Sam Harris - The Witchcraft Argument (By SecularSwede)

Just Think- Sam Harris part 1 & 2 (of 2)

Uploaded on 1 Jul 2010

http://www.samharris.org

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  funcpl2741054 5 months ago

  'religious moderates are intellectually bankrupt' - the best statement EVER

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Sam Harris - Death and the Present Moment

Published on 2 Jun 2012

A Celebration of Reason - 2012 Global Atheist Convention
13-15th April - Melbourne Convention Exhibition Centre
Presented by the Atheist Foundation of Australia
Publish Post
http://atheistconvention.org.au
http://atheistfoundation.org.au

Sam Harris is a Co-Founder and CEO of Project Reason, a non-profit foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society. He received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA.
http://www.samharris.org/

Sam Harris - juxtaposes christian faith as delusional sociopathic narcissism

Uploaded on 28 May 2011

That's how to look at things as they really are.

 

 

 

"Saying Merry Christmas is worst than fornication or killing someone" Is...

Published on 15 Dec 2011

 

.....  for extra videos and stories:
http://www.halalporkshop.blogspot.com

personally wish him Merry Christmas here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/OneWayToParadise

his website: http://www.onewaytoparadise.net/

Richard Dawkins: The Arrogance of Religious Persons

Richard Dawkins: The Arrogance of Religious Persons

JesusSavesAtCitibank· 300 videos
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Idolatry of the Family - not from Jesus

Idolatry of the Family - not from Jesus

September 11, 2012 By Ben Ponder, Editor-at-Large 23 Comments

Jesus didn’t die on a God-forsaken cross to preserve your horn-rimmed vision of 1950s Americana. He did not go through hell and back to secure the keys to an exclusive gated community. And he didn’t suffer lacerations so that your nuclear family could be photographed beside the tulips in matching shiny egg-white shoes.

Jesus had a family. They were his scraggly followers. Yes, he had flesh-and-blood siblings, but they thought big brother was a fake and that mom must have been crazy for buying into all of his religious ranting. They told him to shut up, so Jesus ignored and disregarded them. As he was gurgling his last bloody breath at Golgotha, he wheezed to John—“the disciple whom Jesus loved”—that Mary was to be his mother and he, her son.

Jesus never married. He liked weddings, though, and he even tended bar at a reception once. But getting hitched to a comely woman wasn’t his top priority. He preferred rather to camp with fetid fishermen and smarmy tax collectors after late nights in seedy locations with tattooed sluts and nicotine-stained sinners.

Jesus refused to suffer know-it-alls. The politicians and the preachers (Sadducees and Pharisees, respectively) were always trying to string him up or to capture an unflattering sound bite that would trend on Twitter or loop all night on the news ticker. He called them slithering serpents and gussied-up graves. He stared them square in their seminary-trained eyes and called them haughty imposters. Their rules, he said, were a cheap ruse to distract themselves and everyone around them from the gleaming, glaring truth: that for all of their knowledge about God, they didn’t know God.

God made marriage to be sure. But he made it as a sign, not a club. The story of marriage in the Bible is splotchy and confusing. After Abram had pawned off his wife Sarai a couple of times, Sarai returned the favor by shopping her husband’s harem to find him a fertile lover. Old blind Isaac was duped by his clear-eyed wife. Jacob had two wives and a mess of problems. David had plenty of wives, but he would kill for that bathing beauty, Bathsheba. Ezekiel was told not to shed a tear for his dead wife, and Hosea was commanded to marry a hooker. Peter dropped his nets—and his wife—and wandered down the road with Jesus. My point here is that, while marriage is depicted in scripture as a beautiful, sacramental gift of God, it’s more complicated than that. So before you sound off about the Bible endorsing a unilateral pro-marriage and pro-family agenda, I would recommend paying closer attention on your next fly-by.

“Family” is the euphemistic code du jour for “Evangelical Christian.” “Focus on the Evangelical Christian” and the “American Evangelical Christian Association” didn’t have the same zing to them as their familiar twins. The watchword for these organizations is the preservation of  “traditional family values,” which are, in a nutshell, white American family values from a period of 1939 to 1964. The family values constituency longs for a return to the virginal time before the Civil Rights movement, the Women’s Liberation Movement, the Vietnam War, the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs, John Lennon, and Rock Hudson made the world a more complicated place.

When I read the Bible, I get the distinct sense that Jesus wasn’t interested in saving the nuclear family from a windy onslaught of liberal opinions. I rather get the impression that he was concerned with diving headfirst into the unvarnished messiness of the human condition and saving us—as individuals, as families, as communities, as people—from our own unhinged self-absorption and festering lovelessness.

The world is a mess because we are a mess. We are a mess because I am a mess. I am a mess because my heart is a mess. And the heart condition of each of us is the heart of the issue. Any other agenda, any other moralistic totem or golden calf half-truth, any political platform or religious soapbox should receive our careful scrutiny. Because an idol carved in the shape of a smiling family is still an idol.

