Adam, Eve and T. Rex

from LA Times
Ashley Powers, Times Staff Writer

Giant roadside dinosaur attractions are used by a new breed of creationists as pulpits to spread their version of Earth's origins.

CABAZON, Calif. — Dinny the roadside dinosaur has found religion. The 45-foot-high concrete apatosaurus has towered over Interstate 10 near Palm Springs for nearly three decades as a kitschy prehistoric pit stop for tourists.

Now he is the star of a renovated attraction that disputes the fact that dinosaurs died off millions of years before humans first walked the planet.Dinny's new owners, pointing to the Book of Genesis, contend that most dinosaurs arrived on Earth the same day as Adam and Eve, some 6,000 years ago, and later marched two by two onto Noah's Ark. The gift shop at the attraction, called the Cabazon Dinosaurs, sells toy dinosaurs whose labels warn, "Don't swallow it! The fossil record does not support evolution."

The Cabazon Dinosaurs join at least half a dozen other roadside attractions nationwide that use the giant reptiles' popularity in seeking to win converts to creationism. And more are on the way.

"We're putting evolutionists on notice: We're taking the dinosaurs back," said Ken Ham, president of Answers in Genesis, a Christian group building a $25-million creationist museum in Petersburg, Ky., that's already overrun with model sauropods and velociraptors.

"They're used to teach people that there's no God, and they're used to brainwash people," he said. "Evolutionists get very upset when we use dinosaurs. That's their star.

"The nation's top paleontologists find the creation theory preposterous and say children are being misled by dinosaur exhibits that take the Jurassic out of "Jurassic Park."

"Dinosaurs lived in the Garden of Eden, and Noah's Ark? Give me a break," said Kevin Padian, curator at the University of California Museum of Paleontology in Berkeley and president of National Center for Science Education, an Oakland group that supports teaching evolution. "For them, 'The Flintstones' is a documentary.

"Tyrannosaurus rex and his gigantic brethren find themselves on both sides of the nation's renewed debate over the Earth's origins and the continuing fight over whether Charles Darwin's "The Origin of Species" or Genesis best explains the development of life.

Science holds that dinosaurs were the Earth's royalty for about 160 million years. Their reign ended abruptly, possibly after a meteorite smacked into the planet, but they're considered the forebears of birds.

Unearthing dinosaur bones that are millions of years old "doesn't prove evolution, but it shows the Genesis account doesn't work," said Nick Matzke, a spokesman for the National Center for Science Education.

Drivers who pull off Interstate 10 in Pensacola, Fla., are told a far different story at Dinosaur Adventure Land. Its slogan: "Where Dinosaurs and the Bible meet!"

The nearly 7-acre museum, low-tech theme park and science center embodies its founder's belief that God created the world in six days. The dinosaurs, even super carnivores such as T. rex, dined as vegetarians in the Garden of Eden until Adam and Eve sinned — and only then did they feast on other creatures, according to the Christian-based young-Earth theory.

About 4,500 years after Adam and Eve arrived, the theory goes, pairs of baby dinosaurs huddled in Noah's Ark, and a colossal flood drowned the rest and scattered their fossils. The ark-borne animals repopulated the planet — meaning that folk tales about fire-breathing beasts are accounts of humans battling dinosaurs, who still roamed the planet.

Kids romping through the $1.5-million Florida theme park can bounce on a "Long Neck Liftasaurus" swing seat; launch water balloons at a T. rex and a stegosaurus, and smooth their own sandbox-size Grand Canyons, whose formation is credited to the flood. A "fossilized" pickle purports to show that dinosaur bones could have hardened quickly. Got an upcoming birthday? Dinosaur Adventure Land does pizza parties.

"Go to Disneyland, they teach evolution. It's subtle; signs that say, 'Millions of years ago' " said evangelist Kent Hovind, the park's founder. "This is a golden opportunity to get our point across."

