AZspot

"The reference of the metaphor in religious traditions is to something transcendent that is not..."

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 19:55:17 +0100

“The reference of the metaphor in religious traditions is to something transcendent that is not literally any thing. If you think that the metaphor is itself the reference, it would be like going to a restaurant, asking for the menu, seeing beefsteak written there, and starting to eat the menu. For example, Jesus ascended to heaven. The denotation would seem to be that somebody ascended to the sky. That’s literally what is being said. But if that were really the meaning of the message, then we have to throw it away, because there would have been no such place for Jesus literally to go. We know that Jesus could not have ascended to heaven because there is no physical heaven anywhere in the universe. Even ascending at the speed of light, Jesus would still be in the galaxy; astronomy and physics have simply eliminated that as a literal, physical possibility, But if you read “Jesus ascended to heaven” in terms of its metaphoric connotation, you see that he has gone inward – not into outer space but into inward space, to the place from which all being comes, into the consciousness that is the source of all things, the kingdom of heaven within. The images are outward, but their reflection is inward. The point is that we should ascend with him by going inward. It is a metaphor of returning to the source, alpha and omega, of leaving the fixation on the body behind and going to the body’s dynamic source.”

- Joseph Campbell

The Price of Silence: Supreme Court Rules That Pre-Miranda Silence Can Be Used Against Defendant To Prove Guilt

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 19:25:09 +0100

The Price of Silence: Supreme Court Rules That Pre-Miranda Silence Can Be Used Against Defendant To Prove Guilt:

In a major loss for individual rights vis-a-vis the police, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that prosecutors could use a person’s silence against them in court if it comes before he’s told of his right to remain silent. The prosecutors used the silence of Genovevo Salinas to convict him of a 1992 murder. Because this was a non-custodial interview, the Court ruled that the prosecutors could use his silence even though citizens are allowed to refuse to speak with police. It is of little surprise that the pro-police powers decision was written by Samuel Alito who consistently rules in favor of expanding police powers.

Bob Englehart: NSA Spying

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 18:54:33 +0100

Bob Englehart: NSA Spying

It's A Turd! It's Plain! Man Of Steel, Reviewed.

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 18:00:06 +0100

It's A Turd! It's Plain! Man Of Steel, Reviewed.

"But here’s what journalists should be asking at this point: What data does the government store? How..."

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 17:09:25 +0100

“But here’s what journalists should be asking at this point: What data does the government store? How long have they been storing it? Do they ever delete it? All of the government arguments around 4th Amendment protections center on policy decisions regarding what the NSA and FBI can look at. But as they make these arguments they imply that the data is already sitting on government servers. Snowden, of course, doesn’t imply this, he says it flat out.”

- Journalists Need To Start Asking About Storage, Not Access

"Americans have a right to know what kind of “evidence” or innuendo is sufficient to land..."

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 16:17:19 +0100

“Americans have a right to know what kind of “evidence” or innuendo is sufficient to land them on the No Fly List, and to have a hearing where they can defend themselves. Without this bare minimum, there is no meaningful check to correct the government’s mistakes or ensure that it uses the blacklisting power it claims fairly and appropriately. We are asking the court, therefore, to vindicate a basic yet fundamentally important proposition: a government black list that denies Americans the ability to fly without giving them an explanation or fair chance to clear their names violates the Constitution.”

- American Civil Liberties Union

The Constitution Applies When the Government Bans Americans From the Skies

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 15:26:03 +0100

The Constitution Applies When the Government Bans Americans From the Skies:

The government does not have the unchecked authority to place individuals on a secret blacklist without providing them any meaningful opportunity to object, the ACLU argued in a brief filed last Friday with the federal district court in Oregon.

We made the filing in Latif v. Holder, our lawsuit asserting that the government violated the Fifth Amendment due process rights of 13 Americans, including four military veterans, by placing them on the No Fly List and refusing to give them any after-the-fact explanation or a hearing at which they can clear their names.