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Positive Atheism's - Big List of Quotations (Wa)

Wa: Positive Atheism's Big List of Quotations

Positive Atheism's Big List of Quotations

T  • U  • V  •

Wa

•  We-Wh •  Wi •  Wo-Wr

     • No-Frames Quotes Index
     • Load This File With Frames Index
     • Home to Positive Atheism

Frans de Waal Primatologist at Emory University I've argued that many of what philosophers call moral sentiments can be seen in other species. In chimpanzees and other animals, you see examples of sympathy, empathy, reciprocity, a willingness to follow social rules. Dogs are a good example of a species that have and obey social rules; that's why we like them so much, even though they're large carnivores. -- Frans de Waal, quoted in Natalie Angier, "Confessions of a Lonely Atheist," New York Times Magazine, January 14, 2001 Religions have a strong binding function and a cohesive element. They emphasize the primacy of the community as opposed to the individual, and they also help set one community apart from another that doesn't share their beliefs. -- Frans de Waal, quoted in Natalie Angier, "Confessions of a Lonely Atheist," New York Times Magazine, January 14, 2001

George Wald (1906-1997) US biochemist We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship. -- George Wald, "The Origin of Optical Activity," in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, vol. 69 (1957). quoted from The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations

Kenneth D Wald Professor of Political Science Given the ambiguity of religious texts and teachings, the mixed historical record, and the empirical evidence, it would be foolhardy to assert that religious faith necessarily upholds democratic values. — Kenneth D Wald, Religion and Politics in the United States (1986), quoted from Albert J Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom Organizational Development: The New Christian Right of the 1980s was dominated by paper organizations that were essentially the mailing lists of a handful of politicized ministers. Such organizations were better at issuing press releases than doing the hard work of political mobilization and advocacy. By contrast, the movement of the 1990s has generated a plethora of grass-roots organizations that allocate meaningful responsibilities to individual members. The goal is to create an army of grassroots activists who know how to stimulate political change. — Kenneth D Wald, "The Christian Right and Public Policy: Testing the Second Generation Thesis" (May, 2000) Leadership: The first incarnation of the Christian Right was led by members of the clergy, specifically by pastors from conservative religious denominations in the evangelical Protestant tradition. Although skilled in entrepeneurship and recruitment, they often lacked much political experience, prudence, or the ability to appeal across sectarian lines. In the second generation, the dominant groups have recruited leaders with considerable political and organizational skills. Most of the new leaders, exemplified by Ralph Reed and Gary Bauer, are political conservatives who acquired extensive experience in political mobilization in secular realms. Compared to their clergy predecessors, they are less prone to embrace the rigid sectarian distinctions that inhibit cooperation across religious lines. — Kenneth D Wald, "The Christian Right and Public Policy: Testing the Second Generation Thesis" (May, 2000) Language: Given its religious base in the world of evangelical Protestantism, it was not surprising that the rhetoric of the "first" Christian Right was harsh and uncompromising to the ears of people outside that world. As a movement that thought it was doing God's work, the Christian Right made no apologies for its fervor and was hostile to its doubters and opponents. The second generation recognized the political liability of this approach and foreswore the use of religious language and imagery. Rather than use sectarian appeals, the new leaders attempted to frame Christian Right arguments in the rights-based language of liberalism, the predominant political discourse of the modern era. "Mainstreaming the message: entailed both avoiding religious language and, if necessary, downplaying divisive issues during election campaigns. — Kenneth D Wald, "The Christian Right and Public Policy: Testing the Second Generation Thesis" (May, 2000) Pragmatism: The original Christian Right evinced very little interest in compromise or negotiation. Rather, it wanted to impose its vision with little room for discussion and debate. Compromise was seen as moral weakness and cowardice. The second-generation leadership, schooled in the ways of American politics, has evinced a much more pragmatic style. Rather than demand all-or-nothing, the stance of its predecessors, the contemporary Christian Right is willing to engage in horse-trading by shaving back its proposals, supporting suboptimal candidates for strategic reasons, and deferring its claims to the interests of coalition partners. — Kenneth D Wald, "The Christian Right and Public Policy: Testing the Second Generation Thesis" (May, 2000) Incrementalism: In the first generation, the goal of the movement was wholesale social and cultural transformation. Small, incremental victories were too little given the magnitude of America's moral decay. Since 1988, the new leaders have recognized that incrementalism is the surest path to success in political competition. The current movement is committed to securing small victories now, postponing for the long-term more fundamental changes in society and politics. — Kenneth D Wald, "The Christian Right and Public Policy: Testing the Second Generation Thesis" (May, 2000)

Lois Waldman American Jewish Congress: Co-Director of the Commission On Law & Social Action; Director of the Commission For Women's Equality & The Bio-Ethics Task Force Most Jews intuitively know that if the evangelical right succeeds in Christianizing America, Jews will again find themselves an isolated minority alien to American culture. -- Lois Waldman, "After Pawtucket," American Jewish Congress, July, 1985, from Albert J Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom As early as 382 AD, the church officially declared that any opposition to its own creed in favor of others must be punished by the death penalty. -- Lois Waldman, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 1983, from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

Alice Walker African-American poet; activist What the mind doesn’t understand it worships or fears. -- Alice Walker (attributed: source unknown)

