Yes, Evangelicals and Fundamentalists are a small minority of the US population...

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Despite the media frenzy surrounding the influence of evangelical Christians during the 2004 presidential election, the new study indicates that evangelicals remain just 7% of the adult population. That number has not changed since the Barna Group began measuring the size of the evangelical public in 1994.

Barna surveys do not ask people to define themselves as “evangelical” but instead categorize people as such based on their beliefs. In this approach, evangelicals a subset of born again Christians. In addition to meeting the born again criteria (described below) evangelicals also meet seven other conditions. Those include saying their faith is very important in their life today; contending that they have a personal responsibility to share their religious beliefs about Christ with non-Christians; stating that Satan exists; maintaining that eternal salvation is possible only through grace, not by being good or doing good deeds; asserting that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth; saying that the Bible is totally accurate in all it teaches; and describing God as the all-knowing, all-powerful, perfect deity who created the universe and still rules it today. In this framework, being classified as “evangelical” is not dependent upon any kind of church or denominational affiliation or involvement.

Several segments of the population are more likely than average to be found within evangelical circles. The vast majority of evangelicals are Protestant; less than 1% of Catholics fit the description. Similarly, adults who describe themselves as conservative on social and political matters are much more likely to fit the definition than are those who say they are liberal in their thinking on such matters (17% versus 1%, respectively). The largest concentration of evangelicals lives within the South; the most limited number resides in the Northeast. Even though all evangelicals are born again Christians, less than one out of five born again adults (18%) meet the evangelical criteria.

The report also illustrates the comparatively enormous size of the born again constituency. As with the term “evangelical”, the phrase “born again Christian” is not assigned to those people who call themselves by that name. Barna’s surveys categorize people as born again if they say they “have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in my life today” and also contend that after they die they will “go to Heaven because I have confessed my sins and have accepted Jesus Christ as my savior.” Four out of ten adults fit this definition.

When all of the atheists, agnostics and adults associated with non-Christian faith groups are combined, they are only half as numerous as the born again segment (21% compared to 40% respectively). The remaining body of people – 39% of the nation’s adult population – is what Barna categorizes as “notional Christians” – people who consider themselves to be Christian but are not born again. For more than a decade, the sizes of the born again and notional segments have been roughly equivalent.

This matches roughly this Kos diary, which references sources that show that actually, non-Christians are the fastest growing segment of society. In fact, the numbers of Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists have increased the most, percentage-wise, since 1990, according to references therein.


We have to remember that some groups are simply louder than others.

Close your mouth, no barking like a dog!

Matthew Yglesias points me to this essay on "relativism" by the new pope.

I quote from Ratzinger:

The relativism of Hick, Knitter and related theories are ultimately based on a rationalism which declares that reason-in the Kantian meaning-is incapable of metaphysical cognition.[10] The new foundation of religion comes about by following a pragmatic path with more ethical or political overtones. However, there is also a consciously anti-rationalist response to the experience of the slogan "Everything is relative," which comes together under the pluriform denomination of [11]

For the supporters of the New Age, the solution to the problem of relativity must not be sought in a new encounter of the self with another or others, but by overcoming the subject in an ecstatic return to the cosmic dance. Like the old gnosis, this way pretends to be totally attuned to all the results of science and to be based on all kinds of scientific knowledge (biology, psychology, sociology, physics). But on the basis of this presupposition it offers at the same time a considerably antirationalist model of religion, a modern "mystic": The Absolute is not to be believed, but to be experienced. God is not a person to be distinguished from the world, but a spiritual energy present in the universe.

This is pretty much the deepest venture near Eastern philosophy that Ratzinger makes in his document; it is not surprising that he steers clear of Nagarjuna, or Dogen, or Shitou Xiqian (石頭希遷, whose famous rejoinder to questions is the title of this post). Admittedly, the latter two authors' works are shot through with metaphors, giddy fingers wagging excitedly at the moon, but the last link provides a clue into why I think Ratzinger is so far out of his depth (or in denial) that he's not even aware how weak his strawman is:

參同契

Harmony of Difference and Sameness

竺土大仙心 The mind of the great sage of India

東西密相付 is intimately transmitted from west to east.

人根有利鈍 While human faculties are sharp or dull,

道無南北祖 the Way has no northern or southern ancestors.

靈源明皎潔 The spiritual source shines clear in the light;

枝派暗流注 the branching streams flow on in the dark.

執事元是迷 Grasping at things is surely delusion;

契理亦非悟 according with sameness is still not enlightenment.

門門一切境 All the objects of the senses

迴互不迴互 interact and yet do not.

迴而更相涉 Interacting brings involvement.

不爾依位住 Otherwise, each keeps its place.

色本殊質像 Sights vary in quality and form,

聲元異樂苦 sounds differ as pleasing or harsh.

闇合上中言 Refined and common speech come together in the dark,

明明清濁句 clear and murky phrases are distinguished in the light.

四大性自復 The four elements return to their natures

如子得其母 just as a child turns to its mother;

火熱風動搖 Fire heats, wind moves,

水濕地堅固 water wets, earth is solid.

眼色耳音聲 Eye and sights, ear and sounds,

鼻香舌鹹醋 nose and smells, tongue and tastes;

然於一一法 Thus with each and every thing,

依根葉分布 depending on these roots, the leaves spread forth.

本未須歸宗 Trunk and branches share the essence;

尊卑用其語 revered and common, each has its speech.

當明中有暗 In the light there is darkness,

勿以暗相遇 but don't take it as darkness;

當暗中有明 In the dark there is light,

勿以明相睹 but don't see it as light.

明暗各相對 Light and dark oppose one another

比如前後歩 like the front and back foot in walking.

萬物自有功 Each of the myriad things has its merit,

當言用及處 expressed according to function and place.

事存函蓋合 Phenomena exist; box and lid fit;

理應箭鋒拄 principle responds; arrow points meet.

承言須會宗 Hearing the words, understand the meaning;

勿自立規矩 don't set up standards of your own.

觸目不會道 If you don't understand the Way right before you,

運足焉知路 how will you know the path as you walk?

進歩非近遠 Progress is not a matter of far or near,

迷隔山河故 but if you are confused, mountains and rivers block your way.

謹白參玄人 I respectfully urge you who study the mystery,

光陰莫虚度 do not pass your days and nights in vain.

Genpo-roshi's translation is a bit clearer on this point- a dead giveaway I'd say:

Sounds distinguish comfort and discomfort.
The dark makes all words one;
brightness distinguishes good and bad phrases.
The four elements return to their natures as a child to its mother.
Fire is hot, wind moves, water is wet, earth hard.
Eyes see, ears hear, nose smells, tongue tastes the salt and sour.
Each is independent of the other.
Cause and effect must return to the great reality.
The words high and low are used relatively.
Within light there is darkness,
but do not try to understand that darkness.
Within darkness there is light,
but do not look for that light.
Light and darkness are a pair,
like the foot before and the foot behind in walking.(O)
Each thing has its own intrinsic value
and is related to everything else in function and position.
Ordinary life fits the absolute as a box and its lid.
The absolute works together with the relative,
like two arrows meeting in mid air.

The absolute and the relative, in the Mahayana tradition are interdependent; it's not "there are no absolutes" nor "everything is relative."

To deny the relative is to live in a world that is not our own. To deny the absolute is to deny conciousness and thinking about the world. Each has its function and position, as it says above.

It's unfortunate that Ratzinger's piece is what passes for intellectual gravitas nowadays, at least in his immediate circle.

Wishful Thinking...

William Dembski hopes the new pope will come down against evolution.

But in so doing, he reveals his somewhat disingenuous take on evolution.

Dembski quotes from Ratzinger saying:

It is the affair of the natural sciences to explain how the tree of life in particular continues to grow and how new branches shoot out from it. This is not a matter for faith. But we must have the audacity to say that the great projects of the living creation are not the products of chance and error…

Now Dembski claims a Ph.D. in mathematics, and touts a knowledge of Information Theory. As such he should know that Probability and Measure Theory do not state the cause of an underlying set function; they are merely presumed as axiomatic. The "cause" of the underlying set function that governs probabilities of random occurrences is irrelevant to the study of probability.

So the term "chance" when used in a technical, mathematical sense is simply a phenomenological statement; no underlying "cause" is either implied or dismissed. Thus there is no tension between what Ratzinger says here and what John Paull II said on evolution; they are both in agreement as to the metaphysics (and a non-Christian's mileage will still vary).