Carl Baugh opened his Creation Evidence Museum in the 1980s near Dinosaur Valley State Park in Glen Rose, Texas, where some people said fossilized dinosaur tracks and human footprints crisscrossed contemporaneously. The Texas museum sponsors a continuing hunt for living pterodactyls in Papua New Guinea. Baugh said five colleagues have spotted the flying dinosaurs, "but all the sightings were made after dark, and we were not able to capture the creatures.

"Organizers at Creation Research of the North Coast in Humboldt County, Calif., dream of building their own reptile park but lack funding and acreage. So do leaders at Project Creation in Mount Juliet, Tenn., who would need to raise about $1 million to assemble 30 to 50 pterodactyl and brachiosaur replicas to mingle with live chickens and goats.

At the Institute for Creation Research museum in Santee, a San Diego suburb, officials plan to enlarge its paleontological offerings.

The Holy Longing

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,
because the mass man will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive, what longs to be burned to death.

In the calm water of the love-nights,
where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
a strange feeling comes over you,
when you see the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught in the obsession with darkness,
and a desire for higher love-making sweeps you upward.
Distance does not make you falter.
Now, arriving in magic,
flying, and finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly and you are gone.

And so long as you haven't experienced this: to die and so to grow, you are only a troubled guest on the dark earth.

Translated from the German by Robert Bly

Darwin's theory evolves into culture war

By Lisa Anderson Tribune national correspondent

Eighty years after the Scopes Monkey Trial, the battle between those who support the validity of biological evolution and those who oppose it rages on in Kansas--and in more than a dozen other states around the country. The controversy may appear to be simply about the teaching of science in the classroom. But it represents a far more complex, widespread clash of politics, religion, science and culture that transcends the borders of conservative, so-called red states and their more liberal blue counterparts.

"This controversy is going to happen everywhere. It's going to happen in all 50 states. This controversy is not going away," said Jeff Tamblyn, 52, an owner of Merriam, Kan.-based Origin Films, which is making a feature film about the current fight over whether to introduce a more critical approach to evolution in Kansas' school science standards.

So far in 2005, the issue of evolution has sparked at least 21 instances of controversy on the local and/or state level in at least 18 states, according to the National Center for Science Education, an Oakland-based non-profit organization that defends the teaching of evolution in public schools. Although such controversies have occurred regularly over the years, some attribute the recent wave to the success of conservatives in 2004 elections.

At the national level, one attempt to diminish the prominence of evolution in public school curricula and introduce alternative views came in the form of a proposed amendment to the No Child Left Behind Act. Sponsored by Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), the amendment suggested that evolution is in question among scientists and recommended that a "full range of scientific views" be taught. But it was cut from the bill.

Seeking to explain the passion that the issue often ignites, Tamblyn said: "Partly, it's the mixture of religion and politics. If that doesn't get you going, what does?"

Indeed, the theory of evolution, which some opponents say is consonant with atheism because it provides no role for the divine, has been provoking controversy since 1859, when Charles Darwin published "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection."

And if the contentious nature of the Kansas State Board of Education's recent public hearings here on evolution is any indication, the issue remains as explosive today as it was in Tennessee 80 years ago.

Root of the controversy

In the summer of 1925, Clarence Darrow entered a Dayton, Tenn., courtroom to defend biology teacher John Scopes against charges of teaching Darwin's theory of evolution after it had been banned by the state. The highly publicized trial was the basis of the 1955 Broadway play "Inherit the Wind" and the 1960 film of the same title.

Then as now, the controversy over evolution revolved around two Darwinian theories that contradict the biblical version of creation: Darwin's assertion that all life, including humans and monkeys, descended from common ancestors and that it is all the result of natural selection and random mutation. While fundamentalists may recoil from those concepts, many religious authorities, including those in the Roman Catholic Church, hold that belief in God and evolution do not conflict.

As there was in 1999, when Kansas de-emphasized evolution in its school science standards--a move reversed by a more moderate board in 2001-- there has been snickering by critics over the state's "backwardness" and head-shaking over the idea that the validity of evolution, one of the foundations of modern science, is in question.

