Lately, I have been approached by many devout Christians who believe that the world is ending.  They cite all of the natural disasters, the wars, the terrorist attacks, and countless other events as signaling the Apocalypse.  While most of these perspectives seem utterly insane to me, I can’t help but wonder why Christians seem so excited to point out that the world might be coming to an end.  I really don’t see the point in trying to figure it out.  If you don’t believe in religion, chances are you know the world WILL without a doubt end in about 4 Billion years when the sun transforms from a main sequence star into a red giant.  That much is certain.  I just can’t find any reason as to why you would want to try and guess when the world is going to end, biblically speaking.  If the end times are upon us, what are you going to do about it?  There doesn’t seem to be much that you could possibly do to avoid it.  While you have every right to dig around and try and match up clues in today’s world with those from Revelations, it seems like a waste of time.  Besides, all the arguements are so generic.  It appears to me that most of the people who make the claim that the end times are here have no real grasp of history.  In case you haven’t noticed, as the saying goes, “history is doomed to repeat itself”.  We see the same events happening over and over again.  The wars have all been fought.  The disasters have all happened.  Hell, according to statistics from scientists and astronomers, a catastrphic collision between an extraterrestrial object and the Earth is supposed to occur roughly every 50 million years.  Guess what?  It’s been 100 million since the last one.  Hmm…

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While a lot of the issues I blog about aren’t really emotionally charged, every once and a while I will find something that hits a nerve.  Today is one of those days where I am so worked up over this that I am not going to attempt to be non-biased or look at this objectively.  Sometimes it just isn’t possible.  Sorry to leave you hanging in suspense but I am going to take this one nice and slowly, that way I don’t lose anyone.  About an hour ago, I was over on the 9rules homepage, which is one of my favorite places for picking up good ideas.  On the RSS feed of their members, I decided to click on an article that caught my interest.  The feed took me to a blog called Donklephant, one that I had not yet visited.  The immediate vibe was that it was a strongly liberal blog.  My rule of thumb is that I do not take anything as fact from a blog that is heavily biased towards one end of the political spectrum, so I always do my homework after the fact to make sure I am getting reality and not 100% opinion.  The entry that I was reading on Donklephant covered the debate being waged between conservatives (the religious right) and health officials (and everyone who isn’t religious right) over the release of the new cervical cancer vaccine that has been in the works for a long time now.  This debate was news to me because, last I heard, the vaccine was still in development.  Apparently it has been completed, but it has not made it into the hands of health professionals and doctors yet because of the ongoing stalemate between the aformentioned parties. 

For those of you who don’t feel like heading over there and reading about the details, I’ll explain them for you, along with what I have learned from my own individual research into the treasure trove of online articles.  First of all, in order to understand the debate, you have to understand where cervical cancer comes from.  The leading cause of cervix cancer (and cervix cancer can only occur in women for those of you who are anatomically challenged) is the Human Papilloma Virus, otherwise known as HPV.  HPV is a sexually transmitted virus with many different strains and variations.  According to womenshealth.gov, most sexually active people will have contract HPV during their lifetime, but will never know because it rarely shows symptoms and usually goes away on its own.  However, though most women’s bodies can fight off the HPV, it is known to cause cervical cancer during the course of this battle.  This new vaccine is proven to defend against the two most popular strains of HPV that account for 70% of the cases of cervical cancer.  The vaccine would be administered to 11-12 year old girls in their pre-pubescent years in order to protect them against HPV for the rest of their lives. 

The debate is not over if the vaccine works, but whether it should be administered.  Health care officials are on one side arguing for its obvious lifesaving ability.  At the same time, the religious right is claiming that the vaccine should not be administered because of the sexual promiscuity it may encourage.  This debate has become so serious that conservatives have actually blocked the administration of the drug in some states.  While the drug itself is able to be purchased, campaigns for widescale distribution have not been allowed.  Health care workers have said that it shoul be considered mandatory for school attendance, much as other vaccines are.  Until this conflict is resolved, countrywide vaccination does not appear likely.