It is interesting that this "Intelligent" "Design" proponent relies not only on a religious authority, but also George W. Bush (antagonist of the "reality based commun ity") to attack science.

"Be lamps unto yourselves"

That was my response to this heartfelt diary on Kos.

I quote:

Why did so many jump all over the Hitler Youth piece of the new pope's biography, when there are plenty of opinions and actions in the last 20 years or so by Cardinal Ratzinger to be upset over from a liberal perspective? There are folks that aren't familiar with the ins and outs of Catholic theology, but are extremely suspicious of, and sensitive to, anything that smacks of fascism. And this was an easy piece to latch onto, one that appeared to confirm the worst fears of feminists, gays, etc.

No, it wasn't smart. Those who commented that this will certainly be fodder for the folks at LGF to caricature us are correct. But those who reacted this way were reacting from the heart, not the brain. If they were reacting from the brain, they certainly would have said, as others did, that this is no way to bring the Catholic vote back into the Democratic party.

It also was said by some that this was prejudice against the Roman Catholic Church. I do not agree. The posts did not say that Catholics as a whole are idiots, supporters of child molestation, minions of Satan, etc. This was outrage at today's specific act of the college of cardinals in the selection of this particular individual to be pope.

So why the storm and fury over this one individual? Well, let me put it to you this way. In the case of my wife and myself, no other single individual had more to do with why I am no longer a Catholic. I suspect that this is true for the vast majority of ex-Catholics that posted, even if they aren't fully aware of the ongoing detailed role of Cardinal Ratzinger in his official capacities that made them feel unwelcome in the only religious home many of them had ever known...

Of deep pain. Of anguish. Of the kind of pain we all felt on the day after the election. The kind of pain you might feel if you left an abusive, cheating husband, and he was then elected to public office, even though his abusiveness and cheating were well documented in the local press.

It ripped open all the old wounds. It felt as if the Church were saying "good riddance to you!"

The fact that this reader was lucky enough to have lived through the effects of John XXIII and Paul VI, like myself, perhaps set his expections a bit higher for the Roman Catholic Church than is deserved.

Regardless, (and whether or not Ratzinger lives up to his past as pope remains to be seen) the issue -at least for this Buddhist ex-Catholic- isn't really anything to do with Benedict XVI, but myself. Look, folks, if aliens came to visit earth, and they were introduced to Ratzinger et al., with their ways , their celibacy, and their pedophilia scandals, and if those aliens were told that these guys represented the supremum bonum of morality on this earth, if aliens laughed, they would¹. Why be so attached to Joseph Ratzinger's pretensions to authority? It's your life, after all. Live it by doing your best.



1. In one of the first teishos I heard from Bonnie Myotai Treace, she said something to the effect of, "Why would anyone in New York come to hear a bald-headed American woman dressed up in the costume of a 13th century Japanese monk?"

5 Questions for Shokai

Appropos of the "5 Questions" meme, I hope I can get Shokai to answer these questions; his blog is one of my regular stops:

1. You are in sesshin, and it is the fourth day. It is lunch time; so oryoki is being practiced. After serving yourself or being served, after your offering, as you mindfully eat, you notice there is a piece of a plastic fork in your food. What do you do?

2. Designated hitter or pitcher hits his own?

3. This one came from Sogen Roshi, who was kind enough to write this shodou ( 書道 ) for me: East, South, North, West; what does not change?

4. How would you describe enlightenment to someone like Razorskiss?

5. After anyone proceeds in practice long enough, even koans that a student is not formally studying begin to take on meaning that wasn't apparent previously. What koans do you find particularly inscrutable?

Thanks!

This could get interesting

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ROME, April 20 - In his first Mass as pope, Benedict XVI reached out to the church today, setting out some of the themes of his papacy in conciliatory language.

He specified some of the top priorities of his papacy: the promotion of the unity of Christians and a commitment to ecumenism, the continued dialogue with other religions and the fulfillment of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council...

He told the gold-robed cardinals in attendance that he would assume as his primary task the "full and visible unity of all the followers of Christ."

More than a task, he said, it was a duty where "concrete gestures" were required and not vague motions of good sentiment.

For more than two decades at the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Ratzinger was Catholicism's faithful doctrinal watchdog, and in a homily on Monday he said that Christians were being tossed about by the waves of Marxism, collectivism, libertinism and atheism.

And he was highly critical of the creation of new "sects," a term often used by church leaders to refer to Christian evangelical movements, drawing Christians into what he said was "error."

But in his first homily as pontiff he took a much softer stance, saying he was disposed "to do what was in his power to promote the fundamental cause of ecumenism."

And in a gesture perhaps intended to allay the fears of those critics who saw his election as shutting the door on the inter-religious dialogue started by his predecessor, Pope Benedict appealed to "those who follow other religions," reassuring them that the church wanted to continue to construct "an open and sincere dialogue" with them.

Well, if anything, this guy has no more a special place at his table for Evangelicals than he does Buddhists or Zoroastrians.

Interesting.

5 Questions for Thomas Chen

Thomas Chen is one of the brightest people I know. His blog is an interesting window into the really bright high school student stuck amidst the stupidity and mediocrity of today, without the salvific balm of Frank Zappa's or John Lennon's early solo music. I just hope he remembers that Phil Ochs killed himself for our sins many, many years ago...

Here's my 5 questions to him, which I hope he answers on his blog:

1. When you get to Princeton, and you settle in, before classes, what do you expect to do in your free time?

2. What's the most pleasant memory you'll take away from your years at Skyview High School?

3. Who do you think is the most important mathematician of the 20th century, and why?

4. In what one field of knowledge are you currently lacking that you'd like to know more and plan to study at Princeton?

5. What should Americans know first and foremost about China and the Chinese of today?

Thanks in advance!

5 Questions for Razorskiss

Razaorskiss has to be admired; his blog is snazzier than mine and gets much more traffic than mine. As one can also see from his "about" page, he's very fond of words. And apologietics. So when the 5 questions meme went to me, I said to myself, "Self you gotta get this guy."

Anyway, here I go (and I apologize in advance for the long run-ups to some of the questions):

1. Although your recent post referring to another post on Every Thought Captive started to go in the direction of this question, it's still the most obvious one. Blaise Pascal had basically said that apologetics and counter-apologetic arguments did nothing to convince the unbeliever, but the believer became more convinced. The obvious answer then is that apologetics are done to strengthen one's faith. There are other ways to strengthen one's faith as well, among them worship or ritual or contemplative practices. Why favor one over the other?

2. How do you know when it's the Holy Spirit leading and guiding and inspiring you and when it's just you?

3. One of the big divides between moderates and progressives and those who send money to Focus on the Family involves spanking children. What's your thoughts on spanking, and if you never had to spank your kids, would you still do so (assuming the answer is that you follow biblical advice on spanking)?

4. Why can't Christian music come up with something really genuine today, something that doesn't seem to be an echo of the commercial world? (As in, when are we going to see a Christian Frank Zappa?)

5. If someone had the same physiological and psychological responses as you, the same subjective experience as you (peace, understanding that surpassed knowledge, etc.), the same change of behavior, or repentence as you, but believed in a different religion, why - appart from what the bible said (my imaginary construct also has a book, you see) - would you say that guy might be damned and you might not be?

Thanks in advance.

Update funny linking fixed....I think...

Updated Update: Check out Razorkiss's responses on his blog.

Oh, well, throw out the NY Times...

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The last pope who chose the name Benedict was an Italian noble who canonized Joan of Arc and spent much of his papacy trying unsuccessfully to end World War I, which had pitted Europe's Catholics against one another.

Born Giacomo della Chiesa in Genoa, Italy, Pope Benedict XV served as pontiff from 1914 to 1922, the second shortest length of time for a pope in the 20th Century.

(Emphasis added.)
No, dummies; John XXIII's and John Paul I's were shorter. That would make him at best number 3.


Don't these guys have fact checkers?

Kinda like when that guy in Ghost Busters thinks of Stay-Puft, the Marshmallow Man...

I will admit, the first thing that came into my head on hearing of John Ratzinger's elevation to pope, and the name he took, was this guy:





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Seafield Center was my dream when I was first in recovery. I dreamed of a gracious and peaceful setting with a loving and nurturing environment where individualized treatment programs would restore dignity to the addicted and communicate to the entire family that, through treatment, there is help and there is hope. Sobriety is just the beginning. We focus on restoring self-esteem and rebuilding strength within the family. Using advanced state of the art techniques, we help one person at a time, one day at a time.