That has prompted many references to the famous question posed in an 1896 editorial by William Allen White, editor of Kansas' Emporia Gazette. Listing examples of what he deplored as the backwardness of the state, he wrote: "What's the matter with Kansas?"

But if Kansas is "backward," it's not alone. Year to date, at least 13 states have entertained legislation requiring a more critical approach to evolution in the classroom and/or allowing discussion of alternative explanations of the origins of humans, including the supernatural.

The most recent addition is New York, a true "blue" state, where an Assembly bill was introduced May 3 requiring schools to teach both evolution and intelligent design.

Intelligent design, which some critics consider an attempt to get around the Supreme Court's ban on teaching overtly religious creationism, credits an unnamed intelligence or designer for aspects of nature's complexity still unexplained by science.

Whether any of this proposed legislation concerning evolution passes, it is evident that many Americans share the thinking behind it, according to poll after poll, including a recent Tribune/WGN-TV poll.

Partly in response to concerns expressed by such conservative Christian groups as the Illinois Family Institute, the Illinois State Board of Education eliminated the term "evolution" from its science standards in 1997 and substituted the phrase "change over time." However, the word "evolution" does appear in the board's Science Performance Descriptors, a list of grade-specific material over which students must demonstrate mastery.

The Tribune/WGN-TV poll of 1,200 Illinois registered voters, conducted May 5-10, found that 58 percent favor teaching Darwin's theory but 57 percent also are open to teaching views opposed to it. In fact, 57 percent said they believe that both evolution and creationism should be included in school curricula. The poll by Mt. Prospect, Ill.-based Market Shares Corp. has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

And 58 percent of Illinois voters polled said they believe teaching creationism does not violate the constitutional separation of church and state.

Supreme Court prohibition

But in 1987 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to the contrary in Edwards vs. Aguillard. The court held that to teach creationism, or so-called creation science, in public schools implies a state endorsement of a religious view and thus violates the 1st Amendment's prohibition on government establishment of religion.

Nonetheless, the views on evolution expressed by Illinois voters mirror those of Americans overall, according to earlier polls by Gallup and others.

According to a November national Gallup poll, "only about a third of Americans believe that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is a scientific theory that has been well supported by the evidence, while just as many say that it is just one of many theories and has not been supported by the evidence." The rest said they didn't know.

A CBS News poll taken the same month found that two-thirds of Americans want creationism taught with evolution. It also indicated that 55 percent of Americans believe God created humans in their present form and only 13 percent think that humans evolved without divine guidance.

Kansans will learn this summer whether schoolchildren will study evolution alone or in conjunction with criticism of Darwin's theory. Schools are not bound to teach by standards set by the state board. However, teachers, already sometimes nervous about teaching evolution, know that board-recommended material may appear on state science assessment tests, said Steven Case, assistant director of the Center for Science Education at the University of Kansas and chairman of the state's Science Standards Writing Committee.

The majority of the 26-member committee recommended retaining current standards regarding evolution, while eight members disagreed and presented their own minority report, advocating not only a curriculum more critical of evolution but a redefinition of science that goes beyond explanations rooted in nature.

Should the board approve the more critical approach, as is considered likely given its conservative majority, it would open the door to alternative explanations for life on Earth that go beyond natural causes, including intelligent design.

That infuriates many scientists, the majority of whom solidly support Darwin's theory and deny there is any scientific controversy surrounding it. They point out that in science, a "theory" is not merely a guess but a tested concept based on long-term observation and evidence. The National Academy of Sciences, along with the rest of the national scientific community, refused to send witnesses to the Kansas hearings, claiming that the event was rigged against mainstream science and that its participation would confer the kind of scientific credibility that intelligent design seeks.

However, the reasoning behind its position may have seemed confusing, and even condescending, to some Kansans. Past arguments over evolution often have been cast as a culture clash between the Darwinist scientific elite and ordinary, less-educated citizens.

This conflict was neatly summed up by the headline at the top of a news release issued by the Discovery Institute at the close of the hearings: "Darwinists Snub Kansas, Refuse to Answer Questions about Scientific Problems with Evolutionary Theory." The Seattle-based Discovery Institute advocates criticism of Darwin's theory and supports scholarship on intelligent design.

