even our morality. My point earlier about morality being about how we treat each other, instead of what we do personally. Sometimes its considered cool to bully people that you believe are inferior. We see that in high school everyday.

Thanks to celebrity TV which is what reality TV really is, or perhaps nasty TV is a better term being nasty and stupid is considered cool and is rewarded everyday. The only smart people that are rewarded are business executives who run companies that produce the products that are considered cool in America. Fashion, new technology, coffee house coffee, to use as examples. But if you’re simply just trying to make the world better or at least your small part of it better and you’re a very intelligent person, unless you’re considered hip and communicate with young people very well, you’ll be looked down upon as a nerd who reads too much, spent too much time in school. Love to know what George Carlin would bet saying about our over consuming reality TV culture today.

Baby Boomers

Not a boomer obviously being born in the mid 1970s and I’m not even a son of one. Both of my parents were born in the 1930s and had kids relatively late in life, so I don’t have much personal experience with at least who I would call Baby Boomers ( people born in the 1940s and 1950s ) but I’ve worked with people from this generation and most of my teachers were Boomers. I like to look at them as the entitled generation.

Being born during or just after World War II ( depending on how you define the generation ) and growing up in the 1950s and 60s, as a generation they’re like your typical Connecticut Anglo-Saxon Protestant family who’ve been in this country since the 1700s, who live in the suburbs and started out in life with a million dollars thanks to their father’s. They’re the spoiled brat generation would be a way to look at them. Growing up during the economic booms of the 50s and 60s and not having to worry about how they were going to pay for college or if they were even going to be able to get into college. But I’ll give them credit for taking advantage of every opportunity ever given them and becoming one of if not our most productive American generation’s.

Politicians

If you order a cheeseburger and are served a cheeseburger, do you really have any right to expect your cheeseburger to taste like a tunafish sandwich? With politicians it’s the same thing you get what you voted for or at least elected. You vote for and elect crooks and liars, don’t expect to get Saints instead. And this whole deal about not knowing how crooked and lazy the politician was before you voted for that person, is like someone complaining about the apples or oranges that they bought at the store not being ripe enough and being old. If you bothered to look at the fruit that you were buying before you bought that, you would’ve seen that it wasn’t fresh fruit and maybe you should buy something else. You don’t do your homework when it comes to voting, you end up voting for people you don’t know very well and get screwed by them in the process.

Life is what you make out of it. You get yourself a good education, you apply yourself, do the work, make learning and daily thing for yourself and always looking to do things better and make yourself as productive as possible, do your homework to go back to my point about politicians and life in America will be very good for you. At the very least doing these things for yourself and again treating people the way you want to be treated, taking responsibility for your actions to get to my point about morality and that will be your best offense and game plan for success in this country. But you don’t do these things and expect success and happiness to be given to you and you’ll spend a lot of your life waiting for success and happiness.

Anders Jacobson: George Carlin- On Some Cultural Issues

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Lock Carge: Real Time With Bill Maher- Christopher Hitchens in 2010

Source: This piece was originally posted at The Daily Review

The way I look at Catholics and Christians in general when it comes to terrorists and other bad apples like child molesters, is the way I look at Muslims in this sense. There are roughly two-billion Muslims in the world, maybe a hundred-thousand of them are terrorists. You could do a lot with a military of a hundred-thousand especially if you’re a mid-size country. But out of two-billon people that is not much of an army when it comes to percentages. The overwhelmingly majority of Muslims in the world are peaceful people. Who may have far-right cultural views, but not to the point they’re willing to kill themselves and others to express those views. I’m not Catholic, even though a lot of Germans American and otherwise are Catholic or Lutheran, but most Catholics are good moral people. The sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church in the early and mid two-thousands, was a horrible scandal with a lot of people hurt badly. But if that scandal represented Catholicism in general, we would see a lot more people come forward and share their abuse stories at the hands of Catholic priests and other Catholic leaders. Chris Hitchens and to a certain extent Bill Maher, are guilty of over-generalizing here.

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CBC News: ‘Canada Reacts to Quebec’s Charter of Values’

Source:CBC News– a Quebec man being interviewed about Quebec’s Charter of Values.

“The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (French: Société Radio-Canada), branded as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian federal Crown corporation that serves as the national public broadcaster for both radio and television.[4] The English- and French-language service units of the corporation are commonly known as CBC and Radio-Canada, respectively.”

From Wikipedia

“Organizers are hoping thousands of Quebecers will turn out tomorrow to protest the Parti Quebecois’s proposed Charter of Values. The Charter would ban public employees from wearing religious clothing and symbols at work. Today – two federal ministers launched their own form of protest. And the Montreal Board of Trade warned it could harm the city’s reputation.
And people right across the country said the Charter would create a national chill.”

From CBC News

This is what statism from the Far-Left looks like at its worst. And I say this is coming from the Far-Left, because Quebec is an overwhelmingly socialist province. Statism in Canada at least to this extent with government telling people what they can and can’t wear in public. With what I at least would call Fundamentalist Atheism. (Which is what Communists tend to believe) Which is not only anti-religion, but intolerant of religion. And doesn’t believe individuals should be able to make these decisions for themselves.

This State-Atheism philosophy comes from the Far-Left, generally. And had this been a story about Mississippi, an overwhelmingly fundamentalist Christian state in America, perhaps the capital of the Christian-Right in America, I would’ve called this statism from the Far-Right. We are talking about people who tend to be intolerant of non-Christian religions. With Islam being a big target of there’s. But what is going on in Quebec is clearly statism from the Far-Left. And shouldn’t be tolerated, or any type of religious bigotry coming from government.

Canada is obviously different from America. With their own national identity, culture, way of doing things, Constitution and just about everything else. And they’re a bit left-wing, typically to begin with. But Quebec is even further left than Canada as a whole and probably the most socialist of any province in Canada. So they need to figure out these issues for themselves in their own country. Based on their values and Constitution. But this would clearly be unacceptable and unconstitutional in America and thrown out.

You can also see this post at The New Democrat, on WordPress.

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