George Benedict used to have these commercials on in NY late at night on WPIX (Channel 11), and whatever Channel 9 used to be called, that is, the low-budget channels, in which he'd rail against the viewer for being up too late at night, in a grumpy, angry, hardly serene voice, purportedly to encourage the viewers to get themselves into rehab pronto.

He sounded, actually, as if he'd been on an anger binge; it used to give my friends and I great entertainment as we quaffed a few in his honor way back when, before engagement, before career explosion, before child.

My only regret is that Ratzinger didn't take 2 given names for himself, following the example of the last 2 popes; he could well have been Pope George Benedict, and then the metaphor would be even better.

5 questions...the meme to be passed

As tgirsch, the caregiver of Lean Left notes, in response to my answers to his questions, it's now my turn to pass the 5 questions meme around.

The questioner poses 5 questions to 5 people in the blogosphere, who in turn, propagate the meme to 5 others.

If anyone wishes to volunteer, please do.

However, I'm thinking up questions to ask people whose blogs I regularly visit.

Let me know if you wish to be questioned, but I might ask questions of others anyway.

Thanks!

I'm not all that surprised that marriage counseling doesn't work

The NY Times today has an article on marriage counseling and - shock- it doesn't work all that often...

[D]oes marital therapy work? Not nearly as well as it should, researchers say. Two years after ending counseling, studies find, 25 percent of couples are worse off than they were when they started, and after four years, up to 38 percent are divorced.

Many of the counseling strategies used today, like teaching people to listen and communicate better and to behave in more positive ways, can help couples for up to a year, say social scientists who have analyzed the effectiveness of different treatments. But they are insufficient to get couples through the squalls of conflict that inevitably recur in the long term.

At the same time, experts say, many therapists lack the skills to work with couples who are in serious trouble.

Unable to help angry couples get to the root of their conflict and forge a resolution, these therapists do one of two things: they either let the partners take turns talking week after week, with no end to the therapy in sight, or they give up on the couple and, in effect, steer them to divorce...

With an experimental approach called integrative behavioral couples therapy, for example, 67 percent of couples significantly improved their relationships for two years, according to a study reported in November to the Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy.

Instead of teaching couples how to avoid or solve arguments, as traditional counseling techniques do, the integrative therapy aims to make arguments less hurtful by helping partners accept their differences. It is based on a recent finding that it is not whether a couple fights but how they fight that can destroy a relationship.

Especially encouraging, all of the couples in the study were at high risk of divorce. "Many had been couples therapy failures," said Dr. Andrew Christensen, a professor of clinical psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles and the lead author of the study.

But some experts who were trained as couples therapists have now become so disillusioned that they question the value of couples therapy in any form. They say that couples are better off taking marriage education courses - practical workshops that teach couples how to get along and that do not ask them to bare their souls or air their problems to a third party.

There's several reasons why the traditional models don't work:

1. Are marriage counselors trained to train couples to negotiate well? Generally not I'd say. While the aspects of listening and communicating are important, there's other aspects to having needs met and agreed upon, that if these counselors had training in that, they'd be working in business for far more money.

2. Marriage counselors often have a vested interest in continuing the counseling- they get paid per session.

3. This is pointed out later in the article- but in any marriage, it is a human being you marry, complete with foibles, weird personality traits, annoying habits, and is somebody quirky enough to have loved you in the first place. If you don't take the whole package, as they are, it's an act of greed, not love. OTOH, if you don't focus on your own behavior, and cultivate your own discipline (spiritual and/or what you might think of as "otherwise,") your spouse may have married a dead person, for all intents and purposes. Unfortunately, for all the vaunted American religiosity, most Americans do not highly value religious self-discipline.

4. Finally, stressors in marriage tend to be a lack of money and time, especially when kids are involved. It's not for nothing that America has such high divorce rates- it's indicative of the decline in our quality of life.

Hopefully, there's a libel and slander suit - or several- coming

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ORLANDO -- In the four years after Michael Schiavo won the right to remove his wife's feeding tube, the state's social welfare agency investigated 89 complaints of abuse but never found that he or anybody else harmed Terri Schiavo, records released late Friday show.

The state Department of Children and Families repeatedly concluded that Michael Schiavo ensured his wife's physical and medical needs were met, provided proper therapy for her and had no control over her money. They also found no evidence that he beat or strangled her, as his detractors have repeatedly charged...

Schiavo had been kept alive by the feeding tube for 15 years, but courts ruled that she was in a persistent vegetative state and had not wanted to be kept alive artificially. Her parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, countered that she responded to them and wanted to live, setting off an international debate over right-to-die issues.

The records show that DCF took seriously its duty to investigate abuse allegations, which became familiar fodder on the Internet: Terri Schiavo was dirty and unkempt. She did not receive proper dental care or rehabilitative therapy. She was kept in isolation. Her husband beat her and broke her bones. He wanted her dead for her money or to remarry. He pumped her full of insulin, hoping to kill her. He often asked, "When will (she) die?" Her lips were cracked and dry.

The names of the complainants were blacked out under Pinellas County Circuit Judge George W. Greer's orders.

But DCF investigators looked into the charges and closed them as unfounded with such comments as "the spouse has always been courteous and very compassionate toward his wife" and "all her needs being met."

In at least one case, the caller found the evidence of Terri Schiavo's alleged abuse on the Internet.

I really, really, hope Schiavo sues Fox News, CNN, Focus on the Family, and all the follks who dragged his name through the mud;.

5 questions, answered...

Tgirsch has graciously enlisted me to play the 5 questions game; here's my best shot...

1. Superstring theory: Legitimate science or mathematical masturbation? Explain your answer.

That's a pretty difficult one. As an engineer, basically, I am inherently suspicious of theories that require exponentially larger amounts of capital equipment to provide evidence in its favor, which, to my understanding, much of modern physics implies.

The other issue I have with superstring theory is basically, I am inherently suspicous of the possibility of time travel, for reasons, I am embarrassed to admit, come straight from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy- you know, once somebody does it, nobody can be sure of anything anymore.

But given that I suspect the time travel issue can be resolved (to forbid it), and ditto for worm-holes (they've got to be rare if possible) I see no reason why superstring theory can't be true.

But it's only science if there are good ways to prove its implications, which don't involve huge amounts of capital equipment. My guess is somewhat in favor of the mathematical masturbation argument, unless I see something really, really clever.

2. What religion, other than your own, are you most inclined to align with?

I have a friend and colleague who's an atheist Hindu- apparently depending on the school, that's not a contradiction. Maybe I'd be an agnostic Hindu. Or a Unitarian Universalist. I'd probably plump for the latter given that I'm basically a westernized person.

3. Boob man, leg man, or butt man?

I'd say butt.

4. Are there any core tenets of Buddhism with which you disagree? If so, what are they and why? If not, what is your biggest problem with Buddhism?

Buddhism doesn't really have core tenets; but sooner or later reincarnation comes up when I'm asked about it. Explaining reincarnatin as karma as anatman (the doctrine of the insubstianitiality of the self) usually sets my questioner's eyes aglaze. IOW, no, I don't think a self is necessarily literally reborn (although I'm reminded of Marx's dictum on things happening first as tragedy and then as farce.) But I don't think that's out of line with what Buddhism actually teaches, despite popular stories and beliefs of "doing something bad in a past life."

I could also mention vegetarianism; apparently many people think this is necessary to be a "good" Buddhists (which it's not).


My biggest problem with Buddhism is me. I'm the one who's got to live up to what is needed to be done. I hope that doesn't seem like a cop-out.

5. Precisely why are we thanking Mr. Roboto?

For doing the jobs that nobody wants to / For helping me escape just when I needed to
The problem's plain to see / Too much technology
Machines to save our lives / Machines dehumanize


The sad thing is most Japanese don't get this, and those that do are cooler than you or I will ever be...

These are the other folks that make Republicans troublesome

The "Constitution in Exile" movement, profiled today in the NY Times Magazine, is perhaps every bit as scary as the Christian Reconstructionists.

All restoration fantasies have a golden age, a lost world that is based, at least to a degree, in historical fact. For the Constitution in Exile movement, that world is the era of Republican dominance in the United States from 1896 through the Roaring Twenties. Even as the Progressive movement gathered steam, seeking to protect workers from what it saw as the ravages of an unregulated market, American courts during that period steadfastly preserved an ideal of free enterprise, routinely striking down laws that were said to restrict economic competition.

