Recently in Religion Category

Is it possible for mere mortals to predict Miracles?

Is there such a thing as a universal covenant between people today that is unspoken, yet understood?  Or are we all doomed to the niches of our own faith? 

Barack Obama is in trouble.

In a recent comments flow for my -- Disposable Women: Slasher to Gash Her -- article, we wondered about the idea of crime being the last, and perhaps greatest, religion.

The Apple science site is celebrating a 3D archaeological "find" detailing -- The Amulets of Seramon, including the Dung Beetle seen blow -- where the trinkets of an ancient priest of Thebes are now revealed for the first time in 3,000 years.

Dananjay Anandan wrote this article.

In exile from Bangladesh since 1994, Taslima Nasreen lived in many countries before finding refuge in India.

Do you believe in God?

Are you offended by my asking? Am I snooping into your personal life? Am I being inappropriately aggressive and punishing in my inquiry? Why should it matter to me what you believe? I think being made uncomfortable by that question in a public forum is a perfectly human response. Are you allowed, by the will of society and the foundation of your childhood indoctrinations, to not answer or to answer in the negative? I'm not big on The God Thang, but the USA is a Christian Nation where your fundamental belief in God is presumed. However, many of us are still tested by the True Believers: "Do you believe in God?" I usually reformulate that question in my mind -- as previously defended in my Translating God article -- but today I argue most people do a similar sort of translation when asked about believing in God. I believe most people take that question to really mean if they are a "good and moral person." Answer in the affirmative and you're "good" -- answer in the negative and you're in public trouble. Folks generally don't want to say they don't believe in God -- even if they do or are uncertain -- because we have been trained by society to affirm the goodness, not in others, but in our selves to others, and if we don't quickly confirm our belief, the asker will think we are immoral and in need of condemnation or public correcting. The easy answer -- "Yes, I believe in God!" -- is the infrequent believer's socially accepted -- "You do not look fat in that dress!" -- fast-twitch response cry that, while coded to create a nodding head and smiling face in the asker, actually covers the core of an uncertain truth in many responders who resent having their values, faith, and morality put to the test in the public square.

Deepak Chopra is one of those rare gifts to the rest of us: A true SuperGenius who inspires us with the inborn rhythms of storytelling while revealing the myth-making ability to heal humanity. Deepak's latest treading into immortality is his latest book -- "The Third Jesus" -- where he argues we need to celebrate a third "Cosmic Christ" as a part of our ongoing religious enlightenment:

Here is the publisher's blurp for his book where Deepak argues in print when religion becomes a business, power-hungriness follows along with corruption and the destruction of beauty:

First, there is the historical Jesus, the man who lived more than two thousand years ago and whose teachings are the foundation of Christian theology and thought. Next there is Jesus the Son of God, who has come to embody an institutional religion with specific dogma, a priesthood, and devout believers. And finally, there is the third Jesus, the cosmic Christ, the spiritual guide whose teaching embraces all humanity, not just the church built in his name. He speaks to the individual who wants to find God as a personal experience, to attain what some might call grace, or God-consciousness, or enlightenment.

I appreciate how Deepak forces us to reconsider what we think we know. He encourages us to look at history, and each other, and then see everything anew with fresh eyes. It is hard and scary to give up what we think we know and confess we really know nothing, but Deepak goes first. He leads us into a new understanding by releasing his held beliefs into the wind to rediscover their free-flowing and necessarily impetuous need to re-form and re-phrase into something greater than they were when bound close to the mind. I warn you Deepak believes God should be a woman, because the next evolutionary step in human survival -- if we hope to live together in peace -- is "Survival of the Wisest," and not the fittest. That post-modernist, evolutionary, insight is held by Deepak because we require the love, empathy, and mystical knowing that only women posses. We don't need any more masculine power and strength. We must instead have heartfelt understanding. Deepak is also a champion of myths and storytelling. He believes those stories bring us together on an emotional level that creates memory and the capacity to share ideas between cultures. He imagines the power of the world changing if a new "Wonder Woman" comic book character could be created as the product of an Iraqi and American coupling. That sort of shared, feminine, power -- made of the spit and twine of a political disaster -- would bring us closer together than war and guns.

Deepak Chopra believes Comic books and myths create collective healing -- and they also provide a protective shroud of disbelief in which we are allowed to think freely about ideas and notions we may not fully understand or even enjoy.

In the letting go of our immediate cultural mandates via eternally shared myths -- we finally begin to socially internationalize each other -- and that only leads to renewed goodness and a new Goddess of the heart.

Why does the number three have such power in cultures across the world?

As we contemplate our lives on land while breathing the air, I am curious to know the why of your want in death.

Will you choose cremation and the sky?

Or do you prefer burial and the earth?

Are life and death connected for all of eternity -- or are they required by their very nature to be forever separate?