“Religion” is a big word, maybe too big. It is
one of those words, like “artist,” capacious enough to denote both a thing and
its near opposite. Religion is the Tao Te Ching and Dianetics. Augustine and Koresh. Hillel and Kahane, Rumi
and bin Laden. So why does the public conversation around religion often seem
so cramped and stunted? Why is it dominated by people who are fond of reducing
it to thumbs-up, thumbs-down propositions that leave no room for the way most
people think about it? The philosophies at the heart of the great traditions
emphasize the importance of empathy above all other human values, but the
people at the extremes of the God debate don’t seem to know that. Maybe that’s
why they seem so humorless. They seem impervious to the essentially comic
nature of the frustrating, human bind we’re all in. The fundamentalists
cultivate something like a sulky teenager’s romanticized notion of love, and
the atheists a grumpy old bugger’s lack of belief in such nonsense. But love of
the Divine isn’t a feeling, or a belief, it’s something you make yourself
available to. Read the complete article at --
http://www.alternet.org/belief/why-do-we-let-new-atheists-and-religious-zealots-dominate-conversation-about-religion
The witnesses, laying their coats at the feet of Saul, were the men that would cast the first stones at Stephen in Acts 7. Why did they all lay their coats at Saul’s feet? The Talmud contains a very interesting account of the act of stoning that may provide the answer. “When the trial was over, they take him [the condemned person] out to be stoned. The place of stoning was at a distance from the court, as it is said, ‘Take out the one who has cursed.’ [i] A man stands at the entrance of the court; in his hand is a signaling flag [Hebrew sudarin = sudar , ‘scarf, sweater’]. A horseman was stationed far away but within sight of him. If one [of the judges] says, ‘I have something [more] to say in his favor,’ he [the signaler] waves the sudarin , and the horseman runs and stops them [from stoning him]. Even if [the condemned person] himself says, ‘I have something to say in my favor,’ they bring him back, even four of five times, only provided that there is some substance to...
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