The most famous constitutional battle of the time was the 1905 Supreme Court case Lochner v. New York, which challenged a law that was passed by the New York State Legislature, establishing a maximum number of working hours for bakers. The court struck down the law on the grounds that it violated the bakers' freedom of contract, which was arguably, but not explicitly, included in the 14th Amendment's protections of ''liberty'' and ''property.'' In a dissenting opinion, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. objected that ''The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer's Social Statics,'' referring to the celebrated Social Darwinist and advocate of laissez-faire economics...

Early on, the movement found its intellectual guru in Richard Epstein. In the words of Michael Greve, Epstein is ''the intellectual patron saint of everybody in this movement.'' Like Bolick, Epstein is too much of a libertarian purist to be a party loyalist. (''Our president is a most inconsistent classical liberal, to be charitable,'' he says. ''He's terrible on trade and a huge spender and not completely candid about the parlous situation Social Security is in.'') But his devotion to -- and influence on -- the Constitution in Exile is unsurpassed.

''Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain,'' still in print 20 years after its publication, purports to specify the conditions under which government can rightfully impose regulations and taxes that reduce the value of private property. Drawing on the political philosophy of John Locke, Epstein argues that before the existence of government, individuals in what political theorists call the ''state of nature'' have an inherent right of autonomy, which entitles them to acquire property by dint of their labor and to dispose of it only as they see fit through voluntary transfer of goods. Epstein also maintains that any form of government coercion -- including taxation or other forced transfers of wealth -- can be reconciled with the principles of personal freedom only if it makes individuals at least as well off as they were before the tax or regulation was imposed. Epstein's key insight, as the Constitution in Exile adherents see it, is that economic regulations are just as coercive as other involuntary wealth transfers. He insists that if the government wants to reduce the value of an individual's property -- with zoning restrictions, for example -- it has to compensate him for the lost value.

Moving from political theory to constitutional law, Epstein argues that the framers of the United States Constitution recognized these limitations on governmental power in the Takings Clause of the Constitution, which says that ''private property'' cannot be taken for public use ''without just compensation.'' According to Epstein, the Takings Clause prevents the government from redistributing wealth in any form without appropriate compensation and that a proper understanding of the clause calls into question ''many of the heralded reforms and institutions of the 20th century: zoning, rent control, workers' compensation laws, transfer payments,'' as well as ''progressive taxation.'' Liberal governmental reforms could be sustained, Epstein argues, only if the government were to compensate individuals for the lost value of their property or to make everyone better off in exchange for their taxes. ''This simple theory of governance could be expanded to cover all taxes, all regulations, all shift in liability schemes,'' Epstein wrote in an intellectual autobiography. ''It is also the recipe for striking down the New Deal.''...

Three candidates recently renominated by Bush for positions on the federal appellate courts are sympathetic to the ideas of the Constitution in Exile movement. In addition to William Pryor, the former attorney general of Alabama whom Greve praises, there is Janice Rogers Brown, a justice on the California Supreme Court and an outspoken economic libertarian. An African-American and a daughter of sharecroppers, Brown has been promoted by many libertarians as an ideal Supreme Court candidate. Known for her vigorous criticism of the post-New Deal regulatory state, Brown has called 1937, the year the Supreme Court began to uphold the New Deal, ''the triumph of our socialist revolution,'' adding in another speech that ''protection of property was a major casualty of the revolution of 1937.'' She has praised the court's invalidation of maximum-hour and minimum-wage laws in the Progressive era, and at her Senate confirmation hearing in 2003, she referred disparagingly to ''the dichotomy that eventually develops where economic liberty -- property -- is put on a different level than political liberties.''

I don't suppose it would do to say that this philosophy is inconsistent: as things stand today, "wealth" and "property" mean something different than they did bfore- your wealth and income are accounted for not by how much gold it's worth, but how much you can buy, and thus taxes are a part of the picture.

These people if put into power would wind up impoverishing vast numbers of Americans, and would bring back the near-slave labor conditions that existed in some factories and mines at the turn of the century.

This is what Americans voted for in 2004.

I hope they can deal with it, or transcend it, or re-relegate to the ash heap of history.


HT: DavidNYC at Kos.

Frank L. Rich- how does he channel H.L. Mencken?

I can just see from the title of this post that folks will want to conflate Buddhism and "new age" whatever....well...it's worth the risk to note the following:

As the lies and subterfuge of the go-go 1990's coalesced around sex, so the scandal of our new "moral values" decade comes cloaked in religion. The hair shirt is the new thong.

This time the plot begins with money. Two K Street fixers, a lobbyist named Jack Abramoff and a flack named Michael Scanlon, managed to snooker six American Indian tribes into handing over $82 million in exchange for furthering their casino interests. According to The Washington Post, some of their tribal takings, cycled through a nonprofit center for "public policy research," helped send Mr. DeLay golfing in Scotland. The pious congressman, a gambling foe, says he had no idea of his trip's sinful provenance. Never mind that Mr. DeLay was joined abroad by Mr. Abramoff, whom he has described as one of his "closest and dearest friends," or that Mr. Scanlon had once been his spokesman. Mr. DeLay was as innocent of the goings-on around him as a piano player in a brothel.

Beltway cronyism, dubious junkets, loophole-laden denials are all, of course, time-honored Washington fare. The few on the right backing away from Mr. DeLay, from The Wall Street Journal's editorial page to Newt Gingrich, make a point of reminding us of that. As they see it, more in sorrow than in anger, the Gingrich revolutionaries who vowed to end the corruption practiced by Congressional Democrats have now been infected by the same Washington virus as their opponents. That's true, but this critique of Mr. DeLay and company by their own camp all too conveniently sidesteps the distinguishing feature of this scandal. Democratic malefactors like Jim Wright and L.B.J.'s old fixer Bobby Baker didn't wear the Bible on their sleeves.

In the DeLay story almost every player has ostentatious religious trappings, starting with the House majority leader himself. His efforts to play God with Terri Schiavo were preceded by crusades like blaming the teaching of evolution for school shootings and raising money for the Traditional Values Coalition's campaign to save America from the "war on Christianity." Mr. DeLay's chief of staff was his pastor, and, according to Time magazine, organized daily prayer sessions in their office. Today this holy man, Ed Buckham, is a lobbyist implicated in another DeLay junket to South Korea.

But it's not merely Christian denominations that figure in the religious plumage of this crowd. Mr. Abramoff, who is now being investigated by nearly as many federal agencies as there are nights of Passover, is an Orthodox Jew who in his salad days wore a yarmulke to press interviews. In Washington, he opened not one but two kosher restaurants (I hear the deli was passable by D.C. standards) and started a yeshiva. His uncompromising piety drove him to condemn the one Orthodox Jew in the Senate, Joe Lieberman, for securing "the tortuous death of millions" by supporting abortion rights.

As William Blake noted so well, "Prisons are built with the Stones of Law, Brothels with the Bricks of Religion."

Some might think that this is a mere "cackling at the hypocrites" type of phenomenon, this criticism of Delay, FRC, Frist, etc. but its not.










Much as they are loath to go near the thought, there is a very good reason these scandals are intimately related with these people.




When one puts much effort into appearing righteous, one is often short of time and resources to actually be righteous.

Frank Rich should be commended for disseminating this information.

Disgusting

As somebody who's visited both Japan and China multiple times, I find the orchestrated violence from the Chinese against the Japanese pretty reprehensible.

While nobody's hands are absolutely spotless in this area, this simply isn't the time to gin up the violence.

China is where it is today- in positive as well as negative ways- due to Japan. Japan has invested very much to make China competitive.

The US, if it were truly an honest broker in the region, would be able to defuse this situation.

But, then again, the US is playing this stuff for its own benefits.

Why calling one's way a "false religion" is like using the "n-word"

I mentioned below about how Joe Carter jumped the shark - or really let slip out that it's OK to call non-Christian religions "false religions."

I don't think they were aware of it, but it is indeed along the lines of using the "n-word" in referring to African Americans.

Now, yourdictionary.com has a good definition of religion; there is a theme running through it of beliefs and practices.

Of course, there's religions and there's religions. The theistic religions do indeed have some element of the supernatural, a deity, and a creation narrative. The non-theistic religions tend to have many fewer beliefs (often grounded from personal experience), but many practices. Regardless, the more one engages in a religion, the more one's self changes. This is not simply "spiritual," it is also physiological, psychological, and interpersonal.

So, when one says that someone else follows a "false religion," they are in effect making a statement- and not a very pretty one- about the physiology, psychology, and interpersonal relationships, as well as the spirituality about people who follow the religion that someone ignoranty calls "false." It is another way of saying people who don't follow "my" religion are false, whether or not it is meant.