Here is where my article stops the neutrality act.  I have given you more than enough information to make an intelligent decision as to where you stand on this, but if you feel I haven’t, feel free to do your own research.  It is purely my opinion, but I believe the religous right is being absolutely ridiculous in their attempts to block this vaccine.  It appears as though they care more about stopping pre-marital sex than they do about saving the lives of young women, to whom cervical cancer is a death sentence.  I realize that pre-marital sex is a sin.  However, so is lying, cheating, killing, rape, swearing, over drinking, and a million other things.  Let’s examine the consequences of lying and cheating.  If you get caught you might lose a friend.  At the worst (perjury, con artists), you might wind up in jail.  If you have pre-marital sex, you could wind up dying a horrible death.  Makes perfect sense to the religious right.  If you kill or rape, you may wind up facing the death penalty, but not the majority of the time.  In fact, those people are probably sentenced to death about as often as a girl having pre-marital sex develops cervical cancer.  By those standards, killing, rape, and pre-marital sex must all be on the same plane!  Makes perfect sense to the religious right.  I keep hearing fathers commenting that they want their daughter to realize the seriousness that comes from the unholy act of pre-marital sex, but are those same fathers going to stand by while she is on her death bed and tell her she deserved to die? 

The religious right just doesn’t get it sometimes.  They keep preaching abstinence only education and acting as if anything less than perfect following of God’s will is unacceptable.  First of all, I don’t even have to talk about the failure rate of abstinence only education because it is already well documented.  I keep seeing these hypocritical born-agains telling us that we are going to hell for the course we are on, but at the same time, they were much worse than we are in their youths.  They act as if you can’t screw up and return to the path of God, when they themselves did that very thing.  I am willing to wager that the majority of Christians out there fighting this vaccine probably had pre-marital sex.  If you are a Christian and you are reading this piece and shaking your head, think about all of the mistakes you made throughout your life.  Think about all of the sins that you have committed and be honest with yourself.  Then ask yourself if maybe slipping and having pre-marital sex isn’t a sentence to hell.  Maybe that same girl who gave into her passion and had sex deserves a chance to avoid that potential death sentence you are imposing upon her.  The sad thing about all of this is that I am a Christian.  I am almost ashamed to lump myself into that category because of things like this.  So what if your daughter has pre-marital sex!  Great, so she sinned once.  I just don’t understand how you can justify, as a Christian, not saving a potential life.  The bible says thou shalt not kill, and that applies to anyone, whether they are  a sinner or not.  I think that maybe we can approve of something that could save the life of a girl who maybe didn’t consider the consequences of her actions. 

You know, instead of banning this vaccine, maybe you should think about educating kids to all the other sexually transmitted diseases out there.  No offense, but HPV isn’t very scary to a kid when their hormones are raging.  Teach them about AIDs, genetal warts, herpes, and other gross diseases.  I really don’t think many girls are going to say to themselves, “Hey! I can’t get cervical cancer!  I’m going to go and have lots and lots of sex with unclean guys!”  And even more logical, did it ever occur to these anti-vaccine advocates that married women who wait their entire young adult lives to lose their virginity when they are married can still contract HPV and cervical cancer?  Probably not.  Who would have thought that maybe their husband might have given into his primal urges as a teen and gotten the virus?  Or maybe he was unfaithful and gave it to his loving, wonderful Christian wife who did nothing wrong and didn’t deserve to die.  Dare I continue with the extremely common scenarios?  Sure, why not.  How about if a woman gets raped?  I am going to go out on a limb and guess that most rapists are probably carrying some kind of disease.  But apparently that woman should have kept her guard up, because if the circumstances are right and she contracts cervical cancer, its her fault.  Great logic.  The sad thing about our society is that they can be so narrow minded.  They consider one possible effect of an action, but ignore all of the others.  Switching back into Christian mode, humans are supposed to care for one another, regardless of what they do.  Christianity is founded on forgiveness, and you can’t give forgiveness to someone who is dead.  Christians need to stop judging their fellow humans and let God worry about that.  Humans are here to choose their own destiny and path through life.  God doesn’t force anyone to believe in him or live according to the bible.  Just because they choose a different way through life than you do, does not mean that they should have to live with a potential death sentence. 

*This was not meant to offend anyone, especially Christians.  You are entitled to your belief, but maybe you should open up your minds to other ways of thinking.  Christians are normally good people, but sometimes we can get a bit close-minded and try to take too many things into our own hands. 

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We all know there are a number of Americans who detest abortion.  In fact, “a number” is probably a vast understatement.  With the religious right and even more moderate Americans stating that abortion is wrong, its been an increasingly controvertial issue, especially with the right wing majority in the Supreme Court.  However, whether you support abortion or not, I would like to direct your attention to China. 

I came across this article in the New York Times that touched upon some things about abortion in China that I already knew, as well as some facts that I was not aware of.  After reading it, my first thought was, “why are abortion activists making such a fuss about the abortion rates in America when they are so dramatically worse in China?”  In China, there has been a system in place that restricts the number of children one can have for quite some time.  All children that a mother has after that quota has been reached are aborted.  This is a method of population control to keep China from becoming overcrowded.  This is pretty brutal, even to someone who is pro-choice.  In fact, there is no “choice” involved because the government tells you when you have to abort your pregnancy. 