Cliff Walker American social activist Finding one's own purpose and creating a moral system or process for oneself is infinitely more important than trying to attribute objective reality or philosophical validity to what the opportunists of yore managed in order to intimidate the uneducated masses into obedience. -- Cliff Walker, response to letter in Positive Atheism: “Don’t You Feel Lonely Without a Loving Creator-God to Help You?” with Sherri Auer (July 30, 2003) Numerous Christian antagonists (for example, Craig A Parton, author of God Does Not Believe in Atheists) refer to successful atheistic authors Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens as “The Apostles of Atheism.” Most atheists I know don't see it that way at all. We don't see these men as leaders in any sense except the fact that they are more gifted than the rest, something that, even then, must be cultivated to be of any value. Rather, most atheists I know and have heard from have tended to be happy -- overjoyed, if you will -- that an atheist writing about atheism is finally getting the attention and recognition that atheist achievers have deserved but so sorely lacked in the past. -- Cliff Walker, responding to the above-mentioned work by Craig A Peterson The vast majority of atheists rarely if ever ponder even their own atheism: we simply don't care! ... The majority of us -- well, you would be surprised -- shocked -- to learn just who the atheists are in your life! -- Cliff Walker response to the unsigned letter in Positive Atheism: “What Do Atheists Believe About Heaven and Hell?” (December 16, 2003) Chain Letter: Always remember, “What goes around comes around” Cliff Walker: Keep in mind that there’s no such thing as karma. Besides, acting on one’s best behavior simply because one believes that “what goes around comes around” is not morality at all; rather, it is indistinguishable from bribery, coercion, and blackmail.      Finally, if the god of monotheistic religionists actually did exist, then it would have been He who created cancer. In that case, why would He want to cure it? In any event, who are you to tell this “God” character that he’s done it all wrong and that he needs to change his tune? I mean, that is, essentially, what prayer is trying to achieve, is it not? — Cliff Walker response to a chain letter (of sorts) received on November 20, 2009 It is important to keep in mind that even for the full-time atheistic activist, atheism itself is rarely more than just a small part of any atheist’s outlook. This is because atheism speaks only to what we are not and says nothing about what we are; atheism tells you where we do not stand, not where we do stand; atheism simply distinguishes us from a different type of human, the theist. Were it not for the beliefs of these other people, we would not be atheists. There are any number of other issues (or positive beliefs) besides one’s atheism, that might come to mind when searching for an atheist’s identifying traits. Except for a few “village atheist” types, a person’s atheism is seldom even discussed in polite company. -- Cliff Walker response to the letter from Juan De Gennaro in Positive Atheism, “Why Advocate For Individual Activists?” (December 16, 2003) The Day of Atrocity. -- Cliff Walker's one-time name for what most now call "911," quoted from, "Atheists Come To Power" in Positive Atheism  Magazine (November 15, 2001) Materialism would suggest that the conscious, aware "Self" is established by the structures and processes of the brain. When these structures are destroyed and the processes cease, the conscious, aware "Self" ceases to exist. -- Cliff Walker describing the atheistic view of the notion of life after death as he understands it, in "What Do Atheists Think Of Life After Death?" with Janani of Zambia, (December 30, 2001) I will not be going to the Christian Hell when I die. I have more confidence in this prediction than I do in a great many other things I think will come to pass for me. Why do I have such confidence in this statement? Simple. We hear about the Christian Hell by reading about it in the Christian Bible. In fact, this is the only source of knowledge regarding the Christian Hell (unless you have a vivid imagination or haven't been taking your medication like you should). I have examined the Christian Bible more closely than perhaps anything else that I have ever considered worthy of my examination, and I have found the Christian Bible to contain error after error after error regarding things for which we now know the truth: testable claims. Now, if the Bible is found to be untrustworthy regarding things we can know about (historical events, geography, whether this or that food is good for you, and so forth), then we we do well to distrust the Bible's untestable claims, specifically, claims such as for the existence of a Christian deity, a Christian Heaven or a Christian Hell, the validity of various moral codes (or lack thereof), or an entire plan of salvation (or whether we even need salvation). All of this gets defenestrated (right out the window) if we find we cannot trust the Bible regular, day-to-day, earthly information. -- Cliff Walker, assembled (March 31, 2008) from several letters The agnostic claims a lack of certainty, specifically that certain subjects (such as "God" and the supernatural) lie beyond the scope of human knowledge. One claim, however, seems to evade this lack of certainty, namely, the certitude with which numerous agnostics hold this very opinion: that thus and so is beyond the scope of human knowledge. Okay, how would we know this? How would we know that a subject that is supposedly beyond the scope of human knowledge truly is beyond the scope of human knowledge? -- Cliff Walker, letter to Jerry Billings (September 28, 2007) She doesn't remember anything. There's nothing there with which to do the remembering. She doesn't remember me, and he doesn't remember you. They don't remember living, they don't remember dying, they don't remember their final moments. All that's left is here -- now -- you and I, and the rest of us who are still alive.      This is a very hard concept to accept, emotionally as well as conceptually, if all we've ever lived with have been thoughts and talk that always included an afterlife of some sort.      However, I've found one thing that's harder to accept, even, than that. Whenever somebody tries to describe to me their concept of afterlife, that is, how it works, what happens, and all that, I have always ended up getting completely lost. One person talks about a god physically rebuilding your body, and I have to ask, is that really me, then? Another talks about this thing they call a "soul" and I wonder, if we can exist just fine without a body, then what was the point of even having a body in the first place?       And they all talk about me being re-created (or whatever) later on: if Gabriel or Peter or the 72 Virginians (or whoever) can make a new "Me" later on, what's to stop them from making another "Me" right now? Can you imagine the other "Me" walking in that door over there? I can see out of all four eyes, and can feel with all four hands -- otherwise the other "Me" would be nothing more than a clone, an exact replica, but with a different conscious, aware "Self."     In other words, when I look at myself, I'm also looking at myself. I am looking at myself and looking at myself at the same time. It just doesn't make sense.      The one doesn't fly no matter how I try to look at it, and the other, though almost impossible to accept, really has nothing about it that makes me go, "Hey! Wait a minute -- what about..."      And being the type who finds it impossible to deliberately fool myself, I am forced to accept the scenario that often makes me cry when I think about it. It's like telling myself, "I'm sorry, Cliff, but that's the way it is." -- Cliff Walker, in a conversation with a not-so-recently-widowed friend, having himself lost a partner many years earlier. (2008)