Oftentimes, though, that is what is meant; hence some Christian Reconstructionists have advocated putting Wiccans and gays to death (over what basically comes down to religious differences.) It is not a very long path from "their religion is false" to "they are false," to "they are a danger to our religion and must be cleansed."

The western world came a long way since the Thirty Years' War showed that wars over religion are immoral bloodbaths. One would hope that we have the wisdom to remember all that death, and try to avoid such things in the future.

Tom Friedman is spot on here

Somehow I missed this...

At a time when the global economic playing field is being flattened - enabling young Indians and Chinese to collaborate and compete with Americans more than ever before - this administration is off on an ideological jag. It is trying to take apart the New Deal by privatizing Social Security, when what we really need most today is a New New Deal to make more Americans employable in 21st-century jobs.

We have a Treasury secretary from the railroad industry. We have an administration that won't lift a finger to prevent the expensing of stock options, which is going to inhibit the ability of U.S. high-tech firms to attract talent - at a time when China encourages its start-ups to grant stock options to young innovators. And we have movie theaters in certain U.S. towns afraid to show science films because they are based on evolution and not creationism.

The Bush team is proposing cutting the Pentagon's budget for basic science and technology research by 20 percent next year - after President Bush and the Republican Congress already slashed the 2005 budget of the National Science Foundation by $100 million.

When the National Innovation Initiative, a bipartisan study by the country's leading technologists and industrialists about how to re-energize U.S. competitiveness, was unveiled last December, it was virtually ignored by the White House. Did you hear about it?...

Thomas Bleha, a former U.S. Foreign Service officer in Japan, has a fascinating piece in the May-June issue of Foreign Affairs that begins like this: "In the first three years of the Bush administration, the United States dropped from 4th to 13th place in global rankings of broadband Internet usage. Today, most U.S. homes can access only 'basic' broadband, among the slowest, most expensive and least reliable in the developed world, and the United States has fallen even further behind in mobile-phone-based Internet access. The lag is arguably the result of the Bush administration's failure to make a priority of developing these networks. In fact, the United States is the only industrialized state without an explicit national policy for promoting broadband."

Since it took over in 2001, the Bush team has made it clear that its priorities are tax cuts, missile defense and the war on terrorism - not keeping the U.S. at the forefront of Internet innovation. In the administration's first three years, President Bush barely uttered the word "broadband," Mr. Bleha notes, but when America "dropped the Internet leadership baton, Japan picked it up. In 2001, Japan was well behind the United States in the broadband race. But thanks to top-level political leadership and ambitious goals, it soon began to move ahead.

"By May 2003, a higher percentage of homes in Japan than the United States had broadband. ...

"Today, nearly all Japanese have access to 'high-speed' broadband, with an average connection time 16 times faster than in the United States - for only about $22 a month. ... And that is to say nothing of Internet access through mobile phones, an area in which Japan is even further ahead of the United States. It is now clear that Japan and its neighbors will lead the charge in high-speed broadband over the next several years."

South Korea, which has the world's greatest percentage of broadband users, and urban China, which last year surpassed the U.S. in the number of broadband users, are keeping pace with Japan - not us.

This is SO true, it's amazing how much Americans are behind.

We have relegated ourselves to the backwaters; my Chinese in-laws had broadband before I did I kid you not.

Bush and his cronies are destroying America.

Joe Carter thinks it's good to "unplug the god of information technology." If only he could unplug the Republican god.

書道: Old Stuff

Imperial Decree Granting Ecclesiastical Rank of Hôin Daikashô and Posthumous Name Chishô Daishi to Enchin...

from here. The explanation:

It is recorded that this imperial letter, issued by Emperor Daigo (885-930, r. 897-930), was composed by Fujiwara Hirofumi and transcribed by the renown calligrapher Ono no Michikaze (894-966). The voluminous and substantial characters, on pale blue paper with faintly drawn guidelines, reveal a strongly spirited hand. Michikaze, to whom is attributed the creation of Japanese-style calligraphy, was at the time, thirty-four years old and working as a minor scribe in the Ministry of Central Affairs (J. Nakatsukasashô) writing imperial letters and conferrals of rank. The letter has been marked in thirteen places on the front and two places on the back with a square red stamp reading "Emperor's Seal" (J. tennô gyoji).

Enchin (814-891) was the fifth abbot of Enryaku-ji Temple of the Tendai sect on Mt. Hiei and revitalized Onjô-ji Temple (also known as Mii-dera). He is considered to be the founder of the Jimon ("Temple School") branch of the Tendai sect.

John Bolton, stalker?

Really, if you or I did this kind of behavior we'd be canned from our jobs immediately.


Appointing this guy as UN ambassador is like appointing Bernard Law to keep track of pedophiles to protect young boys.

Wal-Mart and "Affluenza"

I posted this diary on Kos about my impressions of Wal-Mart from the standpoint of the merchandise available.

There are 2 other aspects of the questions I indirectly raised there ("Do you really need the stuff that Wal-Mart sells besides the stuff that you think you need? And is it really the stuff you need anyway?")

1. Wal-Mart - other than being a microcosm of a sick American economy addicted to petroleum is also a symptom of Affluenza. Wal-Mart relies on people buying stuff for no other objective than for people to buy stuff. (Tangential disclaimer: although I have and done make pancakes from scratch, I will buy mixed stuff if only because I've no other use for buttermilk.)

2. It would be really impossible for Wal-Mart -based on its business model alone- to be able to supply food (and goods) if one were to achieve a mindful existence. As an exercise, keep Dogen's Tenzo Kyokun in mind as you go through Wal-Mart's aisles. Of course, if there was nothing else to eat, wear or use as medicine, one would be constrained to make a feast from the meager offerings in Wal-Mart's aisles, but luckily we ourselves, through our actions/experience can make and use and find and grow ingredients that will never be supplied at Wal-Mart.



(Even the bathroom is a place of practice, you know.)

On the to-do list of cuisine research...

Hishiho ( ひしほ ) is a culinary ancestor of modern soy sauce and miso; it is said to be somewhere between the two.

I am not sure if it is an exact equivalent of Chinese thick soy sauce, but it is worth investigating.

Soy sauce of course, is one of those miracle food components, like vinegar and olive oil and peanut oil, that when skillfully combined with other ingredients, makes food spectacular.

Miso itself is a wonderful thing that can be used in many ways to flavor dishes outside of the well-known Japanese soup.

Something between miso and soy sauce might provide a taste that is worth exploring.

Joe Carter Jumps the Shark

It's going to be a banner day for blogging I see. Joe Carter writes today (emphasis added):

God, of course, doesn’t have to listen to his voice mail messages, return missed cell phone calls, answer email inquiries, delete trackback spam, write blog posts, and update his PDA. Sure, he has to listen to prayers. But since prayers can’t be sent by IM or text messaging how many people really take the time to pray?

Certainly not us Christians. Ironically, we consider it peculiar that followers of Islam stop five times a day to offer prayers to Allah yet we stop five times an hour to pay homage to our email. We contend that Islam is a false religion but what is it that we are worshipping?

I don't contend that Islam is a "false religion;" that is the religious equivalent of calling an African-American a n*&%(r. I don't call Evangelical Christianity a "false religion" even though many adherents in positions of power practice it in such a way that it increases harm to society. One wonders if Carter is enough of a bigot to call Judaism a "false religion."


Remember, folks, if Frist and company have their way, they're going to be calling your religion "false" ...and then they'll call you false.

Although Carter's bright enough to see that James Dobson's KKK remarks deserve a smackdown, one really wonders why he doesn't put 2 and 2 together when it comes to religious issues like this. Does Carter really not know about "Christian" websites like this one?

Utter Demagoguery

It's not everyday I wake up in the morning and immediately find a good topic to blog about, but this morning- before I've had my first sip of coffee this caught my eye:

Link

WASHINGTON, April 14 - As the Senate heads toward a showdown over the rules governing judicial confirmations, Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, has agreed to join a handful of prominent Christian conservatives in a telecast portraying Democrats as "against people of faith" for blocking President Bush's nominees.

Fliers for the telecast, organized by the Family Research Council and scheduled to originate at a Kentucky megachurch the evening of April 24, call the day "Justice Sunday" and depict a young man holding a Bible in one hand and a gavel in the other. The flier does not name participants, but under the heading "the filibuster against people of faith," it reads: "The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias, and it is now being used against people of faith."

Organizers say they hope to reach more than a million people by distributing the telecast to churches around the country, over the Internet and over Christian television and radio networks and stations.