To represent mainstream science at the hearings, the state recruited Topeka attorney Pedro Irigonegaray, a supporter of Darwin's theory, who cross-examined the nearly two dozen witnesses appearing on behalf of those advocating the revisions. His counterpart was John Calvert, an attorney and managing director of the Kansas-based Intelligent Design Network, a non-profit organization promoting intelligent design.

In September, what promises to be a test case on intelligent design will come to trial in Pennsylvania, where Dover-area schools last fall decided to require that students be made aware of intelligent design and of criticism of Darwin's theory. Parents have filed suit against the school board, arguing that intelligent design is not science but creationism in disguise.

Evolution critics cite science

Proponents of intelligent design assert that there is a scientific rationale to their criticism of evolution. One who testified at the Kansas hearings is Jonathan Wells. A molecular biologist, Wells also is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture.

"We can infer from evidence that some features of the natural world are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than unguided natural processes," Wells said in a phone interview. "Among the latter would be random mutation and natural selection. They're factors, but not sufficient to give a full account.

"I think Darwinism is pseudoscience," he said.

Supporters of the theory of evolution say the same thing about intelligent design.

"Despite how they want to redefine it, science itself appeals only to natural explanations. It doesn't say there are no other explanations," said Harry McDonald, a retired biology teacher and president of Kansas Citizens for Science, a pro-evolution group formed during the fight over standards in 1999.

The Kansas Board of Education will take a preliminary vote in June and a final vote later this summer on revisions to the science standards. But given the 6-4 advantage of conservatives on the board, few believe the outcome is in doubt--although any revisions can be reversed if the composition of the board changes, as happened in 2001.

"I fear that there will be a lack of logic, that emotion is going to rule and, as a result, our science standards will be severely compromised," said Irigonegaray, slumping into a seat in Topeka's Memorial Hall after delivering a 108-minute argument on behalf of mainstream science on May 12, the last day of public hearings.

He paused, then added, "I warn America to be on the lookout for this problem because it's a national phenomenon, not just a Kansas problem."

Alternative theories to evolution

Since Charles Darwin published the theory of biological evolution in 1859, his assertions that humans share common ancestry with all life on the planet and that they evolved to their present form through natural selection and mutation have clashed with the beliefs of those who adhere to the Bible's story that God created the world and created Adam and Eve in his image.

Opponents of evolution have their own vocabulary list. Among the key terms are:

CREATIONISM--Advanced by religious conservatives in response to Darwin's theory, creationism holds that God alone created the world and all life in it as it is today. "Young Earth" creationists take the Bible's Book of Genesis literally and believe the Earth is less than 10,000 years old. "Old Earth" creationists do not take Genesis literally but dispute evolution. "Creation science" claims scientific evidence for the biblical version of creation.

INTELLIGENT DESIGN--Considered a successor to creationism, intelligent design became popular in the early 1990s after the U.S. Supreme Court banned the teaching of creationism in public schools in 1987. Framed in scientific language but devoid of biblical or theistic references, intelligent design posits that there are weaknesses in Darwin's theory and suggests that an unnamed intelligence must have designed complex aspects of nature still unexplained by science.

Lisa Anderson
lbanderson@tribune.com

Terrorism of the Religious Right

The Religious Right:
An Anti-American Terrorist Movement

By Carolyn Baker

When I was in college, I wrote a research paper that changed my life forever. I had grown up in a fundamentalist Christian family living in the buckle of the Bible Belt where I was fed a steady diet of racism and Cold War anti-communism. My grandfather had been a member of the Klan in the 1920s, and as a high school student, I was saving money to join the John Birch Society. Most personally detrimental to me, however, was the denigration by my high-school-educated parents of higher education. "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing," they exhorted from the Book of Proverbs in the Old Testament. And, when I insisted on attending college, they reminded me incessantly that the wisdom of man is foolishness in the eyes of God. However, getting an education from a fundamentalist, Bob Jones University-like institution would be acceptable. I did not attend Bob Jones, but almost miraculously, given the fact that I was attending a similar institution, I started to think critically, and therefore, from their perspective, my parents' caveat that "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" was validated.