Edmund Waller (1606-1687) English poet The fear of hell, or aiming to be blest, Savours too much of private interest.      -- Edmund Waller, Of Divine Love, canto 2, quoted from The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations

 

Josiah Warren (1798-1874) Reformer, inventor, musician, writer The disconnection of Church and State was a master stroke for freedom and harmony. -- Josiah Warren, Equitable Commerce, 1855, quoted from Albert J Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom

Lemuel K Washburn Freethinker Check our Big List of Lemuel K Washburn Quotations If the factory pays taxes and the church does not, it follows that the church will some day own the factory. -- Lemuel K Washburn, "Is The Bible Worth Reading?" The man who gets on his knees has not learned the right use of his legs. -- Lemuel K Washburn, "Is The Bible Worth Reading?" The feet of progress have always been shod by doubt. -- Lemuel K Washburn, "Is The Bible Worth Reading?" The cross everywhere is a dagger in the heart of liberty. -- Lemuel K Washburn, "Is The Bible Worth Reading?" Whatever tends to prolong the existence of ignorance or to prevent the recognition of knowledge is dangerous to the well-being of the human race. -- Lemuel K Washburn, "Is The Bible Worth Reading?" A miracle is not an explanation of what we cannot comprehend. -- Lemuel K Washburn, "Is The Bible Worth Reading?" A dogma will thrive in soil where the truth could not get root. -- Lemuel K Washburn, "Is The Bible Worth Reading?" The man who accepts the faith of Calvin is miserable in proportion to the extent he carries it out. -- Lemuel K Washburn, "Is The Bible Worth Reading?" The person who can make a loaf of bread is more to the world than the person who could perform a miracle. -- Lemuel K Washburn, "Is The Bible Worth Reading?" A true man will not join anything that in any way abridges his freedom or robs him of his rights. -- Lemuel K Washburn, "Is The Bible Worth Reading?"

George Washington (1732-1799) The first President of the United States (1789-1797)     • Check out George Washington's Silent Lack of Theism If I could conceive that the general government might ever be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I beg you will be persuaded, that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution. -- George Washington, letter to the United Baptist Chamber of Virginia, May 1789, quoted from Albert J Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom We have abundant reason to rejoice that in this Land the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition ... In this enlightened Age and in this Land of equal liberty it is our boast, that a man's religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws, nor deprive him of the right of attaining and holding the highest Offices that are known in the United States. -- George Washington, letter to the members of the New Church in Baltimore, January 27, 1793, in Anson Phelps Stokes, Church and State in the United States, Vol 1. p. 497, quoted from Albert J Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom Wilson: Early Presidents Not Religious "The founders of our nation were nearly all Infidels, and that of the presidents who had thus far been elected [Washington; Adams; Jefferson; Madison; Monroe; Adams; Jackson] not a one had professed a belief in Christianity....      "Among all our presidents from Washington downward, not one was a professor of religion, at least not of more than Unitarianism." -- The Reverend Doctor Bird Wilson, an Episcopal minister in Albany, New York, in a sermon preached in October, 1831, first sentence quoted in John E Remsberg, Six Historic Americans, second sentence quoted in Paul F Boller, George Washington & Religion, pp. 14-15

Roger Waters English singer and songwriter for Pink Floyd By the cold and religious we were taken in hand -- shown how to feel good; and told to feel bad. -- Roger Waters, The Final Cut

James Dewey Watson (born 1928) American biologist who with Francis Crick proposed a spiral model, the double helix, for the molecular structure of DNA He shared a 1962 Nobel Prize for advances in the study of genetics The luckiest thing that ever happened to me was that my father didn't believe in God, and so he had no hang-ups about souls. I see ourselves as products of evolution, which itself is a great mystery. -- James Watson, from the Discover interview: the question (a trick question, really) was an attempt to mystify human existence to the point of seeming to demand a supernatural explanation: "I've been told by some geneticists that humans are essentially organic machines and that one day we will understand how we work. If so, what happens to that unexplained mystery of what makes us human, where we draw our passion, our poetry -- our soul, if you will?" Quoted from "Discover Dialogue: Reversing Bad Truths" in Discover (Volume 24, Number 7; July, 2003) Today, the theory of evolution is an accepted fact for everyone but a fundamentalist minority, whose objections are based not on reasoning but on doctrinaire adherence to religious principles. -- James Watson, _Molecular Biology of the Gene_, 4th edition by James D. Watson, Nancy H. Hopkins, Jeffrey W. Roberts, Joan Argetsinger Steitz, and Alan M. Weiner; Volume I, page 3, on the first page of Chapter 1: "The Mendelian View of the World." I In the last analysis, there are only atoms. There's just one science, Physics; everything else is social work. -- James Watson, lecture at the London Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1985, quoted from "God, Atheism & Secular Humanism''(NFB, July 18, 2001) I don't think we're here for anything, we're just products of evolution. You can say, "Gee, your life must be pretty bleak if you don't think there's a purpose,' but I'm anticipating a good lunch. -- James Watson (attributed: source unknown)

