Why not go all the way and declare Newtons laws worthless now that Einstein came along?
Because they're not worthless. Still plenty good for things above the quantum level.
Here also one needs to transcend a predominant level of ones mindstate to move up to higher states. One cannot reason well when living predominantly in a state of fear, grief, apathy, etc.
Whats the point of this - Is it not to put down people who choose Christianity in the 3rd world?
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What is the point of trying to use Maslow's heirarchy to put down folks like those in the next three articles:
The Economist</a>:<br />The government says there are 21m (16m Protestants, 5m Catholics). Unofficial figures, such as one given by the Centre for the Study of Global Christianity in Massachusetts, put the number at about 70m. But Mr Zhao is not alone in his reckoning. A study of China by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, an American think-tank, says indirect survey evidence suggests many unaffiliated Christians are not in the official figures. And according to China Aid Association (CAA), a Texas-based lobby group, the director of the government body which supervises all religions in China said privately that the figure was indeed as much as 130m in early 2008. <br /><br />
OTOH, I've read someone did a non-scientific poll - simply traveling through a lot of provinces and asking people about their religion and extrapolated only 40M - course an awful lot of extrapolation is involved in such a big country.
If so, it would mean China contains more Christians than Communists (party membership is 74m) and there may be more active Christians in China than in any other country. In 1949, when the Communists took power, less than 1% of the population had been baptised, most of them Catholics. Now the largest, fastest-growing number of Christians belong to Protestant “house churches”. <br />It is worth noting that even if the optimistic 130 million figure is true, that only represents about 10% of China's 1.3 billion population. Still this is much better than about 1% in 1949 or the current official count of 1.6%. Some further interesting points:<br />Private meetings in the houses of the faithful were features of the early Christian church, then seeking to escape Roman imperial persecution. Paradoxically, the need to keep congregations small helped spread the faith. That happens in China now. The party, worried about the spread of a rival ideology, faces a difficult choice: by keeping house churches small, it ensures that no one church is large enough to threaten the local party chief. But the price is that the number of churches is increasing. <br />Of course, doctrinal depth and regularity are hard to maintain in an illegal movement:<br />Abundant church-creation is a blessing and a curse for the house-church movement, too. The smiling Mr Zhao says finance is no problem. “We don’t have salaries to pay or churches to build.” But “management quality” is hard to maintain. Churches can get hold of Bibles or download hymn books from the internet. They cannot so easily find experienced pastors. “In China”, says one, “the two-year-old Christian teaches the one-year-old.”<br /><br />Because most Protestant house churches are non-denominational (that is, not affiliated with Lutherans, Methodists and so on), they have no fixed liturgy or tradition. Their services are like Bible-study classes. This puts a heavy burden on the pastor. One of the Shanghai congregation who has visited a lot of house churches sighs with relief that "this pastor knows what he is talking about." <br />Even more interesting:<br />All this amounts to something that Europeans, at least, may find surprising. In much of Christianity’s former heartland, religion is associated with tradition and ritual. In China, it is associated with modernity, business and science. “We are first-generation Christians and first-generation businessmen,” says one house-church pastor. In a widely debated article in 2006, Mr Zhao wrote that “the market economy discourages idleness. [But] it cannot discourage people from lying or causing harm. A strong faith discourages dishonesty and injury.” Christianity and the market economy, in his view, go hand in hand. <br />This doesn't surprise me a bit, nor would it surprise people such as <a href="http://www.soughtaftermedia.com/musunsetonwe.html">Vishal Mangalwadi</a> who has been pointing out for years that the superiority of the West is due largely to its Christian legacy.<br /><br />Via: <a href="http://christianfreedom.org/component/content/284.html?task=view">Christian Freedom International</a>. <br /><br />NOTE: When searching for the article (CFI did not provide a link) I found this article on the <a href="http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?source=most_commented&story_id=12333103">decline of capitalism in China</a>. So the news is not all good. However, as Christianity continues to advance, expect to see both the doctrinal issues noted above and the residual economic and social issues become less severe.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6708070-365485368932435181?l=jackofclubs.blogspot.com'/></div>
cc.bingj.com
The War For China's Soul
By SIMON ELEGANT / NANJING Sunday, Aug. 20, 2006
Several weeks after the attack, the witness is still trembling. "Everyone knew trouble was coming," the man says, describing the day last month that haunts him still. A fit-looking fortysomething wearing a T shirt and jeans, the man was a volunteer working on a half-completed church in a suburb of Hangzhou, a picturesque lakeside city 112 miles southwest of Shanghai. Financed by local Christians, the church was to serve a community of 5,000 parishioners. Hundreds of them gathered at the site on the afternoon of July 29, some joining the construction crew building the church. Others, many of them elderly parishioners, sat on plastic chairs surrounding the church, singing hymns.
