Johannes Tan, Indonesian Translator & Conference Interpreter
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Part 14

7/27/2015

 

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima Syndrome
Part 14: The Quest to Find a Greater and Nobler Truth


Particle Collider
If one smashes the teapot, then how can he drink the tea? Likewise, if one blows his physical body up to pieces, then how can he claim the 'promised' heavenly rewards—be it seven, seventeen or twenty-one virgins? With no intact body parts in life after death, does it even matter to religious suicide bombers whether the heavenly rewards are virgins, goats, or horses? Thanks to what Karl Marx described as "the opium of the people," this is the intoxication we are currently witnessing in various hot spots around the world. Rabid religiosity, eye-for-an-eye sectarianism and primal tribalism which simultaneously run amok (from the Malay word amok or ‘rushing in a frenzy’).

Just look at the Middle East—the cradle of Abrahamic monotheistic religions, even the hypothetical earthly location of paradise. Oh, paradise, paradiso, surga, firdaus! Paradise derives from the word pairi-daēza in Avestan (Old Farsi), which simply means 'garden', the Garden of Eden, if you will. Scholars have long speculated about the geographical location of the Garden of Eden, and two possible locations are often suggested. First, is the location at some common point of the origin of the Tigris, Euphrates, Blue Nile (or Gihon in the Hebrew Bible) rivers as stated in Genesis 2:10-14. The second possibility derives from the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh which describes Dilmun (in modern day Bahrain, near the head of the Persian Gulf) as a paradise garden.

Wherever it was, it's now anything but.

In Iraq—where the Tigris and Euphrates flow—the Sunnis are fighting the Shiites, while the Kurds and the Shiites are fighting the Sunnis/ISIS who are persecuting the Yazidis. In Bahrain—the location of the Dilmun paradise garden—the situation is only a little better. With help from Saudi Arabia, the Bahraini government violently crushed Shiite-inspired pro-democracy protests in 2011. In Turkey, the Sunni Turks are fighting the Kurds. In Syria, the Sunnis are fighting the Alawites who are backed up by the Shiites. Saudi Arabia is supporting the Free Syrian Army in Syria and allies of ISIS in Iraq. Iran is fighting ISIS in Iraq and opposing NATO support for Syrian rebels in Syria. Iran is also fighting ISIS in Syria, while Saudi Arabia and Turkey are supporting the allies of ISIS and the Free Syrian Army. The Palestinians are divided between competing Hamas and Fatah camps. In Egypt, where the Nile flows, Sunni extremists and the Muslim Brotherhood have been persecuting Coptic Christians. Fortunately the Lebanese civil war between the Sunnis and Christian Maronites is over, at least for now, but there is still the perpetual Israeli-Arab conflict over illegal settlements in the occupied territories and authority over Jerusalem's status for Jews, Christians and Muslims. In Yemen … well, you got the picture.

One may argue that some of the aforementioned conflicts e.g. between the Turks and the Kurds are more based on tribalism than sectarianism, and that may be true. But overall I agree with TIME essayist Lance Morrow who believes that if you scratch any aggressive tribalism or nationalism, beneath its surface you usually find "a religious core, some older binding energy of belief or superstition that is capable of transforming itself into a death-force, with the peculiar annihilating energies of belief."

With the spectacle of Abrahamic monotheistic believers earnestly fighting and killing each other to death, actually who needs to spread the word on atheism? Indeed pesky unbelievers have always been missing in action, on multiple levels. First, they do not worship a God and follow any holy book. Second, with all the perpetual cruelty and systematic violence on high definition display—from religious persecutions to jihads to decapitations to abortion clinic bombings—unbelievers let believers make the strongest case for them on the futility and absurdity of religions.

Whence come all this evil and violence—in the Middle East and beyond? Sadly, it's the B-word again. As once expressed by British author and actor Peter Ustinov (1921-2004): "Beliefs are what divide people. Doubts unites them." Ustinov is hardly alone. American literary critic Carl Van Doren (1885-1950) once wrote: "The unbelievers have, as I read history, done less harm to the world than believers. They have not filled it with savage wars… with crusades or persecutions, with complacency or ignorance." Now let's compare the futile sectarian violence and holy wars committed by believers with the fruitful scientific collaboration extended by secular scientists who leave their religions behind and are merely united by the quest to find a greater and nobler Truth.