Richard Watson Theologian Atheist, in the strict and proper sense of the word, is one who does not believe in the existence of a god, or who owns no being superior to nature. It is compounded of the two terms ... signifying without God. -- Richard Watson, A Biblical and Theological Dictionary (London, 1831), quoted from George H Smith, "Defining Atheism," in Atheism, Ayn Rand, and other Heresies

Paul Watzlawick, Ph.D (b. 1921) Austrian-American philologist, psychotherapist, philosopher It follows from the assumption of a universally valid ideology, just as night follows day, that other positions are heresy. -- Paul Watzlawick, Ph.D, The Invented Reality (1984), thanks to Laird Wilcox, ed, "The Degeneration of Belief" As I have already said, the belief that one's own view of reality is the only reality is the most dangerous or all delusions. It becomes still more dangerous if it is coupled with the missionary zeal to enlighten the rest of the world, whether the rest of the world wishes to be enlightened or not. To refuse to embrace wholeheartedly a particular definition of reality (e.g. an ideology), to dare to see the world differently can become a "think crime" in a truly Orwellian sense as we get steadily closer to 1984. -- Paul Watzlawick, Ph.D, quoted from "Watzlawick's Disciplinary Matrix" on The Home Page of Paul Watzlawick, Ph.D If we search our subjective experience in comparable situation, we find that we are likely to assume the actions of a secret "experimenter" behind the vicissitudes of our lives. The loss or the absence of a meaning in life is perhaps the most common denominator or all forms of emotional distress; it is especially the much-commented-on "modern" illness. Pain, disease, loss, failure, despair, disappointment, the fear of death, or merely boredom -- all lead to the feeling that life is meaningless. It seems to us that in its most basic definition, existential despair is the painful discrepancy between what is, and what should be, between one's perceptions and one's third-order premises. -- Paul Watzlawick, Ph.D, quoted from "Watzlawick's Disciplinary Matrix" on The Home Page of Paul Watzlawick, Ph.D Man never ceases to seek knowledge about the objects of his experiences, to understand their meaning for his existence and to react to them according to his understanding. Finally, out of the sum total of the meanings that he has deduced from his contacts with numerous single objects of his environment there grows a unified view of the world into which he finds himself "thrown" (to use an existentialist term again) and this view is of the third order. -- Paul Watzlawick, Ph.D, quoted from "Watzlawick's Disciplinary Matrix" on The Home Page of Paul Watzlawick, Ph.D If we have dwelled on Godel's work at some length, is it because we see it in the mathematical analogy of what we would call the the ultimate paradox of man's existence. Man is ultimately subject and object of his quest. While the question whether the mind can be considered to be anything like a formalized system, as defined in the preceding paragraph, is probably unanswerable, his quest for an understanding of the meaning of his existence is an attempt at formalization. -- Paul Watzlawick, Ph.D, quoted from "Watzlawick's Disciplinary Matrix" on The Home Page of Paul Watzlawick, Ph.D But the solution to the riddle of life and space and time lies outside space and time. For, as it should be abundantly clear by now, nothing inside a frame can state, or even ask, anything about that frame. The solution, then, is not the finding of an answer to the riddle of existence, but the realization that there is no riddle. This is the essence of the beautiful, almost Zen Buddhist closing sentences of the Tracticus: "For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed. The riddle does not exist..." -- Paul Watzlawick, Ph.D, quoted from "Watzlawick's Disciplinary Matrix" on The Home Page of Paul Watzlawick, Ph.D Watzlawick quotes critically edited by Cliff Walker. Emphasis per original.

Evelyn Waugh (Arthur St John) (1903-1966) England's leading satirical novelist in the 1930s Check out The Scary Side of Evelyn Waugh The better sort of Ishmaelites have been Christian for many centuries and will not publicly eat human flesh uncooked in Lent, without special and costly dispensation from their bishop. -- Evelyn Waugh, Scoop (1938), quoted from Encarta Book of Quotations (1999) There is a species of person called a "Modern Churchman" who draws the full salary of a beneficed clergyman and need not commit himself to any religious belief. -- Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fall (1928), quoted from Encarta Book of Quotations (1999) The human mind is inspired enough when it comes to inventing horrors; it is when it tries to invent a Heaven that it shows itself cloddish. -- Evelyn Waugh (attributed: source unknown)

U Dhammaloka (buddhist irishman b 1856) - Wikipedia

U Dhammaloka (buddhist irishman b 1856) - Wikipedia

In this Burmese name, U is an honorific.

Dhammaloka
ဦးဓမ္မလောက
Dhammaloka in 1902 aged about 50.
Religion	Buddhism
School	Theravada
Dharma name(s)	Dhammaloka
Personal
Born	Laurence Carroll Laurence O'Rourke William Colvin 1856 Dublin (?), Ireland
Died	1914 (aged 58) Unknown

U Dhammaloka (Burmese: ဦးဓမ္မလောက; c. 1856 – c. 1914) was an Irish-born hobo (migrant worker)^[1] turned Buddhist monk, atheist critic of Christian missionaries, and temperance campaigner who took an active role in the Asian Buddhist revival around the turn of the twentieth century.
Dhammaloka was ordained in Burma prior to 1900, making him one of the earliest attested western Buddhist monks. He was a celebrity preacher, vigorous polemicist and prolific editor in Burma and Singapore between 1900 and his conviction for sedition and appeal in 1910–1911. Drawing on western atheist writings, he publicly challenged the role of Christian missionaries and by implication the British empire.