Oguz Gurel: Social Media

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 14:11:15 +0100

Oguz Gurel: Social Media

"We have become a technologically addled society that is obsessed less with the question of whether..."

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 13:05:44 +0100

“We have become a technologically addled society that is obsessed less with the question of whether something is true or false, or good or evil, and more with the question of how something works and what its consequences will be. The technological realm has been promoted as the very model of thought for human relations and all sorts of human activities. Our society has come to scorn what is called humanism or the humanities. And I think that is terrible thing, because there are many things about human life that cannot be quantified. So the re-assertion of the centrality of humanistic ideas is a very high priority right now.”

- Leon Wieseltier

Rousseau Revisited

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:00:13 +0100

Rousseau Revisited:

Frequencies of violent deaths have been calculated for many tribal and state societies, studied by four different methods: observations by scientists, observations by others, oral histories, and archaeology. Each method has its own advantages and its own pitfalls, which I discuss. Four scholars – Samuel Bowles, Lawrence Keeley, Steven Pinker, and Richard Wrangham – have extracted the resulting numbers. They all conclude that the percentage of a population meeting a violent death per year, averaged over a long period of alternating war and peace, is on the average considerably higher in tribal societies than in state societies. This statement about averages does not deny that there are some peaceful tribal societies and some violent state societies, and that absolute death tolls are much higher in state societies because of their much higher populations.

Many people are initially surprised by this conclusion. Anyone could be excused for expecting that modern high-tech warfare with large armies would produce higher, not lower, percentage death tolls. The reasons for the initially surprising conclusion become clear when one reads accounts of tribal societies. Tribal warfare tends to be chronic, because there are not strong central governments that can enforce peace, while even the nations with the highest war-related death tolls in the 20th century (such as Russia, Germany, and Poland) were mostly at peace and only intermittently at war. In tribal warfare the fighting is carried out by all able-bodied men of any age, not just by a small professional army of young men. Killing of women and children is common in tribal warfare, but exceptional in state warfare. Tribal victors kill their captives and don’t take prisoners, because they can’t be readily imprisoned or exploited.

"The deep intuitions of most church doctrines are invariably profound and correct, but they are still..."

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 10:54:45 +0100

“The deep intuitions of most church doctrines are invariably profound and correct, but they are still expressed in mechanical and literal language that everybody adores, stumbles over, denies, or fights. Hold on for a while until you get to the real meaning, which is far more than the literal meaning! That allows you to creatively both understand and critique things—without becoming oppositional, hateful, arrogant, and bitter yourself. Some call this “appreciative inquiry” and it has an entirely different tone that does not invite or create “the equal and opposite reaction” of physics. The opposite of contemplation is not action; it is reaction. Much of the “inconsistent ethic of life,” in my opinion, is based on ideological reactions and groupthink, not humble discernment of how darkness hides and “how the light gets in” to almost everything. I hope I do not shock you, but it is really possible to have very “ugly morality” and sometimes rather “beautiful immorality.” Please think and pray about that.”

- Richard Rohr

3 Former NSA Employees Praise Edward Snowden, Corroborate Key Claims

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 09:49:32 +0100

3 Former NSA Employees Praise Edward Snowden, Corroborate Key Claims

US Civilian Employment To Population Ratio Since 1970

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 08:43:46 +0100

US Civilian Employment To Population Ratio Since 1970

"Every Tuesday, President Obama personally checks off the names of people he wants killed. George..."

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 07:38:38 +0100

“Every Tuesday, President Obama personally checks off the names of people he wants killed. George Bush, a bit more squeamish than Obama, never did that; but Mr. Obama felt those decisions were the president’s responsibility: he want[s] to keep his own finger on the trigger,” according to one report. A tidy, scheduled man, the President only picks his victims once a week, now called “Terror Tuesday.””

- The Drone Ranger: Obama’s Dirty Wars

Obama's Dangerous Dilemma

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 06:33:07 +0100

Obama's Dangerous Dilemma:

President Barack Obama, known for preferring thoughtful accommodation to tough-minded confrontation, finds himself caught in a political quandary that could have dire consequences for the world’s future.