In addition to the above, this article points out that abortions to young, single women are rising at an alarming rate.  In fact, it looks as though these abortions may soon surpass those of married women.  This is happening because sexual education in China is practically non-existent.  These women, or couples in general, don’t understand the purpose of condoms or birth control.  They aren’t educated enough to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies.  The aspect of the article that caught my eye was that many of the women who are recieving these abortions have had to have multiple procedures.  They don’t learn from the first time, and they continue to have unprotected sex.  I believe one clinic’s statistic was 65 abortions in a month to single women, of which 42 were repeat patients (or customers).  This shows a significant problem that needs to be resolved.  In fact, it seems like many of the women are using abortions as a form of birth control, rather than the last resort it should be. 

Being a pro-choice myself, I feel that abortions should be a last resort.  If birth control and condoms fail, than maybe you can get an abortion, if you feel that you can not take care of a child in anyway and cannot spare nine months to give that baby over to adoption.   However, what is going on in China is just plain terrible.  Instead of lobbying to outlaw abortion here, in a country with a fairly low abortion rate, those pro-life people should be lobbying the Chinese government to slow down the abortions occurring over there.  Why focus on America when America is not the biggest problem?  If you look at the issue from a pro-life perspective, why does it matter what country you focus on, as long as you are saving the most potential lives?  Really, all it would take to decrease the abortion rate in China is more sexual education and cheaper birth control. 

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I was trolling through the New York Times website as I usually do, and I came across an interesting letter in the opinion section. The letter calls for introductory religious studies courses to be mandatory for students at colleges. Since this falls along the lines of the other pieces I have written on religion, I decided to examine the idea.

First of all, I do think that the study of religion is extremely important in today’s world. Whether you believe in religion or not, it is still useful to know the basics about each of the world’s main theologies. Most Americans follow the war in Iraq closely, as well as the other conflicts in the Middle East. They have also heard of what is occurring in Chechnya and Sudan. I hear so many Americans giving their opinions of these global conflicts, but it is blatantly obvious that they have no understanding of Islam. In order to understand what is happening in our world, you must have an understanding of religion because it ties into just about everything. This is not true for Islam alone. Many people don’t even know the origin of the rift between Protestants and Catholics. Others have no idea why China invaded Tibet. Some have no idea what Buddhism or Hinduism even entail, which is a huge problem if you plan on doing business with China, Japan, or India. Sadly, some Christians don’t even understand the Jewish tradition, despite the fact that Christianity is a direct descendent.

With all of that being said, should religious studies courses be mandatory? I feel strongly that they should NOT. While I think that the knowledge is extremely valuable, I don’t agree with forcing anyone to learn things that they do not want to. I know first hand how unfair it is for a college to charge you to take courses that you aren’t interested in or won’t need. People should take it upon themselves to understand the world they are living in, otherwise they will have to live with that disadvantage for the rest of their lives. There are also reasons why people might not want to take a religious studies class. Being a Christian myself, I can say that taking religious studies courses and seeing how religions evolve and play off one another can be a real eye opener. While I already knew about that type of thing, someone with less knowledge going in might have their faith shaken. As a student, you should have the ability to choose your own path of study, just as you will choose your own path through life. No university should dictate what you should or should not learn.

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I am always amazed at how many people follow the war in Iraq so closely, but still can’t define the difference between a Sunni Muslim and a Shia Muslim.  In order to fully understand what is happening in Iraq, you have to understand the cultures that exist there.  Religion is responsible for most of the conflicts in the world, past and present, and it would be ignorant to study the war without understanding the divisions that are forcing it to continue.  For this reason, I’ll outline the major historical paths of both the Sunni and Shia branches of Islam in hopes that it will help people understand the difficulties that Iraqi’s are having in drafting a constitution and creating national unity.