Buddhist Tract Society stationery.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Burmese career 3 Other Asian projects and travels 3.1 Singapore 3.2 Japan 3.3 Siam 3.4 Other locations 4 Publications 5 Controversy 6 Trial and disappearance 7 Influence and assessment 8 Notes 9 References 9.1 Books and book chapters 9.2 Conference papers 9.3 Journal articles 9.4 Video presentations 9.5 Other published sources 10 External links

Early life

Dhammaloka's early life and given name are as yet uncertain. He reportedly gave at least three names for himself — Laurence Carroll, Laurence O'Rourke and William Colvin. On occasion he used the nom de plume "Captain Daylight". It is accepted that he was Irish, almost certainly born in Dublin in the 1850s, and emigrated to the United States, possibly via Liverpool. He then worked his way across the US as a hobo or migrant worker before finding work on a trans-Pacific liner. Leaving the ship in Japan, he made his way to Rangoon, arriving probably in the late 1870s or early 1880s, before the final conquest of Upper Burma by the British.^[2][3][4][5]

Burmese career

In Burma, he found work in Rangoon as a tally clerk in a logging firm^[6] before becoming interested in the Burmese Buddhism he saw practised all around him. Around 1884, he took ordination as a novice monk under the name Dhammaloka.^[7] Fully ordained sometime prior to 1899, he began work as a teacher (probably in the Tavoy monastery in Rangoon). By 1900, he had gained the status of a senior monk in that monastery^[8] and began travelling and preaching throughout Burma,^[9][2][5] becoming known as the "Irish pongyi" or "Irish Buddhist".

British forces enter Mandalay in 1885 marking the final conquest of Burma.

In 1900, Dhammaloka began his public career with two largely unnoticed advertisements forbidding Christian missionaries to distribute tracts^[10] and a more dramatic – and widely reprinted – declaration, first published in Akyab, warning Buddhists of the threats Christian missionaries posed to their religion and culture.^[11] Following a 1901 preaching tour, he confronted an off-duty British Indian police officer at the Shwedagon pagoda in Rangoon in 1902 over the wearing of shoes – a contentious issue in Burma as Burmese Buddhists would not wear shoes on pagoda grounds. The Indians who staffed the police force equally went barefoot in Indian religious buildings, but off-duty visited Burmese pagodas in boots, in what was interpreted as a mark of serious disrespect. Attempts by the officer and the British authorities to bring sedition charges against Dhammaloka and to get pagoda authorities to repudiate him failed, boosting his public reputation.^[12] Later that year he held another preaching tour, which drew huge crowds.^[13]
After some years’ absence Dhammaloka returned to Burma in 1907,^[14] establishing the Buddhist Tract Society (see below). In December a reception in his honour was held in Mandalay with hundreds of monks and he met the new Thathanabaing, the government recognized head of the sangha;^[15] in early 1908 he held another preaching tour, and continued preaching until at least 1910^[16] and his trial for sedition (see below).

Other Asian projects and travels

Singapore

Outside of Burma, Dhammaloka’s main base was Singapore and other Straits Settlements (Penang, Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh). In Singapore, he stayed initially with a Japanese Buddhist missionary Rev. Ocha before establishing his own mission and free school on Havelock Road in 1903, supported mainly by the Chinese community and a prominent local Sri Lankan jeweller. By 1904 he was sending Europeans to Rangoon for ordination (April) and holding a public novice ordination of the Englishman M. T. de la Courneuve (October). In 1905 the editor of the previously sympathetic Straits Times, Edward Alexander Morphy (originally from Killarney, Ireland), denounced him in the paper as a 'fraud'.^[17]

Japan

Dhammaloka unexpectedly left Burma in 1902, probably hoping to attend the 'World's Parliament of Religions' rumored to be taking place in Japan. Though no Parliament took place, Japanese sources attest that in September 1902 Dhammaloka attended the launch of the International Young Men’s Buddhist Association [IYMBA, Bankoku bukkyō seinen rengōkai] at Takanawa Buddhist University, Tokyo. He was the only non-Japanese speaker among a group of prominent Jōdo Shinshū Buddhist clerics and intellectuals including Shimaji Mokurai. Dhammaloka's presence at an October 'student conference' at the same university in company with the elderly Irish-Australian Theosophist Letitia Jephson is also described by American author Gertrude Adams Fisher in her 1906 travel book A Woman Alone in the Heart of Japan.^[18]

Siam

From February to September 1903 Dhammaloka was based at Wat Bantawai in Bangkok, where he founded a free multiracial English-language school, promoted Buddhist associations and proposed an IYMBA-style world congress of Buddhists. He was again reported in Siam in 1914 and may have died there.^[19]

Other locations

Dhammaloka is also recorded as having significant links in China and Ceylon (in both of which he published tracts.)^[20][21] There are plausible newspaper reports of his visits to Nepal in 1905^[22][23] and Australia (1912) and Cambodia (1913). Dhammaloka's claim to have traveled to Tibet well before Younghusband's expedition of 1904, though reported as far afield as Atlanta and Dublin, remains unconfirmed.^[24]