The Christians surely knew they were testing the patience of local government officials, who insisted the building was illegal and had to be torn down. But few were prepared for what happened next. Witnesses told TIME that at about 2:30 p.m., thousands of uniformed police and plainclothes security officers appeared at the construction site. The police cleared a way through the crowds for a few drill-equipped backhoes, and the authorities then demolished the church. Witnesses say police bludgeoned people indiscriminately with nightsticks. "They were picking up women--some of them old ladies--by their hair and swinging them around like dolls, then letting them crash to the ground," says a man who watched the clash from across the street. A statement faxed to TIME by the information office of the Xiaoshan district government describes the scene differently, claiming that about 100 Christians "attacked and injured government officials" and that although the police detained a few protesters, none were injured. But the volunteer interviewed by TIME produced receipts from the local hospital attesting to his treatment for broken ribs, which he says many others suffered as well. "They treated us like dead dogs," he says. "Some of them scoffed at us as we lay there, saying, 'Where is your God now? Why can't he help you? If you want to go to heaven, we'll help you get there right now.'"
The crackdown in Hangzhou may seem unremarkable for a country where a public demonstration of any kind can still trigger a brutal government response. For openly religious Chinese, in particular, that's a constant threat. Human-rights groups regularly report cases of harassment, temporary detention and even long-term imprisonment of priests and their followers. But the Hangzhou episode is also unmistakable evidence that Christianity is transforming Chinese society.
After four failed attempts over a millennium and a half by foreign missionaries to gain a foothold in China, Christianity is finally taking root and evolving into a truly Chinese religion. Estimates vary, but some experts say Christians make up 5% of China's population, or 65 million believers. And thousands more are converting every day, the vast majority through unofficial "house" churches like the one that sparked the clash in Hangzhou. "Politically, China hasn't changed at all," says Dennis Balcombe, who has spent the past three decades evangelizing in China from his base in Hong Kong. "But as far as religion is concerned, it is much, much freer."
The flowering of Chinese Christianity reflects a wider religious awakening. Long criticized by Western governments and human-rights groups for its virulently antireligious policies, China's central government has in recent years adopted a more lenient attitude toward religious expression. Traditionally, the Communist Party allowed membership in five officially approved religions: Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Protestant Christianity and Catholicism. Anything falling outside those groups was officially shunned. Even those adhering to "approved" religions have to register to worship in churches and temples approved by the state. But those rules are becoming harder to enforce. These days, Chinese flock to everything from mystical Taoist sects to huge, prosperous Buddhist temples and spiritually based exercise and meditation systems.
The growth of spirituality poses a challenge for China's ruling class, which pays little more than lip service to communist ideology but still strives to control its restive populace. Faced with a social phenomenon that would use up huge amounts of time, manpower and international goodwill to curb, Beijing's cadres have decided to tolerate the new churches so long as they keep a low profile. The more outspoken and organized such groups become, however, the greater the threat they pose to the authority of the Communist Party. For the moment, that influence is confined to local issues related to their faith, such as church building and education. But observers say the challenge could grow, as churches continue to spread out of the countryside and into the cities, where they draw from the ranks of the rapidly growing middle class. "If you look at Chinese history, all the rebellions that led to change of dynasty had some religious connotations," says Jean-Paul Wiest, an expert in the history of Christianity in China who teaches at Beijing's University of International Business and Economics. "The authorities don't like that."