His dangerous dilemma is this: the planet is facing a rising tide of existential threats – from widening income inequality to life-threatening global warming – that require coordinated and aggressive responses from nation states and particularly the United States. But, simultaneously, his support for expanded government surveillance and national security secrecy is undermining trust in government.

So, just when the people need government the most – to literally save the world – government is giving them more reasons to reject government. It is a moment when Obama’s proclivity for careful political calibrations adds to the danger.

If he doesn’t move quickly and decisively to let American citizens in on as many of the government surveillance secrets as reasonably possible – and dial back the dragnet on people’s personal information – he risks playing into the hands of anti-government extremists like the Tea Party who are now casting themselves as the protectors of America’s constitutional rights.

"Conservative media has never been about conservatism, and has always been about using conservatism..."

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 06:00:05 +0100

“Conservative media has never been about conservatism, and has always been about using conservatism as a vehicle to make money. oger Ailes doesn’t care about how the GOP is perceived or whether it wins elections. If Sarah Palin draws eyes, that’s who he is going to put on TV. So back comes Sarah Palin to make conservatives look clueless, and on and on it goes.”

- Sarah Palin’s Fox return proves conservative media outlets don’t care about conservatism

On Warfare and Weakness: Part 2, A Theology of Revolt

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 05:00:06 +0100

On Warfare and Weakness: Part 2, A Theology of Revolt:

A key biblical observation for Boyd is that the problem of evil wasn’t a problem for the OT and NT writers. Evil wasn’t a theological conundrum. Evil wasn’t an intellectual puzzle. Evil was a given, it was taken for granted. Evil was expected, and its existence didn’t cause a theological crisis.

That’s a stark contrast with our time where evil is the number one theological problem many of use face and wrestle with. So what’s the difference between then and now?

According to Boyd, the difference is due to changes in theological worldview. Specifically, there has been a shift away from the warfare worldview of the bible to what Boyd calls the classical-philosophical worldview. According to the warfare worldview of the OT and NT life is experienced as a battle between the good and evil. Much of creation is in revolt, rebelling against the rule of God. Given that perspective, evil is an expected and regular feature of the world. We encounter evil all the time, from moral evil to evil within the created order as seen in disease and death. And given this warfare view—that evil is to be expected—the encounter with evil doesn’t create a theological problem for the biblical writers.

By contrast, the existence of evil is a dumbfounding question within the classical-philosophical worldview. This worldview was created in the fusion of Christian theology with Greek categories of thought, where God was defined by categories like omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, and omnibenevolence. In light of these Greek categories the problem of evil becomes a real theological puzzle as God is assumed to exercise what Boyd calls “omnicontrol.” In the classical-philosophical worldview, where God is believed to be providentially in control of every event, the existence of evil is a real theological problem. God, in this worldview, seems to be the origin, creator and source of evil. Or, at the very least, God uses evil for some higher, providential purpose. Consequently, rather than raging or revolting against evil Christians peer into the tea leaves of tragedy trying to discern “God’s plan” for all the pain we are suffering.

Joel Pett

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 04:00:06 +0100

Joel Pett

"…when a person publicly says something like, “I’m going to be like Jesus even though I’m really mad..."

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 03:00:06 +0100

“…when a person publicly says something like, “I’m going to be like Jesus even though I’m really mad and would like to smash things and/or people, but clearly they are just mad at me because I talk about Jesus and I’m famous,” that is not ‘daring,’ ‘honest,’ ‘raw,’ or anything else. It is humble-bragging of the very worst kind, the kind that brings Jesus along to co-sign one’s own bullsh*t, and that is sly blasphemy.”

- Don’t Criticize Notorious Leader Donald Miller

6 Ideas For Those Needing Defensive Technology to Protect Free Speech from Authoritarian Regimes and 4 Ways the Rest of Us Can Help

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 02:00:05 +0100

6 Ideas For Those Needing Defensive Technology to Protect Free Speech from Authoritarian Regimes and 4 Ways the Rest of Us Can Help