Publications

Dhammaloka produced a large amount of published material, some of which, as was common for the day, consisted of reprints or edited versions of writing by other authors, mostly western atheists or freethinkers, some of whom returned the favour in kind.^[25] In the early 1900s Dhammaloka published and reprinted a number of individual tracts attacking Christian missionaries or outlining Buddhist ideas.
In 1907 he founded the Buddhist Tract Society in Rangoon, which produced a large number of tracts of this nature. It was originally intended to produce ten thousand copies of each of a hundred tracts; while it is not clear if it reached this number of titles, print runs were very large.^[26] To date copies or indications have been found of at least nine different titles, including Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man and Age of Reason, Sophia Egoroff’s Buddhism: the highest religion, George W Brown’s The teachings of Jesus not adapted to modern civilization, William E Coleman’s The Bible God disproved by nature, and a summary of Robert Blatchford.^[27]
Beyond this, Dhammaloka was an active newspaper correspondent, producing a large number of reports of his own activities for journals in Burma and Singapore (sometimes pseudonymously; Turner 2010: 155)^[28] and exchanging letters with atheist journals in America and Britain.^[29] He was also a frequent topic of comment by the local press in South and Southeast Asia, by missionary and atheist authors, and by travel writers such as Harry Franck (1910).^[30]

Controversy

Dhammaloka’s position was inherently controversial.^[31][32] As a Buddhist preacher he seems to have deferred to Burmese monks for their superior knowledge of Buddhism and instead spoken primarily of the threat of missionaries, whom he identified as coming with "a bottle of 'Guiding Star brandy', a 'Holy bible' or 'Gatling gun'," linking alcoholism, Christianity and British military power.^[33]
Unsurprisingly responses to Dhammaloka were divided. In Burma he received support from traditionalists (he was granted a meeting with the Thathanabaing, was treated with respect among senior Burmese monks and a dinner was sponsored in his honour), from rural Burmese (who attended his preaching in large numbers, sometimes travelling several days to hear him; in at least one case women laid down their hair for him to walk on as a gesture of great respect) and from urban nationalists (who organised his preaching tours, defended him in court etc.; Turner 2010). Anecdotal evidence also indicates his broader popularity in neighbouring countries.^[30] While also popular in Singapore, particularly among the Chinese community, Bocking’s research has shown that he was less successful in Japan and in Siam.^[34]
Conversely much European opinion was hostile, including naturally that of missionaries and the authorities, but also some journalists (although others did appreciate him and printed his articles as written). In general he was accused of hostility to Christianity, of not being a gentleman or well-educated, and of stirring up "the natives."^[32][35]

Trial and disappearance

Dhammaloka faced at least two encounters with the colonial legal system in Burma, in one and probably both of which he received minor convictions. Turner^[36][37] speculates that this was to avoid the potential political embarrassment to the colonial authorities of trials with more substantial charges and hence a greater burden of proof.
During the shoe affair in 1902 it was alleged that Dhammaloka had said “we [the British] had first of all taken Burma from the Burmans and now we desired to trample on their religion” – an inflammatory statement taken as hostile to the colonial state and to assumptions of European social superiority. Following a failed attempt by the government to gather sufficient witnesses for a charge of sedition, a lesser charge of insult was made and it appears that Dhammaloka was summarily convicted on a charge of insult although the sentence is not known.^[38]
In October and November 1910, Dhammaloka preached in Moulmein, leading to new charges of sedition laid at the instigation of local missionaries. Witnesses testified that he had described missionaries as carrying the Bible, whiskey and weapons, and accused Christians of being immoral, violent and set on the destruction of Burmese tradition. Rather than a full sedition charge, the crown opted to prosecute through a lesser aspect of the law (section 108b) geared to the prevention of future seditious speech, which required a lower burden of proof and entailed a summary hearing. He was bound over to keep the peace and ordered to find two supporters to guarantee this with a bond of 1000 rupees each.^[39]
This trial was significant for a number of reasons. It was one of the few times the sedition law (designed to prevent native Indian and Burmese journalists from criticising the authorities) was used against a European, the first time it was applied in Burma and precedent-setting for its use against nationalists.^[37] On appeal, he was defended by the leading Burmese nationalist U Chit Hlaing, future president of the Young Men's Buddhist Association. The judge in the appeal, who upheld the original conviction, was Mr Justice Daniel H. R. Twomey (knighted in 1917), who wrote the definitive text on dovetailing Buddhist canon law and British colonial law and is of interest to scholars of religion as the grandfather of anthropologist Mary Douglas.^[40]
Following the failure of his appeal, Dhammaloka’s activities become harder to trace. In April 1912, a letter appeared in the Times of Ceylon. Reprinted in Calcutta and Bangkok, the letter purported to report his death in a temperance hotel in Melbourne, Australia. In June of the same year, however, he appeared in the offices of the Singapore Free Press to deny the report, whose motivation remains unclear.^[41]
Between 1912 and 1913 Dhammaloka is known to have travelled in Australia (reportedly attending the 1912 annual Easter meeting of the I.O.G.T. temperance organisation in Brisbane), the Straits Settlements, Siam and Cambodia; in 1914 a missionary reported him alive in Bangkok running the “Siam Buddhist Freethought Association”.^[42][24] Although, to date, no reliable record of his death has been found, it would not necessarily have been reported during the First World War, if it had taken place while travelling, or indeed if he had been given a traditional monastic funeral in a country such as Siam or Cambodia.^[24]