Dr. Frist's spokesman said the senator's speech in the telecast would reflect his previous remarks on judicial appointments. In the past he has consistently balanced a determination "not to yield" on the president's nominees with appeals to the Democrats for compromise. He has distanced himself from the statements of others like the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, who have attacked the courts, saying they are too liberal, "run amok" or are hostile to Christianity.

It is, of course, Frist and the Family Research Council that are actually "hostile to people of faith," for example, people who have my religion.

It is Frist and the Family Research Council that want "people of faith" to forget about justice for the imprisioned, feeding the hungry, caring for the sick and infirm, and all of the other things that don't have to do with fetuses and people who are already dead that more enlightened socieities than ours do as a matter of course.

Frist needs a response.

Whaddaya know, we won one...

link

A federal judge Thursday struck down the FDA ban on ephedra, the once-popular weight-loss aid that was yanked from the market after it was linked to dozens of deaths.

The judge ruled in favor of a Utah company that challenged the Food and Drug Administration's ban. Utah-based Nutraceutical claimed in its lawsuit that ephedra "has been safely consumed" for hundreds of years.



Supplements that included ephedra have been widely used for weight loss and bodybuilding, but have linked to 155 deaths, including that of Baltimore Orioles pitching prospect Steve Bechler. The FDA ordered the substance off the market in April 2004.

Judge Tena Campbell's ruling sends the matter back to the FDA "for further rulemaking consistent with the court's opinion" and keeps the agency from enforcement action against the companies.

Indeed. It's infuriating to have to use decongestants like sudafed (which can be easily converted to meth) when ma huang works just as well, and can be made into a nice tea that even Mormons wouldn't find offensive.

Remember- Republicans are not for the troops

AP:

Democrats were furious that the GOP leadership allowed none of the 35 amendments they had proposed earlier to be voted on. They particularly wanted provisions that would exempt from the new bankruptcy requirements military personnel returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, and people whose indebtedness is the result of financial identity theft.

Identity theft is a real problem. So is getting your life together after being in Iraq or Afghanistan.

What I really wonder about though, is why we're giving this giveaway to the credit card companies- they charge usurious interest because of the risk of default.

Hopefully, in the long run, this will cause people to use credit cards less. But it is also likely to help torpedo the economy.



HT Kos

Interesting useless post on cooking verbs

link

Which of course is part of a more interesting language blog.


And all because I was bored and wanting to include words in a report that were common in restaurant reviews, just to get me to write the report.

Keeper from Kos

The Myth of Low Prices at Wal-Mart.

Wow- this foreign currency stuff is even more complicated than I'd thought...

I hate to bash the China bashers, but this article from the London Times is the thing to read to understand just how simple-minded some folks are being about this currency stuff.

I quote:

...The dollar and the euro should depreciate against Asian currencies. But how is this to be achieved? At present all Asian governments, with the partial exception of Japan, either peg their currencies officially to the dollar (as in China and Hong Kong) or spend tens of billions of dollars to intervene in the foreign exchanges. This currency intervention is openly justified by Asian politicians as a means of protecting competitiveness and promoting exports. This Asian currency mercantilism represents an export subsidy and trade distortion far bigger than the steel, textile and aircraft disputes, on which the US and European trade ministers waste most of their time.

Why, then, has nothing been done to force the Asians to abandon their currency manipulation? The answer is surprisingly simple. Markets and G7 policymakers have focused on the only two Asian countries that seemed to matter — Japan and China. But on closer inspection, neither Japan nor China, turned out to be appropriate targets.

Japan has not intervened in its currency markets for more than a year. And when Tokyo was artificially holding down the yen, it had a reasonable justification — a cheap yen was need to help to pull the world's second-largest economy out of a 12-year recession, which was doing the global trading system even more harm than the undervalued yen. Now that the Japanese economy is recovering, it could certainly cope with a gradual strengthening of the yen. But Japan’s relatively high labour costs relative to Asian countries such as Korea, Taiwan and Singapore, which are now at a comparable technological level, make the Japanese nervous about being undercut by cheap-currency competitors.

China, meanwhile, has been selling renminbi (RMB) and buying dollars not so much to keep its exports competitive, but to maintain some semblance of stability in its domestic banking system. Moreover, while China has a large surplus with the US and Europe, its overall global trade is not far from balance, because of the enormous deficits it runs against Japan, Korea and Taiwan. On closer inspection, it turns out that much of the value of the goods shipped by China to the US and Europe actually originates in Japan, Korea and Taiwan. Finally, China's wages are so low that even a huge RMB revaluation would be no help to labour-intensive industries in the US and Europe, which China would continue to undercut. The beneficiaries of an RMB revaluation would be factories in Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines, not in South Carolina or Spain...

For these reasons, the Chinese and Japanese would almost certainly be willing to participate in a currency revaluation which extended across the whole of Asia but they see no reason why they should take the lead. But if Japan and China will not lead, who can? Two months ago, I suggested a possible answer on this page. The smaller Asian economies, specifically the five newly industrialised “Tiger economies”: Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. These are the countries with the world’s biggest trade surpluses relative to GDP. Their industrial structures are now directly competitive with Western countries. Although living standards in Taiwan, Korea and Singapore are comparable to those in the US and Europe, wages are 50 to 70 per cent below Western levels.

Moreover, these countries have been accumulating reserves much faster than either China or Japan. Korea foreign exchange reserves at the end of March stood at $205 billion, and Taiwan's at $247 billion, compared with Japan’s $841 billion and China’s $610 billion. Since the Korean and Taiwanese economies are about one-eighth the size of Japan and China, their reserve accumulation has been far more aggressive — and potentially disruptive to global trading. This is even more true of Malaysia and Singapore.

So far, neither investors nor Western policymakers have paid much attention to these smaller Asian currencies. Most investors have considered buying these currencies to be too risky.

Buy Singapore. Buy Vietnam. Malaysia.

In NYC? Want good Japanese confections?

This is the place.


They also deliver anywhere in the US.

Mmmm...junk television

Carter today points me to "blogs4God" which in turn teaches me something I didn't know:

In the mail today I received the pilot episode of NBC's six-hour series "Revelations" which is set to premier Wednesday, April 13 (9-10pm ET) on NBC. Public relations firm Grace Hill Media has distributed the pilot to select Christian bloggers in an effort to tap into the power of the blogosphere.

The series centers around two unlikely partners - one who worships God and one who worships Science - that come to find the world is reaching The End of Days. Bill Pullman ("Independence Day") stars as Harvard professor Dr. Richard Massey, an astrophysicist whose science-based view of worldly events is challenged by a nun, Sister Josepha Montifiore, played by Natascha McElhone. God's miracles are evident, but Satanist Isaiah Haden (Michael Massee of "24") answers his own "Lord" to help ensure the Armies of Darkness win the apocalyptic battle to come.

Christians often complain about a lack of representation in mainstream media, but they often fail to admit that modern Christian shows often lack quality screenplays, acting, and production. Such is not the case with "Revelations." which offers a refreshingly well-made series putting Christianity in a positive light. It's truly a production that both Christians and secularists will enjoy.

To which I reply:

1. I sure as hell hope Richard Gere doesn't send me anything the next time he makes a Buddhist -themed flick.
2. Oh, good, NBC is telling everyone that scientists should be naturally opposed to religious people (out of the scientists' ignorance, of course).
3. Those nasty Satanists always bring about the apocalypse.

I'm sorry folks, but this isn't "quality Christian programming," it's junk television. But I'll try to tune in tonight if I'm awake; I think it's good thing to cultivate a taste for le bad television; but American "Christian" TV will have a long way to go before it even begins to approach the cheesy cinematic genius of something like Karan Arjun.

Update:

I noticed Salon has an amusing take-down of this show. I hadn't realized that David Seltzer, who wrote this show, also wrote "The Omen," which admittedly had me laughing at loud in the movie theater when I first saw it, simply because the principal characters were so dense that they couldn't see the foreshadowing.

But I don't think that Salon's right here: I won't be annoyed; if Seltzer lives up to his previous opus, this is going to be laugh-out-loud funny again.

Does anyone "get" it?

With the exception of the last one (although arguably it was, but mostly it was posted becasause a) I wanted to learn what Dogen's name was in kanji, and b) it's a good thing to remember what Dogen said on studying one's self), the posts in the past day or two have been about Joshu's Dog. Actually not about Joshu's Dog, they've been Joshu's Dog.

While this koan can have many meanings imparted to it, there is one specific meaning that is taken to be "passing" this koan. The use of the terms "passing" and "meaning" here is quite interesting, because it is probably unique usages of those terms.