In the second semester of my freshman year, I chose to write a research paper on race. It was 1964, and that summer, the Congress would pass the Civil Rights Act. Throughout my high school years, Martin Luther King was becoming a household word, and few people in my world held anything but contempt for the "colored communist sympathizer."

As I reflect on my innocence at that age, but more importantly, my thirst for knowledge, I recall the hours of reading and research invested in the topic. Specifically, I set out to discover if African Americans were genuinely equal with whites. Pathetically, I was actually seeking evidence for the humanity of blacks. On the one hand, that I needed to research the topic in order to grasp that African Americans were my brothers and sisters was tragic, but on the other hand, that particular research project at that particular time in my life opened one door and closed another permanently, forever, and there was no turning back. I didn't get an A on the paper, but it launched for me a journey of social justice that I have been on ever since.

Today, as I witness the possibility of losing the last shreds of liberty to a fundamentalist theocracy, I am reminded once again of my college research paper and how "dangerous" research, critical thinking, and asking the right questions can be. All those years ago, I extricated myself from the fundamentalist Christian programming of my family and subculture, and now I am watching it threaten to engulf my entire country.

To even attempt to understand the religious right, which many are now naming "Dominionism", one must grasp the mental duress it holds on its followers. I should know; I was one of them. Axiomatic in the worldview of the fundamentalist, born-again Christian is: "I have the truth, I'm right; you don't have the truth, you're wrong." As a result, critical thinking, research, or intellectual freedom of exploration are not only unnecessary, they are dangerous and potentially heretical. Paul Krugman noted in a recent article that while the religious right bashes academia for its "liberal bias", studies of the political persuasions of college and university professors indicate that persons who prefer academia as a lifelong career tend to be more liberal, just as those who prefer the military as a lifelong career tend to be more conservative.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/printer_040505H.shtml

The halls of academia do not spawn the likes of Tim LaHaye or Pat Robertson. Remember, "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing." But simply shunning critical thinking does not make one a terrorist. What does, however, is the notion that because one "has the truth" and everyone else who believes differently is "wrong", those individuals will be condemned to spend eternity in hell and must be incessantly reminded of their fate and their "inferior" status in the eyes of God. Moreover, because of one's "superior" spiritual status, one has the so-called "divine authority" to subvert, by whatever means necessary, the very machinery of government in order to establish a theocracy in which one's worldview is predominant.

When sufficiently pressed, Christian fundamentalists intractably argue that people are poor because they have not been born again. Like the Puritans of seventeenth-century America, wealth is a sign that one is following the will of God, and poverty indicates that one is not. People are poor because they are doing something to cause themselves to be poor, and whatever that may be, the underlying cause is that they do not have a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ." Increasingly, one sees many faces of color in fundamentalist congregations, but those individuals are almost without exception, born-again Christians who tow the dominionist line with other people of color.

Dominionism deplores the mental health system. Like those who are poor, the mentally ill would not be so if they were born again Christians. After all, mental illness is a label given by the Dr. Phil's of the world to people whose minds have been devoured by Satan. What they really need is Christian conversion and of course, a great deal of medication from the pharmaceutical lobby. The only valid therapist is Jesus; down with Oprah, God bless Joyce Meyer. Obviously, according to Dominionism, government should not be financing mental health programs.

And what about addictions? In case you haven't caught on to the drill yet, Jesus is the answer to that one as well. Who needs a Twelve-Step program? There's only one step: Accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior as soon as possible, and your addictions will be erased faster than those eighteen minutes on the Richard Nixon tapes. (Remind me to write another article on the religious right AS an addiction.)