While believers have been busy fighting tooth and nail for 1,380 years over who was the legitimate successor of the Prophet Muhammad after he died in 632, up there at the International Space Station which orbits the earth at an altitude between 205 and 270 miles (330 and 435 km), American, Russian, Canadian, Japanese, European and Brazilian scientists are closely—literally and figuratively—working together to conduct scientific research and support space exploration to reveal the breathtaking magnificence of the universe. While devotees and disciples have been killing each other over Jerusalem's status, somewhere around Geneve, over 2,500 staff members and visiting scientists representing 608 universities and research facilities from 22 different countries are working together at CERN (The European Organization for Nuclear Research), operating the largest particle physics laboratory in the world to understand the origin of the universe—and invented the World Wide Web along the way. Meanwhile, in Antarctica, between 1,000 and 4,000 scientists from 30 countries are working together in numerous field camps on various scientific research projects, all leaving their religions behind.

Which brings us back to our question: Whence come evil and violence? Do they come from within or without? According to spiritual philosopher J. Krishnamurti (1895-1986) who was awarded with the 1984 United Nations Peace Medal, violence derives from individuals who separate themselves from the rest of mankind, then take labels too seriously.

"When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else," Krishnamurti said, "you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind."

[To be continued.]

Johannes Tan, Indonesian Translator & Conference Interpreter 


Part 13

7/20/2015

 

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima Syndrome
Part 13: Smashing the Teapot Instead of Drinking the Tea


Teapot
The belief in a single truth and in being the possessor thereof is the root cause of all evil in the world.
-MAX BORN (1882-1970), German physicist and mathematician

The uncompromising Catholic Church's blind conviction in a single truth almost costed Italian astronomer and mathematician Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) his life, as highlighted in the Galileo Affair of 1633. That said, Galileo should thank his lucky stars and friendship with Pope Urban VIII (1568-1644), considering that his senior, Italian philosopher and mathematician Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) was burned at the stake by the Inquisition for insisting the universe is "in fact infinite and could have no celestial body at its 'center'." Indeed all the spectacular images sent by the Hubble Space Telescope of the Milky Way, other galaxies and even the most distant MACS0647-JD galaxy (13.3 billion light-years away) prove and confirm that Giordano Bruno was right!

More importantly, Hubble images also prove that absolutism adopted by the then Catholic Church—or by any organized religion at anytime for that matter—is preposterous. As argued by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan in The Reign of Religion in Contemporary Philosophy (2012): "Absolutism is unphilosophical, unscientific, unempirical and contrary to common sense, since it dismisses the solid world of reality with all its wealth and richness as unreal." Now let's review how absolutism through millennia has been proven to be more destructive than constructive.

Ancient people absolutely believed in mythologies that the earth is flat—even supported by elephants or tortoises—and one could actually fall off the edge of the world. Ptolemy's geocentric view—in which the earth is believed to be the center of the universe—was naturally embraced by the Church as it nicely dovetailed with the Book of Genesis. Then Copernicus, Giordano and Galileo came along with their heliocentric views that earth is just one planet orbiting the sun in the solar system. Fast forward to the 21st century: As described by Stephen Hawking in his classic A Brief History of Time, we (at least most of us!) are presented with overwhelming evidence that the earth is but "a medium-sized planet orbiting around an average star in the outer suburbs of an ordinary spiral galaxy, which is itself only one of about a million million galaxies in the observable universe." To put our absolutism and self-importance in context:

Up to date, 1932 exoplanets have been discovered in 1222 planetary systems. For earthlings, this discovery must quite be a spectacular, if not humiliating, fall from grace, perhaps more dramatic than a fall from the edge of a flat earth. This lovely earth—far from being the glorious center of the universe especially made for the chosen people—is now just relegated to an insignificant position as a speck of dust in the infinite vastness of the universe. If physical location reflects significance and importance, then the Solar System's location is downright insignificant, period. Astronomers have calculated that 'our' Solar System is located about 27,000 light-years from the Milky Way's galactic center, in the outer region of the spiral. Indeed the Milky Way itself is only like the size of a dime in the observable universe which contains between 100 billion and 200 billion galaxies—as estimated by astrophysicist Mario Livio of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. We have not even factored in the possibility of parallel universes or multiverse. I don't know whether it's possible for the human brain to grasp how insignificant we are in the universe.

