A humanist analysis of bullying.  See link:

http://open.salon.com/blog/dave_niose/2010/04/10/understanding_bullying

Last Friday the U.S. Attorney for Hawaii announced grand jury indictments of 14 people for conspiracy to distribute marijuana. Not earthshaking news, but for the fact that the individuals freely admit what they are doing, and claim their activity is protected because they are part of a church, called the “THC Ministry.” THC is the abbreviation for the active chemical in marijuana; the THC Ministry proudly uses marijuana smoking as a sacrament.

Roger Christie, age 61, is the chief minister of the church. “We provide cannabis sacraments and we’re happy to do so. And it’s a sacred thing to us. I think that I am a legitimate, exempt ministry,” Christie said. “We’re standing for religious freedom, using cannabis in private, at home or church. And it’s a blessed, beautiful thing.”

U.S. Attorney for Hawaii Florence Nakakuni is unmoved by this argument. “There is a state medical marijuana law. There is no law that protects his allegations of using marijuana religiously,” Nakakuni said. But Nakakuni must know (or if she doesn’t, she should be disbarred) that the Supreme Court of the United States as recently as 2006 unanimously ruled that it was perfectly ok for a group claiming to be a South American Indian religion to import and use a hallucinogenic tea containing an illegal drug called dimethyltryptamine (DMT). Not only is there substantial scientific evidence of the brain damage caused by DMT, but the United States has entered into an international treaty in which we promised the rest of the world to ban it. Doesn’t matter. Every major religious authority, from the Southern Baptists to the Anti-Defamation League, lined up in favor of special breaks for drug abusers, because they (correctly) saw the issue as one of enhancing their own power against that of the elected civil government. So if you or I get high on DMT, we’ll be thrown into prison; because these people say they are God experts and God wants them to break the law, they go free. It doesn’t take a crystal ball to predict what kind of defense THC Minister Christie is going to present.

To get around the Supreme Court case, the prosecution will have to argue that THC Ministry is not a religion, but a fraud. And what exactly is the difference? A Toronto court is wrestling with exactly this question right now, in a case involving an organization strikingly similar to THC Ministry that calls itself the “Church of the Universe.” Just last month a government expert witness presented a report listing ten factors common to religions, and finding the Church of the Universe lacking in most of them. Defense attorneys quite properly ridiculed her, though, when she admitted that she had never actually spoken to anyone belonging to the Church, but had just read its website. They also quoted William James, author of The Varieties of Religious Experience, who wrote that religion simply “shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider divine.”

What none of the reports about either case mention is the Rastafari movement centered in Jamaica, which probably scores pretty well on the ten-factor list. It’s as old as the religion involved in the 2006 case, it has something around a million followers worldwide, and its principal sacrament is the smoking of marijuana. Why don’t the Church of the Universe and the TMC Ministry just claim to be Rastafari affiliates?

The connection between religion and drug use is actually older and deeper than the THC Ministry may imagine. Rock paintings from 7,000-9,000 years ago preserved in the Sahara desert depict religious rituals involving hallucinogenic mushrooms. In one of the scenes, masked dancers hold a mushroom-like object in the right hand, with two parallel lines coming out of the object to reach the central part of the head of the dancer, apparently showing the effect of the mushroom on the mind. Rock paintings from the Stone Age period in eastern Siberia show mushroom gatherers with ornate earrings and an enormous mushroom on their heads, and figures with the stance of people trying to keep their balance. Stone carvings found in Guatemala also point to a mushroom cult which flourished there as long as 3,500 years ago. Read the rest of this entry &raquo

Caner was Liberty University’s seminary dean, a position he rose to after only two years as a member of the faculty.  He was Liberty’s star player, booking speech tours and selling over a quarter of a million books.  He injected charisma and vitality into what he once referred to as a needlessly dry field of study.  So what made him different from all the other hyperactive Evangelical enthusiasts?  Caner was raised Muslim.

Born in Turkey, he claimed, he spent years in an Islamic extremist environment, even going so far as to confess himself a member of the Islamic youth jihad.  A child trained in the manner of the 9/11 assailants, he said.  Upon moving to Ohio as a teenager with his family, a friend brought him to a Christian church and thus he was “saved.”  How droll. 

In a post 9/11 country, Caner’s story of “redemption” was scooped up by the Christian right and worshipped on high.  He provided so-called insight into the seedy Muslim world and an assurance to terrified Christians everywhere that Muslims could see the “error of their ways” and convert.  He lectured, he pontificated, he told the Christian right what they wanted to hear about the religion they equally feared and despised.  How convenient, to be a Muslim guru and a Christian hero!  At the same time!

One problem: Caner wasn’t born in Turkey, but in Sweden, a fact he forgot to consider while penning a later book with his brother, inadvertently exposing the original fib.  Furthermore, it was revealed that his family had moved to Ohio years before Caner previously claimed. A little difficult to be a member of the youth jihad when you’re shoveling snow in the Midwest and listening to Peter Frampton like every other Ohio teen, wouldn’t you say? 

Suspicious observers were already on to him.  A web of controversy cropped up across the internet as curious Muslims and scholars detected error after error in Caner’s library of Islamic knowledge (if you want a laugh, search Ergun Caner on YouTube and watch an array of clips of Caner botching basic terminology and confusing customs).  Whispers culminated into action this spring as Liberty University launched a formal inquiry into Caner’s past.  Following a curt statement from Liberty University regarding the disappointing findings, Caner’s position as seminary dean was up for grabs. 

Caner was a used car salesman of Christian conversion hawking busted parts.  Mangled, dishonest and cheap, reeking of fraud and agenda.   Is he the first of his kind?  Most certainly not.  But his attempt was so shoddy, so arrogantly full of holes and awash in anti-Muslim hostility, his blunder seems like a well-timed, shrewdly planned investment in the culture of fear.  If this were the ’50s he’d be selling you hula-hoops (probably decorated with Red Scare propaganda and anti-communist slogans).  