Christian fundamentalism in "cafeteria style" has chosen which parts of Jesus' teachings it chooses to honor and which not. Preference is always given to the "I am" passages such as those in the Gospel of John in which Jesus says, " I am the door; the bread of life; the way, the truth, and the life; the light of the world; the living water," and so on, supposedly claiming to be God and commanding his listeners to accept him as the only way to live forever with God in heaven and escape eternity in hell. Little attention is given to the Sermon on the Mount and the many passages where Jesus condemns the wealthy and the religious leaders of his time for their callous, hypocritical, mean-spirited absence of compassion. In fact, theologians who pay much attention to Jesus' teachings on compassion are viewed as bleeding hearts, unorthodox, and not really Christian. For this reason, Pat Robertson stated on his 700 Club Program, January 14, 1991: "You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense. I don' have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist."

Let us not overlook the obvious: Dominionism is about dominion-over women, children, the poor, people of color, alternative sexual orientations, and the earth. It fits so nicely with fascist tyranny.

Christian fundamentalism is fundamentally UN-American. Dominonists clearly desire a revised United States Constitution that will institute a fundamentalist Christian theocracy. As Katherine Yurica has so assiduously reported, the Domionist agenda would shred the Constitution and end the democratic republic our Deist founding fathers hammered out for five grueling months in 1787 in Philadelphia.

http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/ConstitutionRestorationAct.htm

In fact, Pat Robertson believes that only Christian people should interpret and benefit from the Constitution. Again, on his 700 Club, December 30, 1981, he stated that "The Constitution of the United States, is a marvelous document for self-government by Christian people. But the minute you turn the document into the hands of non-Christian people and atheistic people they can use it to destroy the very foundation of our society." Never mind that most of the founding fathers did not consider themselves Christian and clearly, adamantly, and unequivocally defended the right of everyone in America to believe-or not believe, as he/she chooses.

Replacing this republic would be the Dominionist theocracy which pronounces itself above the rule of law and claims to be directed by the "higher law" of the Bible. In that society, abortion would be illegal, even in cases of rape or incest; capital punishment would be mandatory in every state, and for some Dominionists, it should be extended to anyone with a sexual orientation other than heterosexual; the nation's entire infrastructure and economy would be privatized; public schools would be turned into essentially Dominionist parochial schools, and no social services would exist except those of faith-based charities. The fastest-growing industry in the nation, the prison system, would undoubtedly find itself at the top of the financial markets as hordes of "unbelievers" were incarcerated. However, given the multitudes of fundamentalist Christian organizations now proselytizing in the nation's prisons, the heathen masses would be given "one more chance" to be born again, hence sending them to prison would be doing God's work and society a favor.
Most egregious, and certainly paralleling terrorism's culture of death is the fundamentalist Christian contempt for life-I repeat: contempt for life. As Benedictine Sister, Joan Chittister notes, being "pro-birth" is not the same as being pro-life.

http://www.pbs.org/now/society/chittister.html

Forcing females to have children without providing what they need financially, emotionally, and educationally is a pro-birth agenda that murders countless bodies and souls. Because they don't think the Sermon on the Mount is really very important, these individuals have an appalling disconnect, fawning over the decaying body of a woman in a permanent vegetative state while praising the demise of over 100,000 innocent Iraqi citizens and touting the patriotism of some 1,600 dead U.S. troops.

The religious right of twenty-first century America is anti-American, inherently violent, and a cruel, tyrannical, punitive, force of death and destruction. In its mindset, adult human lives do not matter because the human condition itself is inherently evil resulting in eternal and everlasting punishment in hell unless its members are redeemed in a prescribed manner by the fundamentalist God/man/savior, Jesus Christ. Moreover, with an embarrassingly adolescent flamboyance, Dominionists shamelessly rape, pillage, and desecrate the earth because in the first place, their Bible has given them authority over all things human and in the second place, their "imminent" apocalyptic rapture, transporting them from the human "veil of tears" to live happily ever after in heaven, entitles them to do so. Meanwhile, we the unredeemed, the unbelievers, the poor, the feminists, the gay and lesbian, the disabled, the homeless, the mentally ill, the addicted, and those who are conscientiously following divergent spiritual paths of their choice, are suffering in the wake of Christian fundamentalism's devastation of the economy, the earth, and the human race. But this is what we deserve for not becoming born-again devotees of their Jesus. And we deserve even worse-to burn in hell for all of eternity. Hence, we are expendable, inconsequential, and a force to be conquered, broken, imprisoned, or killed.