There may not be much they can do about it. Across the country, Christians are worshipping with a fervor once unimaginable in a communist society. Take the service held at 10 o'clock on a recent Sunday morning in China's booming southern city of Shenzhen. Some 40 people are crowded into the living room of a small two-bedroom apartment. The regulars call the place the Home of Love, and like the majority of Chinese Christians, they worship in private because they can't--or won't--register with the government-controlled official Protestant Church, the so-called Three-Self Church (the church's name refers to its three guiding principles of self-reliance). The cries of hawkers selling vegetables and fruits in the alleyway below drift through the grimy windows, but the worshippers have eyes only for the front of the room, where a plump, middle-aged preacher in a tight gray suit stands at a small lectern. Behind him is a large wooden cross draped with a white cotton cloth. Several pictures of Jesus hang on the walls, and Chinese characters phonetically spelling out Emanuel--"Yi-man-nei-yi"--frame an archway.
Because of fears that officers from the Public Security Bureau might disrupt the proceedings, which are illegal, services in house churches are often low-key. Not at the Home of Love. The congregation starts by belting out a series of hymns to an accompanying sound track booming out of several large loudspeakers. After the singing, the preacher launches into a sermon extolling the growth of Christianity in China. Then he steps among the tightly packed worshippers, holding their heads and praying over them, chanting what would sound to most Chinese like gibberish. Soon most of the room has joined him in fervent, noisy prayer, many swaying back and forth, eyes squeezed shut, moaning, shouting, wailing. One woman repeats over and over, "Oh mashalah, oh Yesu, oh mashalah, oh Yesu, oh Yesu, oh Yesu." (Yesu is Jesus; mashalah seems to mean nothing.) The woman's face is clenched in ecstasy; tears run down her cheeks.
So far, the government hasn't done much to halt the spread of such hothouses of faith. But that may be changing, as evidenced by the assault on the Hangzhou church. The mandarins in Beijing have always reserved special venom for groups they label xie jiao, or evil cults. The most famous is the brutally suppressed Falun Gong movement, but the authorities may be tempted to extend that label to the Christian sects that are growing the fastest--those practicing fervid forms of worship that stress miracles and personal inspiration through prayer. A number of cultlike, pseudo-Christian offshoots have sprung up in the Chinese countryside in recent years, apparently inspired by this ecstatic form of worship. Often spawned by the personal ambition of their leaders, these highly secretive groups usually espouse millenarian views that make the authorities profoundly nervous. Members of a sect called the Three Grades of Servants were convicted earlier this year in Heilongjiang province on 20 murder charges, involving attacks on its main rival, Eastern Lightning, a sect that relies on kidnapping and beating to make converts. One of its central aims is the overthrow of the "Great Red Dragon," a thinly disguised reference to Beijing.
Although Christians tend not to see themselves as revolutionaries, house churches have become one of China's few bulwarks against government power. In Wenzhou, a city in coastal Zhejiang province known among Chinese Christians as "China's Jerusalem," 15% to 20% of the population is Christian, a fact that gives the church leaders much greater authority in confronting local party officials. In 2002, for example, a campaign of protests and appeals to Beijing led to the reversal of a city government decision to ban Sunday-school teaching. In Hangzhou, local officials say the clash--about which TIME was the first to hear eyewitness accounts--stemmed from the church builders' long-running defiance of government regulations. The county government's statement contends that three alternative sites had been offered to the Christian community's representatives but were refused by church leaders.
Chinese authorities insist that they are not hostile to religion as long as it is practiced according to their rules. At officially sanctioned churches like St. Paul's in Nanjing, a near puritanical attention to order is maintained. There are rows of wooden pews, a pulpit from which the sermon is preached, even a signboard on which hymn numbers are posted. The pastor of St. Paul's, Kan Renping, 38, says his congregation has grown from a few hundred when he took over in 1994 to some 5,000 regular worshippers today. Many have to watch the proceedings on remote TV from four satellite chapels in a nearby building. Despite the growth, Kan isn't a proselytizer. "Anyone is welcome to come in and have a chat with me about religion," he says. "But if people want to come in and talk politics, that we don't like. We only want to concentrate on religion here."
