‘Biblical Blame Shift’ Is Monotheism Root Cause Of Religious Wars?

An interesting take by Jan Assmann, who argues that the multiple competing deities kept cultural and political balance and equilibrium,and prevented wars. Monotheism disrupted this stability and that lead to religious wars. It started with Old Testament.( F. Sheikh)

Is the Egyptologist Jan Assmann Fueling Anti-Semitism?

By Richard Wolin

Jan Assmann has been described as the world’s leading Egyptologist—a characterization that few these days would dare to dispute. A 74-year-old emeritus professor at the University of Heidelberg and honorary professor at the University of Konstanz, Assmann has held guest professorships at Yale, the University of Chicago, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, in Paris.

Assmann argues that biblical monotheism, as codified by the Pentateuch, disrupted the political and cultural stability of the ancient world by introducing the concept of “religious exclusivity”: that is, by claiming, as no belief system had previously, thatits God was the one true God, and that, correspondingly, all other gods were false. By introducing the idea of the “one true God,” Assmann suggests that monotheism upended one of the basic precepts of ancient polytheism: the principle of “divine translatability.” This notion meant that, in ancient Mesopotamia, the various competing deities and idols possessed a fundamental equivalence. This equivalence provided the basis for a constructive modus vivendi among the major empires and polities that predominated in the ancient world.

Assmann readily admits that the ancient Middle East was hardly an unending expanse of peaceable kingdoms. However, he suggests that before monotheism’s emergence, the rivalries and conflicts at issue were predominantly political rather than religious in nature. For this reason, they could be more readily contained. Monotheism raised the stakes of these skirmishes to fever pitch. According to Assmann, with monotheism’s advent, it became next to impossible to separate narrowly political disagreements from religious disputes about “ultimate ends” (Max Weber) or “comprehensive doctrines” (John Rawls). According to the new logic of “religious exclusivity,” political opponents to be conquered were turned into theological “foes” to be decimated.

By introducing the “Mosaic distinction,” Assmann argues, the Old Testament established the foundations of religious intolerance, as epitomized by the theological watchwords: “No other gods!” “No god but God!” Thereafter, the pre-monotheistic deities were denigrated as “idols.” As Assmann explains: Ancient Judaism “sharply distinguishes itself from the religions of its environment by demanding that its One God be worshiped to the exclusion of all others, by banning the production of images, and by making divine favor depend less on sacrificial offerings and rites than on the righteous conduct of the individual and the observance of god-given, scripturally fixed laws.”

In his more recent work, Assmann has taken the corrosive spirit of early modern Bible criticism a step further. In The Price of Monotheism (Stanford University Press, 2010) and related studies, Assmann ignited an international controversy by claiming that the Old Testament, by discriminating between true and false religion, was responsible for ushering in unprecedented levels of historical violence. Provocatively, he has designated this fateful cultural caesura—whose origins lie in the sacred texts of ancient Judaism and which Assmann describes as a world-historical transition from “cult to book”—as the “Mosaic distinction.”

Ckick link below for full Article;

http://chronicle.com/article/Biblical-Blame-Shift/138457/

 

Evolution minus Darwin’s Theory of Evolution ( Darwin Deleted)

(Book review by Marek Kohn) Darwin Deleted: Imagining a World without Darwin
By Peter J Bowler (University of Chicago Press 336pp £19.50)

The author argues that the world would have accepted evolution in a more orderly,progressive and purposeful way without the Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.

( F.Sheikh)

Some excerpts;

“Although Darwin’s theory of natural selection transformed the understanding of life by turning all eyes to evolution, the subsequent decades saw a successful effort to sideline it in favour of less disturbing candidates for mechanisms of change. People were ready to accept the idea of evolutionary transformation as long as it seemed orderly, progressive and purposeful. Lamarckian ideas, suggesting that individuals could improve themselves through their own striving and then pass on these improvements to their offspring, were a popular alternative. Other theories proposed that living forms were shaped by inner laws that guided change in beneficial directions. Arguments such as these did not confront respectable men with undignified implications about their relationship to monkeys, or threaten to make the universe look meaningless. By the century’s end Darwinism was in eclipse, as the biologist Julian Huxley later put it, but the cracks it had made in the foundations of existential belief were beyond repair.”