Several ironies are graspable, however. While religion based on dogma has made us arrogant and feel exceptional, knowledge based on empirical evidence has made us humble and feel insignificant. While religion has nurtured rabid absolutism, knowledge has nurtured pragmatic relativism and humility. While religion has made us compulsively obsessed with life after death, knowledge has made us grateful and appreciative of the gift of present life. Even the great Albert Einstein, the most spiritual scientist who needs no introduction, had to revise his original theories several times be it about the static universe, the evolution of stars, or the general theory of relativity that did not factor in the principle of quantum mechanics. (He did it graciously.)

Obviously, our breakthrough revelations in knowledge and science have not been matched by that in belief systems. Most of us are still clinging to Dark Ages' religious dogmas that have been taught since pre-Copernican era. Much like the sun brightness blinds us to see millions of stars that are only visible in the darkest sky, our holy books shackle us from liberation. According to a 1991 International Social Survey Program, 63.17 percent of the United States population still believe in heaven, 49.6 percent believe in hell, and 55 percent believe in life after death. On the other hand, the U.S. —the country of NASA, first class research centers and Ivy League universities—was lowest among 21 nations on knowledge of human evolution (44.2 percent), lower than Poland and Russia.

Kept as hostages by religious absolutism, believers have been busy arguing against each other about what is right and what is wrong, using literal interpretations of same old same old narratives as final arbitrators. Indeed believers—especially in the Middle East, reputed to be the cradle of the great religions—have been waging wars, even jihads, over prophets, idols, dogmas; killing each other in the pursuit of martyrdom points. As expressed by Irish Taoist philosopher Terence James Stannus Gray (1895-1986), better known as Wei Wu Wei: "Disciples and devotees … what are most of them doing? Worshipping the teapot instead of drinking the tea!"

The way I see it, they have been busy smashing the teapot …

[To be continued.]

Johannes Tan, Indonesian Translator & Conference Interpreter 


Part 12

7/13/2015

 

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima Syndrome
Part 12: What is God's Religion?


Yin and Yang of Belief System
The man who tapped Jesus' shoulder actually made a very important point. What was Jesus' religion? What is God's religion, and which side is he rooting for? If God does not have a particular religion, then why have millions of believers for centuries fought each other and killed fellow human beings in his name? No wonder that Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), perhaps in exasperation upon witnessing vicious cycles of religious hatred, declared: "God has no religion. God is conscience. He is even the atheism of the atheist."

Whether one agrees with Gandhi or not is irrelevant. But to say that Yahweh is a Jew, God a Christian, and Allah a Muslim is to betray and contradict the most sacred principle in Judaism, Christianity and Islam that there is only one God. What have those believers been fighting about all along? The Crusades? The 30-year War? The French Wars of Religion? The Lebanese Civil War? The Second Sudanese Civil War? The Iran-Iraq War? The current Syrian Civil War? Perhaps the underlying root cause of the disconnect between monotheism and the dualism it created is not caused by God, but by … religion itself.

Religion derives from the word religare (Latin) which means 'to bind.' Remember the dreadful situation in which we may be kept as hostages by our own beliefs? Most of us are still bound and hung up by the binary opposites of hell and heaven. "Religion as practiced today deals in punishments and rewards," wrote Jesuit priest Anthony de Mello. "In other words, it breeds fear and greed—the two things most destructive of spirituality."

