and these are just the religion quotes
The Pope’s problems: Hari is a well-known reporter with a good rep. What the The Independent’s logic was behind assigning this sort of “consumer advisory” story to him I have no idea.
But at least Hari didn’t bring up Pope Joan.
Still, before Catholics start worrying about a woman Pope, they have this to think about.
And while we're on the topic of women...The Tablet argues the liberal Catholic view.
Meanwhile, Hawking is still hedging.
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The persistence of evil: It is, as Theodore Dalrymple notes, always with us.
That evil has not disappeared pari passu with German measles puzzles and troubles us. Evil remains a conundrum, as evidenced by Marxist literary theorist Terry Eagleton’s recently published book On Evil. Eagleton is not one of those Marxists for whom, like the late historian and Stalin apologist Edward Hallett Carr, the problem of evil does not exist. “I don’t think there are such things as bad people,” Carr once said. “To us Hitler, at the moment, seems a bad man, but will they think Hitler a bad man in a hundred years’ time, or will they think the German society of the thirties bad?”--
Eagleton sees clearly that this will not do. Helping him in this recognition is that he is a Christian as well as a Marxist, and no Christian can believe wholly in social determinism. The problem of the human heart is real, not just a remediable social artifact. The relationship between society and human behavior is dialectical, Eagleton believes. Society has its effect, but it is acting on an already imperfect nature, which in turn is bound to produce an imperfect society.
Significantly, Eagleton begins his book by citing the case of two ten-year-old British boys who abducted, tortured, and killed three-year-old Jamie Bulger in 1993. Here is the opposite of childhood innocence, for the two boys knew that what they were doing was deeply wrong but went ahead and did it anyway. The human mystery is that neither their environment nor their nature can fully explain them. Man is not only wolf to man; he is mystery to man.
So the Enlightenment project has failed, at least in explaining man fully to himself. However successful it has been in other regards—and we are all, even its bitterest enemies, children of the Enlightenment—we do not know ourselves any better than we did in Jenyns’s and Johnson’s day. Self-understanding may even have regressed since Johnson, for no man was better at self-examination than he. If more people proved adept at it, perhaps the prevalence of evil would decline. Johnson was highly imperfect, knew himself to be so, and always struggled against his imperfections without expecting more than partial victory. He did not approve of Pope’s theodicy, but he could agree with the famous lines summing up the human predicament:
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl’d;
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
Theodore Dalrymple, a physician, is a contributing editor of City Journal and the Dietrich Weismann Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
‘Hipsters’ are ruining Christianity.
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Pass the mustard: Galilean banquets 12,000 years ago
Humans were organizing mass banquets to foster community spirit 12,000 years ago, scientists learned.
A team excavating a burial cave in Galilee, northern Israel, uncovered the remains of at least 71 tortoises and three wild cattle.
The shells and bones showed evidence of the animals being cooked and butchered for human consumption.
The finds were in two specially crafted hollows linked to burial rituals, said the researchers writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Tortoise shells were placed under, around and on top of the remains of a ritually buried shaman.
Meat from the tortoises alone could probably have fed around 35 people, according to study leader Dr Natalie Munro, from the University of Connecticut, United States.
"This is the first solid evidence that supports the idea that communal feasts were already occurring - perhaps with some frequency - at the beginnings of the transition to agriculture," she said.The Independent/UK
Bollywood does Jesus, reverentially, they swear.
Believe as much of this one as you like:
Cecil B DeMille has been there before, of course. As have Pier Paolo Pasolini, Roberto Rossellini, Mel Gibson, Franco Zeffirelli and Martin Scorsese. So maybe it was only a matter of time before Bollywood not only succumbed to the temptation but went one better by making its version in the subject's native land. Yesterday, India's Aditya Productions unveiled plans for a $30m (£19.5m), two-hour-15-min biopic which will be shot in the Holy Land and which it said would be "the first ever – in 79 years – Bollywoodian film on the life of Jesus Christ".--
Although the picture will – unusually – mainly feature child actors, it will have an as yet unspecified role for the Bollywood megastar Pawan Kalyan – introduced to reporters at Jerusalem's King David Hotel yesterday as the "darling of millions".
Summing up the appeal of the story, which will be "a very faithful representation of the life of Jesus" from "birth to his crucifixion" with particular emphasis on his youth, the producer, Konda Krishnam Raju, said: "It is remarkable that this man who started his mission from a small village became within a short span of three years a force that influenced mankind for over 2,000 years and is worshiped by millions of people."
Stressing that the film – which will be made in English, Hindi, Telugu and Malayalam, will start shooting here in October and should be ready by late 2011 – was high budget, Krishnam Raju said simply: "It is going to be a huge one."
To judge by the almost reverential tone of Indian entertainment journalists being beamed into the press conference by video link from seven cities in the subcontinent, he is right. Although fewer than 3 per cent of Indians are Christians, Kalyan, who declined to say what part he would be playing, explained: "There are millions of people in India who follow Christianity. It is a great faith, a great religion. There is a great tolerance for other religions; there is a great audience for such a film in India."
The actor underlined his delight at being involved in the project by describing how, six months before he was approached for a part in it, his five-year-old son hurt his knee in a fall. "The first thing that came into my mind was mother Mary and what she must have been through seeing her son [on the cross]." As a result, he explained, when the producers contacted him about the film. "I felt a kind of connectivity with it." Kalyan said there would be music but not "song and dance like in other Bollywood films".
All religions have their whackos
9. Let's face it, all religions have their whackos. Catholics have O'Reilly, Gingrich, Hannity and Clarence Thomas (in fact all five conservatives who dominate the Supreme Court are Catholic). Protestants have Pat Robertson and too many to list here. The Mormons have Glenn Beck. Jews have Crazy Eddie. But we don't judge whole religions on just the actions of their whackos. Unless they're Methodists.