The "answer" given to the koan, as the Westerners after WWII noted out of their anthropological curiosity about the Japanese and Zen, was not so much a rote answer as it is a way of being. In fact, the "answers" to the koans are supposedly widely known, and have been published in English and Japanese. But reading the answers will do you no good in sanzen or dokusan, if you've got any kind of a "teacher" who is properly deeply realized himself.

And this is ultimately why we practice Zen: to have the true freedom to have a very particular way of being. When you have this freedom, every word that koan Joshu's dog (interestingly translated by Google from Chinese as "son of a bitch") makes perfect sense. If you have no awareness that such a freedom can exist, it looks almost like sentences generated at random. "What the hell is up with that hot iron ball stuff anyway? " you might ask. Who the heck is this "General Kuan" (as it appears in some versions of the koan)? Why would I want to kill the Buddha?

I could go on ad nauseum, but suffice it to say that in this very particular way of being , suffering may be transcended. But it ain't static for nobody.

道元希玄禅師大和尚

"To study the self is to forget the self; to forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things."

趙州狗子: 日本語

リンク

趙州和尚、因(ちな)みに僧問う、
「狗子に還って仏性有りや無しや」
趙州云く「無(む)」

無門曰く「参禅は須(すべか)らく祖師の関を透るべし、妙悟は心路を窮めて絶せんことを要す。
祖関透らず、心路絶せずんば、尽(ことごと)く是れ依草附木の精霊ならん。
且らく道え、如何が是れ祖師の関。只だ者(こ)の一箇(いっこ)の無の字、乃(すなわ)ち宗門の一関なり。
遂に之を目(なず)けて禅宗無門関と曰(い)う。
透得過(とうとくか)する者は、但だ親しく趙州に見(まみ)ゆるのみならず、便ち歴代の祖師と手を把って共に行き、眉毛(びもう)厮(あ)い結んで同一眼に見、同一耳に聞くべし。
世に慶快ならざらんや。透関を要する底(てい)有ること莫しや。
三百六十の骨節、八万四千の毫竅(ごうきょう)を将(も)って、通身に箇の疑団を起こして、箇の無の字に参じ、昼夜に提撕(ていぜい)せよ。
虚無(きょむ)の会(え)を作すこと莫れ、有無の会を作すこと莫れ。
箇の熱鉄丸を呑了するが如くに相似(あいに)て、吐けども又た吐き出さず、従前の悪知悪覚を蕩尽し、久久に純熟して自然に内外打成(ないげだじょう)一片す。
唖子(あし)の夢を得るが如く、只だ自知することを許す。
驀然(まくねん)として打発(たはつ)せば、天を驚かし地を動じて、関(かん)将軍の大刀を奪い得て手に入るるが如く、仏に逢(あ)うては仏を殺し、祖に 逢うては祖を殺し、生死岸頭(しょうじがんとう)に於て大自在を得、六道四生の中に向かって遊戯三昧(ゆげさんまい)ならん。
且(しば)らく作麼生(そもさん)か提撕せん。
平生(へいぜい)の気力を尽くして箇の無の字を挙せよ。
若し間断せずんば、好(はなはな)だ法燭(ほうしょく)の一点すれば便ち著くるに似(に) ん。」
頌(じゅ)に曰(いわ) く
狗子仏性、全提正令。
纔(わず)かに有無に渉れば、喪身失命せん。

趙州狗子

link


【一　趙州狗子】

趙州和尚、因僧問、狗子還有佛性也無。州云、無。

無門曰、參禪須透祖師關、妙悟要窮心路絶。祖關不透心路不絶、盡是依草附木精靈。且道、如何是祖師關。只者一箇無字、乃宗門一關也。遂目之曰禪宗無門關。透得過者、非但親見趙州、便可與歴代祖師把手共行、眉毛厮結同一眼見、同一耳聞。豈不慶快。莫有要透關底麼。將三百六十骨節、八萬四千毫竅、通身起箇疑團參箇無字。晝夜提撕、莫作虚無會、莫作有無會。如呑了箇熱鐵丸相似、吐又吐不出。蕩盡從　前惡知惡覚、久久純熟自然内外打成―片、如唖子得夢、只許自知。驀然打發、驚天　動地。如奪得關將軍大刀入手、逢佛殺佛、逢祖殺祖、於生死岸頭得大自在、向六道四生中遊戲三昧。且作麼生提撕。盡平生氣力擧箇無字。若不間斷、好似法燭一點便著。

　　　頌曰
　　狗子佛性　　全提正令
　　纔渉有無　　喪身失命


(Chinese)

公案: 無

link

Or better yet, this link.

Joshu's Dog

A monk asked Joshu, a Chinese Zen master: `Has a dog Buddha-nature or not?'

Joshu answered: `Mu.' [Mu is the negative symbol in Chinese, meaning `No-thing' or `Nay'.]

Mumon's comment:s To realize Zen one has to pass through the barrier of the patriachs. Enlightenment always comes after the road of thinking is blocked. If you do not pass the barrier of the patriachs or if your thinking road is not blocked, whatever you think, whatever you do, is like a tangling ghost. You may ask: What is a barrier of a patriach? This one word, Mu, is it.

This is the barrier of Zen. If you pass through it you will see Joshu face to face. Then you can work hand in hand with the whole line of patriachs. Is this not a pleasant thing to do?

If you want to pass this barrier, you must work through every bone in your body, through ever pore in your skin, filled with this question: What is Mu? and carry it day and night. Do not believe it is the common negative symbol meaning nothing. It is not nothingness, the opposite of existence. If you really want to pass this barrier, you should feel like drinking a hot iron ball that you can neither swallor nor spit out.

Then your previous lesser knowledge disappears. As a fruit ripening in season, your subjectivity and objectivity naturally become one. It is like a dumb man who has had a dream. He knows about it but cannot tell it.

When he enters this condition his ego-shell is crushed and he can shake the heaven and move the earth. He is like a great warrior with a sharp sword. If a Buddha stands in his way, he will cut him down; if a patriach offers him any obstacle, he will kill him; and he will be free in this way of birth and death. He can enter any world as if it were his own playground. I will tell you how to do this with this koan:

Just concentrate your whole energy into this Mu, and do not allow any discontinuation. When you enter this Mu and there is no discontinuation, your attainment will be as a candle burning and illuminating the whole universe.

Has a dog Buddha-nature?
This is the most serious question of all.
If you say yes or no,
You lose your own Buddha-nature.

Nothing really much to blog today but the anniversary zen

I have a long post waiting to be written on family zen practice, or rather, family life as zen practice.

It'd be kind of a companion to business life as zen practice.

But other than that- and there's much practice involved therein, there's little for me on which to opine today.

So why not justinstead of reading Frank Rioh (who, while I agree with him usually, in this case it seems he doesn't appreciate life or death, and I don't want to spend any more words on that explaining why- read my earlier blog entries), try instead DarkSyde's informative piece on evolution over at Kos.

Highly recommended.

書道:

Beautiful Morning

Regarding the "new" ID blog

I'm amazed that at least now the trackbacks seem to work.

But it's the same content. ;-)

I'll take one example:"Is ID Science? Three Things to Keep in Mind."

This subject is one of my pet peeves with these guys. Somebody like Dembski should know what is science and what is not science. Let me begin with the first sentence:

Laypersons new to the debate over intelligent design encounter many conflicting claims about whether it is science.

Scientists and engineers, however, know what science is, and ID is not science.

Next,Dembski's first point:

Can the majority of scientists be wrong about scientific matters? Yes they can....Intelligent design is at present a minority position within science. But it is a position held by reputable scientists.[6]

Regarding Dembski's list, I have previously commented that in fact, in Dembski's own purported specialty, Information Theory, there is not one peer-reviewed article in the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory related to this subject, and for good reason. I don't know in details the credentials of the others, but this whole exercise is an attempt at an argument from authority.

In fact, it can also be true that the majority of scientists can be right about a given scientific matter.

Dembski's second point:

Just because an idea has religious, philosophical, or political implications does not make it unscientific. According to the late evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould, “Biology took away our status as paragons created in the image of God…. Before Darwin, we thought that a benevolent God had created us.”[7] Oxford University biologist Richard Dawkins claims, “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”[8]

The fact that Dawkins used evolutionary biology to argue for his atheism does not mean that therefore ID's religious implications make ID true or false, although the the very existence of ID is due to folks trying to use their religion to marginalize science.

"ID" is metaphysics, not science, and I for one wish Dembski et al. would stop pretending it is anything but metaphysics.