We tend to associate religion with morality. But why in the world does religion preach homicide, suicide, and genocide—expressed or implied? Violence abound in the Old Testament: "Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys" (1 Samuel 15:3). Killing infants is one thing, ripping pregnant women open is another. "The people of Samaria must bear their guilt, because they have rebelled against their God. They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open" (Hosea 13:16). These are from the Old Testament, though such brutality is certainly not a monopoly of Christianity.

The 1947 partition of Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan resulted in a horrifying outbreak of sectarian violence, massacres, mass rape, mutilations, genocide, even infanticide among communities that had co-existed for more than 900 years. As of now, proxy wars and sectarian violence between the Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims still rages on in the Middle East after 1,380 years ... all due an unsettled dispute over who was the legitimate successor of Muhammad as a caliph of the Islamic community after he died in 632. Only twenty years ago (1995), more than 8,000 Muslim Bosnian men and boys were massacred by Serbian Orthodox Christians in and around Srebrenica. And certain imams still preach treason and sectarian hatred in mosques, going as far as praising Al Qaeda, Taliban and ISIS, which have committed the most repulsive and despicable acts in the name of Allah.

Juxtapose the aforementioned violence and conflicts among dogmatic monotheist believers, if you will, with the narratives of non-dogmatic paganistic beliefs of some African tribes. The Yao tribe in East Africa called their God Mulungu, who one day left the people to live in the sky definitely due to the "cruelty of men." The Ngombe tribe in Central Africa called their God Akongo. Like Mulungu, Akongo got fed up because the people were quarrelsome and "left them to themselves." Akongo "went and hid in the forest and nobody has seen him since." These simpler narratives convey an unequivocal message to their believers to condemn violence and get along with each other. 


Until the Christian missionaries arrived in Africa … As lamented by the first Kenyan President Jomo Kenyatta (1892-1978): “When the missionaries arrived, the Africans had the land and the missionaries had the Bible. The missionaries taught us how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened our eyes, they had the land and we were stuck with the Bible.” Not surprisingly, the land grab in such biblical proportions did not occur only in Africa.

Under the pretext of to spread Christianity among heathens, Christian Europeans committed unspeakable cruelty and genocide on Native Americans. In American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World (1992), David E. Stannard writes: "The destruction of the Indians of the Americas was, far and away, the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world." According to Peter Montague, by 1891 "the native population had been reduced to 2.5% of its original numbers and 97.5% of the aboriginal land base had been expropriated ... Hundreds upon hundreds of native tribes with unique languages, learning, customs, and cultures had simply been erased from the face of the earth, most often without even the pretense of justice or law."

It's hard to say whether those violent 'religious' acts in Africa, the Americas, the Middle East and Indian subcontinent occur because of or in spite of religion. Perhaps both. "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil;" said American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg, "but for good people to do evil—that takes religion."  Just by scanning the news and headlines—one needs not be a historian or statistician—it's crystal clear that beliefs have killed more men than skepticism. Illusion has killed more men than factual truth. Rigidity has killed more men than flexibility.   

[To be continued.]

Johannes Tan, Indonesian Translator & Conference Interpreter 


Part 11

7/6/2015

 

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima Syndrome
Part 11: Jesus at the Football Match

Two Trees
The invention of automobile is one thing, driving one is another. Likewise, the concept of monotheism is one thing, practicing a monotheist religion is another. Whereas in polytheism there are multiple supernatural powers whom need to be appeased, in monotheism there is only a single one. Eventually, in the course of time, the once-vertical relationship turned into a more horizontal, symmetrical, even transactional one.

Sacrifices evolved into demands. The supernatural power has become nothing more than a projection of human desires, like a central clearing-house, to which believers send each and every single wish to be fulfilled. Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) defined "to pray" as "to ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessed unworthy." The supernatural power satisfies our impulse to get favors, to beg for gifts, successes and victories, to get something for nothing. God is All Knowing, yes, but somehow we always have to remind him relentlessly of our petty needs. While Santa is for kids, God is for adults. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), an English poet, pointed to this irrationality:

If [God] is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him?
If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future?
If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers?
If he is everywhere, why erect temples for him?
If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has filled with weaknesses?
If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at the blind to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable?
If he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him?