In the long run, though, government attempts to circumscribe how people practice their faith seem unlikely to succeed--and could well spark more unrest. It's telling that even in the face of such crackdowns, some Chinese Christians say they are confident that they will eventually win the freedom to practice their faith as they choose. Brother Chow (not his real name) is one. He is every inch the model of the modern Chinese Christian, a preacher who doubles as a businessman. Despite his pressed jeans, polo shirt and fancy mobile phone, he professes to believe in a deep, ancient faith, one that he says has carried many a Christian through persecution. "Why don't I think it will be a problem? Because as time goes on, the government will get to know the Christian spirit and realize that God exists." He smiles with the secret knowledge of a true believer. "And then," he says, "they will become Christians too."
time.com
As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God
Missionaries, not aid money, are the solution to Africa's biggest problem - the crushing passivity of the people's mindset
Only thing missing from this is a recognition Chistian growth isn't really missionary, or at least foreign missionary, driven any longer.
Matthew Parris
Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Today it's Malawi, and The Times Christmas Appeal includes a small British charity working there. Pump Aid helps rural communities to install a simple pump, letting people keep their village wells sealed and clean. I went to see this work.
It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I've been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I've been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.
Now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.
I used to avoid this truth by applauding - as you can - the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It's a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith.
But this doesn't fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.
First, then, the observation. We had friends who were missionaries, and as a child I stayed often with them; I also stayed, alone with my little brother, in a traditional rural African village. In the city we had working for us Africans who had converted and were strong believers. The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world - a directness in their dealings with others - that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall.
At 24, travelling by land across the continent reinforced this impression. From Algiers to Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and the Central African Republic, then right through the Congo to Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya, four student friends and I drove our old Land Rover to Nairobi.
We slept under the stars, so it was important as we reached the more populated and lawless parts of the sub-Sahara that every day we find somewhere safe by nightfall. Often near a mission.
Whenever we entered a territory worked by missionaries, we had to acknowledge that something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to: something in their eyes, the way they approached you direct, man-to-man, without looking down or away. They had not become more deferential towards strangers - in some ways less so - but more open.
This time in Malawi it was the same. I met no missionaries. You do not encounter missionaries in the lobbies of expensive hotels discussing development strategy documents, as you do with the big NGOs. But instead I noticed that a handful of the most impressive African members of the Pump Aid team (largely from Zimbabwe) were, privately, strong Christians. “Privately” because the charity is entirely secular and I never heard any of its team so much as mention religion while working in the villages. But I picked up the Christian references in our conversations. One, I saw, was studying a devotional textbook in the car. One, on Sunday, went off to church at dawn for a two-hour service.
It would suit me to believe that their honesty, diligence and optimism in their work was unconnected with personal faith. Their work was secular, but surely affected by what they were. What they were was, in turn, influenced by a conception of man's place in the Universe that Christianity had taught.
There's long been a fashion among Western academic sociologists for placing tribal value systems within a ring fence, beyond critiques founded in our own culture: “theirs” and therefore best for “them”; authentic and of intrinsically equal worth to ours.
I don't follow this. I observe that tribal belief is no more peaceable than ours; and that it suppresses individuality. People think collectively; first in terms of the community, extended family and tribe. This rural-traditional mindset feeds into the “big man” and gangster politics of the African city: the exaggerated respect for a swaggering leader, and the (literal) inability to understand the whole idea of loyal opposition.
Anxiety - fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things - strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won't take the initiative, won't take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders.
How can I, as someone with a foot in both camps, explain? When the philosophical tourist moves from one world view to another he finds - at the very moment of passing into the new - that he loses the language to describe the landscape to the old. But let me try an example: the answer given by Sir Edmund Hillary to the question: Why climb the mountain? “Because it's there,” he said.
To the rural African mind, this is an explanation of why one would not climb the mountain. It's... well, there. Just there. Why interfere? Nothing to be done about it, or with it. Hillary's further explanation - that nobody else had climbed it - would stand as a second reason for passivity.
Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I've just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.
Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.
And I'm afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.
timesonline.co.uk |