Meanwhile, international money mind has been really active

Link 1

PARIS (Reuters) - Accumulation of dollar reserves by some Asian countries could spark a systemic foreign exchange crisis, the chief economist of the World Bank said in an interview to be published on Thursday.

Francois Bourguignon told the Les Echos newspaper it was too early to talk of a speculative bubble but that the United States had to cut its deficits to head off a crisis. The paper released the text of the interview ahead of publication.

"For the moment I would not speak of a speculative bubble but of the danger of a systemic crisis linked to the accumulation of foreign exchange reserves," Bourguignon told the paper.

"Some countries, particularly Asian ones, have no interest in the parities of major currencies being modified. As a result, they are financing the enormous American current account deficit.

"Today, the danger is that some dealers are starting to think they must change the rules of the game, play dollar depreciation and move toward the yen and the euro. That would confront us with a real systemic risk.

(HT gwhayduke over at Kos)

This should be read synoptically with the gyrations with Congress, Treasury Secretary John Snow, and China.

Link 2

Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., introduced an amendment Wednesday to a State Department appropriations bill that would slap a 27.5% tariff on Chinese imports if China doesn't revalue its currency within 180 days.

Lawmakers have expressed growing frustration over China's refusal to weaken the yuan's peg to the dollar. They contend that the tie has left the yuan significantly undervalued, putting U.S. manufacturers and workers at a disadvantage and contributing to the sharp rise in China's trade surplus with the United States.

"We think there is no more broad-based and serious violation of the spirit and rules of international trade than a purposefully undervalued currency," Schumer said in a statement. "When those conditions are violated, the system must respond or else the actions of one nation will upset the whole global balance."

On the House side, Reps. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., and Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, are scheduled Thursday to unveil legislation that supporters said will use existing trade laws, in compliance with the World Trade Organization, to address China's currency peg. Critics of the Schumer proposal have argued that his approach would violate WTO rules.

This could make for some interesting consequences, to be sure, among them a) increased inflation in the US, b) your Chinese neighbors, friends and colleagues suddenly becoming a lot wealthier than you are (unless you happen to have Chinese folks in your family, as I do), and c) increased interest rates, because in yuan, we're in effect defaulting a bit on our debt obligations.

And now link 3

Treasury Secretary John Snow urged lawmakers Thursday to let financial diplomacy take its course in an effort to get China to ease the peg between its currency and the dollar...

In a move that caught the attention of the White House and top trade lawmakers, the Senate voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to defeat a procedural motion that would have set aside the Schumer-Graham amendment. A final vote on the language was delayed.

Snow, testifying at a Senate Banking Committee hearing on government-sponsored housing enterprises Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, said the U.S. trade deficit with China is "far larger than we'd like to see it," but argued that financial diplomacy with Beijing, not measures like Schumer's and Graham's, will prove effective.

"We're all waiting, Mr. Secretary," Schumer responded.

Some lawmakers contend that the peg has left the yuan significantly undervalued, putting U.S. manufacturers and workers at a disadvantage and contributing to the sharp rise in China's trade surplus with the U.S.

These people may think they're bashing China to be popular, but they'll only be bashing themselves. China does subsidize its economy by keeping the yuan undervalued, this has to be looked at carefully, and remember, these are the same folks that did the Terri Schiavo fiasco. Or at least less than a quorum of 'em did, and the rest went on vacation.

Anyway, the international financial system's really brittle, and isn't very tolerant of grandstanding at the moment.

"Naturalism" as behavioral determinism and Zen

As I have previously mentioned, Joe Carter often provides good grist for discussion, and today, I have to agree with this post, albeit for different reasons than he's expressed.

Carter's viewpoint takes off on the contradictions of a spirituality of a viewpoint grounded in behavioral determinism. Myself, having been spiritually weaned on the free will/determinism debate of the 70s and 80s, come at this from a somewhat different viewpoint, "naturally."

Let me first note that the folks over at the Center for Naturalism ("CFN"), Carter's (and my) bête noire du jour have a funny definition of naturalism. The dictionary definition of naturalism (for these purposes) should be:

"The system of thought holding that all phenomena can be explained in terms of natural causes and laws."

A Buddhist generally doesn't have a problem with this definition, although from our standpoint as agents who can attenuate suffering or increase it, we do have a problem with stipulating behavioral determinism.

CFN's "Spirtuality" section offers this article "Debunking Enlightenment" from the "Council for Secular Humanism," and that forms the basis of my main critique of this viewpoint/ogranization. To quote from that article, a book review by Thomas Clark on a book by John Horgan:

Part of the pull of mysticism is the noetic intuition that during such experiences we are in touch with some deep truth about the universe, but how are we to validate this intuition? Hallucinations, after all, are routinely mistaken for reality.

Horgan is well aware of the intimate connection of experience to the physical brain, and indeed a good part of his book is spent describing “mystical technologies” that seek to alter experience by modifying the neural states responsible for consciousness, either by traditional noninvasive routes such as meditation and chant, or by drugs and newfangled electronic devices. His staunch commitment to physicalism (or his bias, if you aren’t a materialist) is epitomized by the title of his chapter on Zen adept James Austin: “Zen and James Austin’s Brain.”

In researching the neural correlates of mystical experience, Horgan pays an extended visit to Canadian scientist Michael Persinger, who studies the effects of trans-cranial electromagnetic stimulation on consciousness, and Horgan interviews several proponents of “entheogenic” drugs, including Swiss psychiatrist Franz Vollenwieder, described as “arguably the world’s leader in psychedelic research involving humans.” He subjects himself to Persinger’s “God-machine,” but with such anticlimactic results that he wonders, as magnetic pulses play futilely on his cortex, “How will I turn this into a scene for my book?” In contrast, as vividly described in his penultimate chapter, he samples a South American hallucinogenic mixture known as ayahuasca and is pretty much flattened by the experience. But powerful though it is, Horgan’s interpretation is deflationary: “In retrospect, all my ayahuasca visions seemed more like products of my own brain than transpersonal revelations.” This same interpretation, of course, can be applied to any variety of mystical consciousness, however it’s produced, that purports to represent reality the way it “really” is. All such states are, materialists believe, a function of the brain, so why should we suppose that it’s just these states, as opposed to more mundane brain processes subserving ordinary cognition and perception, that get reality right? They might be earth-shattering, ego-dissolving, and imbued with deep certitude, but in retrospect, why should we suppose they are veridical?

Ah, yes, how do we know we've got it right? Especially given the life stories of certain Zen masters, mystics, and others- how can they screw up if they've got it right?

William James (you'll have to read Varieties etc. yourself) said something to the effect of the mystic's experience is valid unto himself, but we have no obligation to follow him. In Zen, we are highly dissuaded from following anyone, even if we study under a teacher or roshi (老師) for many years.

The short answer to Clark is that we know we've got "it" right because we can see how to practially "clear the area" to do good; the area being our own little minds.

Another answer to Clark is that, at least in the 老師 business, they're actually looking for something very specific. I won't tell you what it is, but it's very specific and it's apparent when the student has "it."

Clark's article deserves one other response:

Mystical experience, Horgan says, presents two existentially opposite possibilities, one in which the self is transcended in blissful unification, the other in which we are threatened with dissolution by the uncaring, impersonal abyss that surrounds our fragile human consciousness. The first possibility promises to solve the problem of life: to end (literally) self-induced suffering by losing the self and putting its problems permanently in abeyance. The second, of course, is the prospect of death as it’s often conceived: the end of the self and its world followed by the onset of nothingness. The first is what we most want, the second what we most fear – the complementary halves of the human condition.

With all due respect to Mr. Clark and Mr. Horgan, there is another possiblity: the full participation of the individual/environment. In saying the above these "naturalists" make the same mistake about Zen as mysticism that Christian apologists do. We don't escape suffering, but we do learn how to live where we are. Dogen Kigen Zenji Daiosho said, "When you find yourself where you are, there is practice that realizes the fundamental point." Another master said Zen is your ordinary mind. This ain't an escape.

Kudos to Carter for finding something I can find agreement with him; these guys at CFN and these secular humanists missed the point.

Update

I hadn't realized Carter got his post from Dembski. Of course, I vehemently disagree (too weak a term) with Dembski's ideas on "Intelligent" "Design," and functionally tend to act as a naturalist (but pragmatic: the free will versus determinism argument has little "cash value" for me), but based on the definition from CFN, I guess I'm an "anti-naturalist," which is kind of an absurd category, since I'm not a "supernaturalist."