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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JF Quinnelly who wrote (17453)	2/5/1998 2:35:00 PM
From: Grainne	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 108807

Well, first of all Freddy, I have decided that since you do not have a degree, and are not subject to peer review of any kind, I will no longer be able to take you at all seriously about anything except cute mailman shorts, reduced Christmas card volume at the holidays these last few years, and the sexual proclivities of VERY young girls, because these are things you seem to know a lot about, EXPERIENTIALLY speaking. If you want to discuss serious intellectual issues, I will entertain the possibility of doing that with you, but since I have a degree I will not have to produce footnotes, and you will. Now, secondly, and more seriously, I don't recall that I ever called the esteemed Dr. Hakeem an authority on the damage that religion may or may not do to mankind and the earth, although I do believe that a full professor with a doctorate and a nine page CV is capable of interesting ideas, and of doing solid research as well. I do think it is valid to present his ideas if we are going to discuss religion, for he certainly provides a provocative argument, and that keeps the discussion interesting. Certainly, religious historians disagree all the time--there is no one TRUTH to behold. But basically, I think most of us are intelligent enough here to pull sources of all sorts off the web, and sort out what is absolute drivel and what might be something we disagree with but is fascinating to discuss, without using ad hominem arguments to dispute every tiny bit of information and opinion sourced from anyone writing anything out of their peer-reviewed area of specialty. It would be quite boring here if we followed your rules!!! That does not mean that Dr. Hakeem's arguments are wrong, incidentally, or are not backed up by peer-reviewed experts writing in their fields. I am sure Dr. Hakeem knows all about footnotes, but he was writing newspaper articles for "Freethought Today" when I quoted him here. I seldom see footnotes in newspapers, but of course perhaps the fact that I read that liberal fluff and fishwrap, the S.F. Chronicle, explains my seeming stupidity. Does your L.A. Times use footnotes on a regular basis? I don't even see them in the N.Y. Times, so you must be reading very intellectual newspapers. Incidentally, there are definitely recognized scholars who echo Dr. Hakeem. Right now I am reading "Rebirth of the Goddess", by Carol P. Christ, who holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Yale. Her previous books include "Diving Deep and Surfacing", "Laughter of Aphrodite", "Womnanspirit Rising" (coauthor), and "Weaving the Visions" (coauthor). She currently lived in Greece, where she is Director of the Ariadne Institute for the Study of Myth and Ritual. Dr. Christ is writing in her field, is subject to peer review, and uses copious footnotes. This is part of what she says about the influence of Christianity on the Holocaust in Europe, which echoes Dr. Hakeem: "Anti-Judaism is deeply rooted in western (Christian and secular) cultures. When I first realized this, I was still a Christian, and I felt devastated. Based in the struggles of the early Christian church with the synagogue, anti-Judaism forms part of the texture of the New Testament and thus influences Christian liturgy and Christian practice. The negative images of the scribes and Pharisees, the notion that 'Judas' (from the Hebrew word for Judah and the Greek word for Jew) and 'the Jews' betrayed Christ, and the idea that Judaism is a religion of 'law' rather than 'spirit' have deeply influenced the way many of us think about the world. Such images portray Jews and Judaism as 'the other' and create a climate in which Jews and Judaism can be blamed for a variety of problems. This in turn legitimates acts of discrimination and violence against Jews. I view Christian anti-Judaism as one of the sources of of the Nazi program of genocide. As long as the biblical stories that blame the death of Jesus on the Jews form the basis of Christian celebrations of Easter, the attitudes created by these stories will continue to shape culture and politics."