Influence and assessment

Dhammaloka has been largely forgotten by subsequent Buddhist history, with the exception of brief asides based on a 1904 newspaper item.^[43][44]
On the western side, most accounts of early western Buddhists derive ultimately from Ananda Metteyya’s followers, whose Buddhist Society of Great Britain and Ireland was key to the formation of early British Buddhism.^[45] These accounts do not mention Dhammaloka,^[46] but construct a genealogy starting with Bhikkhus Asoka (H. Gordon Douglas), Ananda Metteyya (Allan Bennett) and Nyanatiloka (Anton Gueth).^[47] By contrast with Dhammaloka, Ananda Metteyya was oriented toward the image of gentleman scholar, avoided conflict with Christianity and aimed at making western converts rather than supporting Burmese and other Asian Buddhists.^[48] Dhammaloka’s pugnacious Buddhist revivalism and intensive Asian Buddhist networking, by contrast, places him more beside figures such as Henry Steel Olcott and Anagarika Dharmapala. On the Burmese side, Dhammaloka takes up an intermediate place between traditionalist orientations towards simple restoration of the monarchy and the more straightforward nationalism of the later independence movement. His non-Burmese origins are inconvenient for later nationalist orthodoxy.^[49]
Dhammaloka’s identification of Buddhism with free thought – and his consequent rejection of multi-faith positions – was tenable within Theravada Buddhism. In terms of the global Buddhism of his day it aligned him with Buddhist rationalists^[50] and those who aimed at a Buddhist revival resisting colonial and missionary Christianity; this contrasted both with post-Theosophist Buddhists who saw all religions as ultimately one^[50] and with those who sought recognition for Buddhism as a world religion on a par with (and by implication extending equal recognition to) Christianity.^[49]
Beyond this, his Buddhism seems to have focussed primarily on the major concerns for Burmese monks of the day, above all correct observance of the Vinaya.^[7][51] In western terms this reflected a persistent concern of plebeian freethinkers in particular to assert that morality without threat of religious punishment was entirely possible, and to his own temperance concerns.^{[citation needed]}
In Irish history, Dhammaloka stands out as a figure who rejected both Catholic and Protestant orthodoxies. Although not the only early Irish Buddhist^[52] or atheist, he is also striking among these as being of plebeian and Catholic origin, undermining popular accounts which see the Republic of Ireland in particular as until recently homogenously Catholic. ^[53] Like other early Irish Buddhists, he appears as having “gone native” in Buddhist Asia, representing an anti-colonial solidarity marked by work within Asian Buddhist organisations and a hostility to Christian missionaries and imperialism. ^[54]

Notes

1. ^ O'Connell, Brian (July 5, 2011). The Irish Times. http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2011/0705/1224300083009.html.
2. ^ ^{a b} Turner, Cox & Bocking 2010, pp. 138–139.
3. ^ Tweed 2010, p. 283.
4. ^ Cox 2009, pp. 135–6.
5. ^ ^{a b} Cox 2010b, p. 215.
6. ^ Cox 2009, p. 135.
7. ^ ^{a b} Skilton & Crosby 2010, p. 122.
8. ^ Turner 2010, pp. 157–158.
9. ^ Turner 2010, pp. 151–152.
10. ^ Turner 2010, p. 151.
11. ^ Cox 2010b, p. 214.
12. ^ Turner 2010, pp. 154–155.
13. ^ Turner 2010, pp. 156–158.
14. ^ Turner 2010, pp. 159–160.
15. ^ Turner 2010, p. 159.
16. ^ Turner 2010, p. 160.
17. ^ Bocking 2010a, pp. 255–266.
18. ^ Bocking 2010a, pp. 238–245.
19. ^ Bocking 2010a, pp. 246–254.
20. ^ Cox 2010b, pp. 178–9.
21. ^ Cox 2010b, p. 180.
22. ^ Turner, Cox & Bocking 2010, p. 127.
23. ^ Cox 2010b, p. 216.
24. ^ ^{a b c} Bocking 2011.
25. ^ Cox 2010b.
26. ^ Cox 2010b, pp. 180–182.
27. ^ Cox 2010b, pp. 194–200.
28. ^ Bocking 2010a, pp. 252–253.
29. ^ Cox 2010b, pp. 193–194.
30. ^ ^{a b} Franck 1910.
31. ^ Turner 2009.
32. ^ ^{a b} Turner 2010, pp. 164–165.
33. ^ Cox 2010b, p. 192.
34. ^ Bocking 2010a.
35. ^ Cox 2010b, pp. 213–214.
36. ^ Turner 2010, p. 155.
37. ^ ^{a b} Turner 2010, p. 161.
38. ^ Turner 2010, p. 154-155.
39. ^ Turner 2010, pp. 161–162.
40. ^ Bocking 2010b.
41. ^ Turner, Cox & Bocking 2010, p. 141.
42. ^ Bocking 2010a, p. 253-254.
43. ^ Sarkisyanz 1965, p. 115.
44. ^ Song 1967, pp. 369–370.
45. ^ Cox 2010b, p. 176.
46. ^ Bocking 2010a, p. 232.
47. ^ Batchelor 2010.
48. ^ Turner, Cox & Bocking 2010, p. 130.
49. ^ ^{a b} Bocking 2010a, p. 231.
50. ^ ^{a b} Tweed 1992.
51. ^ Turner 2010, pp. 164–166.
52. ^ Cox & Griffin 2011.
53. ^ Turner, Cox & Bocking 2010, p. 143.
54. ^ Cox 2010a.

References