Entertainers and artists have been known to stretch truths in the name of creation.  Though James Frey’s partially fictionalized (and fantastically written) memoir was shredded by the media, his defense in Vanity Fair was a relatively fair one:   “The thing on the side of the book means nothing. Who knows what it is. It’s just a book. It’s just a story.”

But James Caner—excuse me, Ergun Caner—was not selling literature.  He was selling a religion, Christianity, wrapped tightly with an anti-Muslim bow, inspiring more fear and hatred in a climate already awash in prejudice.  He was peddling his life of redemption at the price of Liberty University’s tuition.  (And the man knows how to sell—under his guidance, seminary enrollment tripled.)  He was loved.  He was talented.  He was lying. 

Ergun Caner’s relationship with Islam is one I cannot comment on with any authority, but I believe that while attempting to make an example of Islam, he has made a mockery of the very religion he claimed to be promoting.  Just another zealous charlatan, he turned out to be a disappointment to the students who valued his teachings and a disgrace to non-violent Muslims attempting to live their lives free of harassment.    

Though Liberty University has not completely washed their hands of him—Caner will continue to serve as a member of the faculty this fall—his reputation has been considerably damaged and his credibility destroyed.  So what’s left for Ergun Caner?  I think he should focus on his strengths, seek out further education in an institution where he belongs: NYU’s Tisch School of Performing Arts.

We just passed the 175^th anniversary of an episode, inconsequential in itself, that kicked off a fascinating chain of events that may well have an impact on the 2012 election.

On June 30, 1835, a traveling showman named William Chandler rolled into the little town of Kirtland, Ohio. Chandler had purchased from the estate of a French adventurer named Antonio Lebolo a collection of genuine Egyptian mummies and hieroglyphic writings on papyrus, that Lebolo had stolen during Napoleon’s occupation of Egypt. Chandler’s investment was profitable, as Americans were willing to pay good money to gawk at such exotic artifacts. The problem with the hieroglyphics, though, was that no one knew what they meant. Except for one man: Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of Mormonism, who claimed to have a divine gift for translating “Reformed Egyptian.” So Chandler made his way to Kirtland, where Smith was then operating, to see if Smith had any interest in his collection.

Chandler hit a gusher. Smith instantly pronounced the writings to be the work of the biblical prophet Abraham himself, written in his own hand, and yes indeed he could translate them if given a little time. Shrewd businessman Chandler wanted cash; Smith raised the then-staggering sum of $2,400 from his congregation to buy the entire collection, including the mummies.

It took Smith several years to complete the translation, during which time he was occupied with other matters such as establishing a fraudulent bank, marrying dozens of wives, and touching off a minor civil war in Missouri. But when it finally was published in 1842, The Book of Abraham had a huge impact on Mormon theology. Among other things, it firmly established Mormon teaching on race.
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The Catholic Church is baring its teeth.

The first snarl came from Pope Benedict himself. Feeling his oats after a victory against gay marriage in the European Court of Human Rights, the pope slammed the door on glasnost in the sex abuse scandal, ordering his subordinates not to speak ill of their colleagues. Ironically, the target of the pope’s wrath had actually been defending the pope himself. Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn of Vienna had been sticking up for Benedict, telling reporters that long before Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI, he had sought a full investigation of the allegations against Austrian Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer, who was widely suspected of sexual abuse of young seminarians. Ratzinger’s initiative had been squashed, though, by Cardinal Angelo Soldano, who then served as the Vatican Secretary of State, and who is now dean of the College of Cardinals. So was Benedict pleased that Schoenborn was defending him? He was not; he sternly reinforced the chain of command, growling that “only the pope has the authority to accuse a cardinal” and that Church officials need to “show due respect” for one another. An institution genuinely committed to reform might encourage its members to go public when internal procedures fail to produce results; the Catholic Church censures them.

The Church slammed another door as well, filing a brief in a Kentucky case to prevent plaintiff’s attorneys from taking depositions of the pope and three other senior Vatican officials. The Church’s two arguments are downright silly. First, they say there has never been an official Vatican policy of hushing up sex abuse cases. But how can the court know what the Vatican policy is unless the plaintiffs are allowed to complete their discovery? The second argument may not be silly under the law — the brief says that Vatican City is a “nation,” recognized as such by American diplomacy, and allowing a court to subpoena its officials would be “akin to a foreign plaintiff seeking a foreign court order compelling the depositions of the United States President, Vice President, Secretary of Defense and ambassador.” Legally, the sovereign immunity argument is probably a winner — which is just the latest evidence of the absurdity of recognizing Vatican City as a state, on the level of France or Japan.

With one European Court victory in its pocket, the Church pressed on for another, arguing that the government of Italy has the right to brainwash Jewish, Muslim, humanist, and other children by installing a Christian crucifix in every public school classroom. Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re called the crucifix “an emblem of a universally shared humanity” — an odd description of an instrument of torture. Rather than just dealing piecemeal with one symptom after another, though, the Church launched an initiative to attack the root of the disease — secularism itself. “The process of secularization has produced a serious crisis of the sense of the Christian faith and role of the Church,” the pope complained, and thus announced a new bureaucracy to combat “a progressive secularization of society and a sort of ‘eclipse of the sense of God.’” If the Church proclaimed a special campaign to target Jews, or Muslims, or Mormons, or Methodists, wouldn’t there be a storm of indignation? But targeting humanists gets a ho-hum from the press. What would they say about a humanist effort to target Catholics, on the grounds that they suffer from a sort of “eclipse of the sense of reality”? Read the rest of this entry &raquo

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