 

“He even goes so far as to suggest that Darwin’s radical insight ‘distorted’ the process of scientific development by answering the question of life’s variety before everybody else had managed to formulate it. If it had waited its proper time, the ground would have been prepared for it by earlier theories, which were wrong in ways that made them acceptable. Darwin argued for gradual evolution in nature, but the theory he presented was a sudden, disruptive leap. This view of scientific history is compelling where it is persuasive and even more so where it is not. It casts Darwin in the role of a reformer who demands what he believes is right rather than what society is ready to grant – like campaigning for universal suffrage before the abolition of slavery, or for gay marriage before the repeal of laws against gay sex. In Bowler’s court of history, Darwin stands accused of being prematurely right.” Click link below to read full review;

http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/kohn_04_13.php

 

Religion Without God & Religious Atheism

( Is atheism a religion? )

BY Ronald Dworkin ( A Book review)

An interesting take on religion, God and atheism .Some excerpts from the review;

 

“The familiar stark divide between people of religion and without religion is too crude. Many millions of people who count themselves atheists have convictions and experiences very like and just as profound as those that believers count as religious. They say that though they do not believe in a “personal” god, they nevertheless believe in a “force” in the universe “greater than we are.” They feel an inescapable responsibility to live their lives well, with due respect for the lives of others; they take pride in a life they think well lived and suffer sometimes inconsolable regret at a life they think, in retrospect, wasted”

“There are famous and poetic expressions of the same set of attitudes. Albert Einstein said that though an atheist he was a deeply religious man:

To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong in the ranks of devoutly religious men.1

“Percy Bysshe Shelley declared himself an atheist who nevertheless felt that “The awful shadow of some unseen Power/Floats though unseen among us….”

 

 

“Judges often have to decide what “religion” means for legal purposes. For example, the American Supreme Court had to decide whether, when Congress provided a “conscientious objection” exemption from military service for men whose religion would not allow them to serve, an atheist whose moral convictions also prohibited service qualified for the objection. It decided that he did qualify.4The Court, called upon to interpret the Constitution’s guarantee of “free exercise of religion

 

“So the phrase “religious atheism,” however surprising, is not an oxymoron; religion is not restricted to theism just as a matter of what words mean. But the phrase might still be thought confusing. Would it not be better, for the sake of clarity, to reserve “religion” for theism and then to say that Einstein, Shelley, and the others are “sensitive” or “spiritual” atheists? But on a second look, expanding the territory of religion improves clarity by making plain the importance of what is shared across that territory. Richard Dawkins says that Einstein’s language is “destructively misleading” because clarity demands a sharp distinction between a belief that the universe is governed by fundamental physical laws, which Dawkins thought Einstein meant, and a belief that it is governed by something “supernatural,” which Dawkins thinks the word “religion” suggests.”

 

“The zealots have great political power in America now, at least for the present. The so-called religious right is a voting bloc still eagerly courted.”

 

“ Militant atheism, though politically inert, is now a great commercial success. No one who called himself an atheist could be elected to any important office in America, but Richard Dawkins’s book The God Delusion (2006) has sold millions of copies here, and dozens of other books that condemn religion as superstition crowd bookstores.”

 

Click below to read full review;

 

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/apr/04/religion-without-god/

 

Positive Thinking Does Not Lead to Happiness or Success

By Berit Boggard

Excerpts from review;

“So many tangles in life are ultimately hopeless that we have no appropriate sword other than laughter,” said Gordon Allport, an American psychologist and one of the founders of the study of personality. Scientists have studied the effects of mirthful laughter, positive thinking and optimism on feelings of self-worth, mood disorders and depression since the 1970s. In The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking British author and Guardian feature writer Oliver Burkeman takes issue with “the cult of optimism,” the convention that phony smiles, jovial laughter and positive thinking is a surefire path to happiness. Positive thinking is the problem, not the solution, Burkeman teaches us. He believes people have come to trust that a “Don’t worry. Be happy” attitude toward life is the only route to contentment. People seem to be of the conviction that if you have negative thoughts and see your own limits, you cannot be happy. So to be happy we must set out on a journey that changes your mindset from negative and inhibited to enthusiastic, fervent and animated. We are told to visualize our dreams and goals, eliminate the word “impossible” from our vocabulary and put a big fabricated smile on our physiognomy. All that actually can lead to unhappiness, Burkeman says.

Negative thinking, in Burkeman’s sense, is not exactly the opposite of positive thinking. It involves turning toward our insecurities, flaws, sorrows and pessimism and finding ways of enduring those episodes by embracing them. We should acknowledge that because we are human, we sometimes fail. By admitting that we sometimes screw up and that some things really are impossible for us or are as inevitable as is death, we will feel more content. This is the basic premise of the book.

Click below to read full Review:

http://berlinbooks.org/brb/2012/12/negative-thinking-as-a-path-to-happiness/