Almost two hundred years later, American author Tad Tuleja basically pointed on the same issue: "If the entire future already exists in the mind of God, isn't His will being done, whether we like it or not and whether or not we are being good, bad or indifferent? If whatever happens is already known or 'preordained,' then isn't the plea 'Thy will be done' a mere tautology?"

Does this mean that praying is useless? Then, why do we even need to pray? I'll let wiser men and scholars answer these questions. "Prayers are to men as dolls are to children," English author Samuel Butler (1835-1902) wrote. "They are not without use and comfort, but it is not easy to take them very seriously." The efficacy of prayer has been an appealing subject in academia. In Realized Religion: Research on the Relationship between Religion and Health (2007), Chamberlain and Hall cites Dr. Fred Rosner, an expert on Jewish medical ethics, who expressed his doubt that "prayer could ever be subject to empirical analysis." Alas, the scientific Christian perspective is not more encouraging. The conclusions of Intercessory Prayer: Modern Theology, Biblical Teaching and Philosophical Thought (2005) by Philip Clements-Jewery, as well as Talking to God: the Theology of Prayer (2002) by Wayne R. Spear cannot be blunter. While recognizing "the need for guidance from the Holy Spirit as to what needs to be prayed, God can not be coerced."

If God cannot be coerced, then may an attempt to trick him be worthwhile? Again from
Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar (2007) by Cathcart and Klein:
Man: "Lord, I would like to ask you a question."
Lord: "No problem. Go ahead."
Man: "Lord, is it true that a million years to you is but a second?"
Lord: "Yes, that is true."
Man: "Well, then what is a million dollars to you?"
Lord: "A million dollars to me is but a penny."
Man: "Ah, then, Lord, may I have a penny?"
Lord: "Sure. Just a second."

Nice try. And welcome to the dualism of monotheism. On one hand, there is only one god. One universal God is for All. This monotheistic principle is so important to Abrahamic religions that idolatry is considered a cardinal sin in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. According to the Old Testament, when Moses returned from his 40-day Mount Sinai retreat, he furiously smashed the golden calf to underline the importance of the first two Commandments—First, You shall have no other gods before Me and Second, You shall not make idols—to drive the point home not to idolize anything but the-one-and-only God. Likewise, shirk (idolatry) is considered a cardinal sin according to the Koran: "You shall not serve two gods, for He is but one God. Fear none but Me."

On the other hand, monotheism promotes the concept of binary opposites: heaven and hell, rewards and punishments, sacred and profane, good and evil, kosher and tereifa, halal and haraam. In our day-to-day lives, the Oneness of God is trumped by humans held hostages by their own egoism, insecurity, self-righteousness, holier-than-thou attitude, bigotry, zealotry, barbarity, provincialism, tribalism, and sectarianism. Both competing parties in most religious wars and sectarian conflicts invoke the same One and Only God for All. This exceptionalism even spills over to non-religious sporting events. We root for our favorite athletes, varsity teams, home teams, or national teams to victorious championship at all costs—by invoking God's name while at the same time forgetting His (or Her?) Oneness. Again, this disconnect is illustrated by de Mello in Jesus at the Football Match parable:

Jesus Christ said he had never been to football match. So my friends and I took him to one. It was a ferocious battle between the Protestant Punchers and the Catholic Crusaders. The Crusaders scored first. Jesus cheered wildly and threw his hat high up in the air. Then the Punchers scored. And Jesus cheered wildly and threw his hat high up in the air.

This seemed to puzzle the man behind us. He tapped Jesus on the shoulder and asked, "Which side are you rooting for, my good man?" "Me?" replied Jesus, visibly excited by the game. "Oh, I'm not rooting for either side. I'm just enjoying the game."

The man behind us turned to his neighbor and sneered, "Hmm, an atheist!"

Jesus, of all people, an atheist?

[To be continued.]

Johannes Tan, Indonesian Translator & Conference Interpreter 


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