In his article, "Feeling The Hate," in the May, 2005 issue of Harpers Magazine, Chris Hedges conjectures that we may well see a civil war in America between the religious right and everyone else who does not identify as such. I do not know if this will happen, but I do know that the demented logic and circular reasoning of "the Bible says" fundamentalists must be challenged and exposed at every turn for what it is: Intellectual, emotional, and spiritual terrorism un-American, un-democratic, inhuman. Furthermore, I wouldn't be surprised if some of their children, somewhere, sometime, write research papers that prove to the world that "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing."

Carolyn Baker is an adjunct professor of history living in Southern New Mexico. She can be contacted at cbaker@nmsu.edu

Mindful of the Censor

by John Mordell

After photographing the start of a meditation class at Northeastern University in Boston, Mass., for a story on students and spirituality, I put my cameras down, turned off my cell phone, sat down, crossed my legs, and joined in.

Meditation for me is quieting my mind by focusing on the sensation of my breath entering and exiting my body. When my mind strays, as it often does - to what's next on the schedule, errands to run, what so-and-so said - I gently return to the focus on my breath. Try it. It's hard work.

Sitting in the Sacred Space at Northeastern, my thoughts veered toward criticizing my just concluded photo shoot, as the voice of my creative censor started chattering. "You did not get close enough to the meditators, like your buddy Mark Peterson would have." Back to the breath. "But his dynamic style can be less than flattering," I countered. "Yeah, but his photos have more impact that yours," kept up the relentless naysayer. Back to the breath. "You should have highlighted the serene expressions and the room." Back to the breath.

Then finally, "THAT'S NOT WHAT I DO, NOT HOW I SHOOT", I shot back my internal critic. I realized that I needed to stop comparing my style with others. To just shoot my own stuff. And then I felt peace in my heart.

Several years ago I was on a wild ride between three New England states, carrying out three different assignments in one day, and needing to transmit some of material back to the office to meet a deadline. My middle stop was in Vermont, to photograph a teacher of peace and meditation, Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh, at one of his monasteries. I had read many of his books and it was a treat to meet him.

They invited me to stay and have a silent, meditative meal with them, but I had to transmit my photos and get to my next shoot. "Stay for lunch, and everything will work out," said one nun. "Tell that to my editor," I replied. However, I stayed, and learned a great deal about mindful living.

Then, trying to use one of the monastery's phone lines, and having problems connecting, I was getting more and more stressed out, worrying about getting to my final shoot before daylight faded. I said to one of the monks, "I just realized that 80% of my life is insane." He did not reply, but his expression indicated that he was not going to argue with me.

Hours later, as dusk approached, I screeched into a buffalo rancher's place in New Hampshire. Great, deep dark animals stood out against a sharply contrasting layer of snow on the ground. I groaned. But we hiked to an upper pasture, and just then, a shaft of sun pierced the trees.

Maybe the monks are onto something.

The New Pope and Journalism's Crisis of Faith

by Norman Solomon

The papacy of Benedict XVI confronts journalists with a key question: How much critical scrutiny is appropriate when a religious leader gains enormous power?

So far, most American media outlets seem to be walking on eggshells to avoid tough coverage of the new pope. Caution is in the air, and some of it is valid. Anti-Catholic bigotry has a long and ugly history in the United States. News organizations should stay away from disparaging the Catholic faith, which certainly deserves as much respect as any other religion.

At the same time, the Vatican is a massive global power. Though it has no army, it is more powerful than many governments. And in the present day, the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church is the capital of political reaction garbed in religiosity. Many dividing lines between theology and ideology have virtually disappeared.

After more than two decades as a Vatican power broker, Joseph Ratzinger is now in charge as Pope Benedict XVI. He is extremely well-positioned to push a longstanding agenda that includes hostility toward AIDS prevention measures, women's rights, gay rights and movements for social justice. No one in the hierarchy was more committed to stances like vehement opposition to condoms while millions of people contracted cases of AIDS that could have been prevented. And he has been the commander of the Vatican's war on liberation theology.

During the 1980s, it was Ratzinger who led the charge from Rome against the wondrous spirit and vibrant activism that galvanized Catholics and others across Latin America. While many priests, nuns and laity bravely joined together to challenge U.S.-backed regimes inflicting economic exploitation, intimidation, torture and murder with impunity, Ratzinger used the Vatican's authority to undermine such community-based resistance. He silenced outspoken Church officials and installed orthodox clergy who would go along with the deadly status quo.

Hours after the smoke cleared over the Vatican and the world learned the name of the new pope, Mary Jo McConahay -- an insightful journalist who has long covered Latin America -- wrote for Pacific News Service about a question blowing in the wind. "What would have happened, Guatemalans and El Salvadorans ask to this day, if Ratzinger and Pope John Paul II had regarded the Latin American call for liberation from autocratic rulers with the same force with which the European churchmen supported the Polish Solidarity revolution?"

For right-wing religious activists, Ratzinger has been a Godsend. And now that he's running a church with 1.l billion members, the odds are excellent that he will proceed to gladden the hearts of misogynists, homophobes, and anti-left crusaders around the world. Contrary to the predictable media spin since Tuesday about the uncertainty of his papal course (reminiscent of the claims in early 2001 that George W. Bush might turn out to be some kind of moderate president), everything we know about Ratzinger's extensive record during the last quarter-century tells us that he is a reactionary zealot who is determined to shove much of the world's history of progressive social change into reverse. He is a true believer whose ideological theology accepts scant diversity and no dissent.

The new papacy is a huge gift to the minority of conservatives in the United States who are trying to impose their version of morality on the country and the world.

Soon after the 2000 election, an astute analyst of far-right religious movements, Frederick Clarkson, wrote that "both the evangelical and Catholic Right are developing and promoting a long-term, fundamental approach to the practice of faith that links political involvement with faith itself. In this case, the Catholic Church is building on its own history and also benefiting from the Christian Right's recent efforts to create wider space for public expressions of religiosity in civil discourse." Clarkson added that "a shift in the political culture suggests that personal and unedited expressions of religious belief for political purposes are no longer considered unseemly. Indeed, the suggestion is that they are beyond reproach."

And that's much of the problem. When a highly debatable position is "beyond reproach" -- when religiosity provides cover for all manner of manipulations and repression -- it's easier for demagogic power-mongers to get away with murder.

Journalists should not let any pious proclamations intimidate them. When the policies of a president or prime minister result in suppression of human rights or fuel public-health disasters, the news media should not hesitate to expose the consequences. And the policies of a pope should be no less scrutinized.

Norman Solomon's latest book, "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death," will be published in early summer. His columns and other writings can be found at: www.normansolomon.com.

New Spong Book is Out

John Spong, a retired Episcopal bishop and prominent spokesperson for liberal Christianity, focuses this book on "terrible texts" which have been used to justify such "sins" as overbreeding, degradation of the environment, sexism, child abuse and anti-Semitism. These biblical texts, according to Spong, are not the incontrovertible Word of God, but flawed human responses to perceived threats. An incendiary example of this is Spong's assertion that Paul was a closeted gay man whose anti-gay statements were motivated by little more than his own self-loathing.

Spong does not stop there; in the course of the book he suggests that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married; that none of the supernatural events described in the Bible took place--including the resurrection--and that theism itself is a misunderstanding of God. Interestingly, readers who do not endorse Spong's radical reinterpretation of Christianity will still find much in this book they can affirm. His explanation of the roots of Christian anti-Semitism is fascinating and much less challenging to orthodoxy than many of his other claims. Unfortunately, Spong leads with his weakest section, which features a variety of poorly constructed arguments claiming, but giving inadequate evidence for, a strong causal relationship between biblical injunctions and both overpopulation and environmental problems. Nonetheless, this absorbing book has much to offer readers of all persuasions.