In order to understand the division between the two branches, you have to grasp the origin of Islam itself.  I’ll quickly go over a brief version of how Islam came to be (very brief).  Islam begins in the Arabian Peninsula, specifically in the city of Mecca.  Originally, there were many tribes that lived in the area surrounding Mecca, each with their own God or Goddess.  These tribes would gather in Mecca to worship their own God at the Kaaba, an immense holy shrine in the center of the city.  The Prophet Muhammad was born to a middle class family inside the walls of Mecca.  He worked as a caravan driver for years, crossing back and forth between the Zoroastrian Persian Empire to the East and the Christian Byzantine Empire to the West.  As a result of this, he was exposed to both monotheistic religions.  Eventually, he travelled back to Mecca and spent a great deal of time in the caves surrounding the city.  On one particular day, the Angel Gabriel is said to have appeared to Muhammad in a revelation.  The Angel dictated the word of God to Muhammad, which he memorized and in turn dictated to his followers.  His followers wrote each revelation down in the Qu’ran, word for word.  Muhammad continued to have these revelations for the next twenty years, or until his death.  According to Muslims, Muhammad was given the same message that was given to Abraham, Moses, and Jesus.   However, they believe that the message was distorted by those three, and that the Qu’ran is the only undistorted message from God.  Muhammad unified the entire Arabian Peninsula through military conquest, which he based in the city of Medina.  It is at the death of Muhammad that we see the split occur in Islam. 

First we will look at the Sunnis.  The majority of the Muslims in the world are Sunnis, approximately 85%.  These Muslims base their religious authority on the Islamic Law, as interpreted by religious scholars.  Essentially, they derive all of their laws and beliefs from what is written in the Qu’ran and fromt he recorded sayings and actions of the Prophet Muhammad (the Hadith).  In other words, if nothing is written about a certain situation in the Qu’ran, the religious scholars will examine the Muhammad’s actions in a similar situation to determine how to act themselves.  In the era after Muhammad’s death, the Sunnis elected a leader for the Islamic Empire that had sprung up.  This leader was known as the Caliph.  The Caliph had political and social authority, but not religious authority, as that was only found in the Qu’ran. 

The Shia Muslims are the minority in the world population of Islam.  The Shias believe that just before Muhammad died, he chose a succesor.  This successor is said to be his cousin, Ali.  Ali was named to the position of Imam, a position that maintained political and social authority, as well as RELIGIOUS authority.  In the history of the Shia tradition, there have been 12 Imams, all blood descendants of Muhammad.  Many of these Imams are said to have been slaughtered by the Caliphs of the Sunnis, so we start to see why the hostility exists between the two groups.  This past history, coupled with the different belief in where religious authority lies, leads to bad blood between the two groups.  The Shias say that the 12th Imam is still alive, being cared for by God.  When the world ends, they say the 12th Imam will reappear, and interestingly enough, so will Jesus.  Each Imam had the ability to make religious decisions by himself, but today they are carried out by various religious leaders.  These leaders are generally called Ayatollahs, the higher ranking Shia clerics.  Even more powerful are the Grand Ayatollahs, of which there are very few. 

So now we can clearly see the differences between the Sunnis and the Shias and where they originated in history.  The next step is applying all this to Iraq.  The proportion of each branch in Iraq is much different from the world distribution.  The Sunnis are actually the minority in Iraq with only 15% of the population, mostly grouped around Baghdad and the Central region of Iraq.  The Shias are the majority group in the country with about 65% of the population, concentrated in the South (the remaining 20% are Kurds in the North).  The strange thing about Iraq is that under Saddam Hussein, the Sunnis were actually in power despite their extreme minority status.  Now we have to look at the challenges facing the new government Iraq.  There are two issues that are preventing the emergence of the new government:  Religious authority, and religious leadership.  The concept of Islamic Law, as practiced by Islamic countries, is that Islam is not just a religion, but a legal system as well. If two groups have different beliefs, they can’t have the same laws.  This is a major problem for Iraq because you can’t have certain laws for certain people.  As for the issue of religious authority, you have Shia Ayatollahs saying one thing, and the scholars of the Sunnis saying another.  The two will never see eye to eye. 

After dissecting all of this, it seems to me that the only way to achieve peace is to divide the country along religious lines.  Why do we insist upon trying to force incompatible groups to live together under the same government?  While unification could be possible, it would take a major shift in the actual religion itself.  While we have seen this happen in the past with things like the Protestant movement, what are the chances of it happening in the limited time our forces have left in Iraq?  You certainly don’t have to agree with this conclusion, but the cultural divide is obvious. 

Also, for an interesting related article follow this link to Popular Doctrine blog. Popular Doctrine

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I recently read a blog article in which the author mistaken replaced “Atheist” with “Agnostic”.  Thinking back on prior readings, I realized that many people make this same mistake.  While I know that a few people know the difference between the two, I figure I’ll outline them just to make sure my readers are well educated.  We can start with Atheism.      

Atheism is used to describe someone who specifically believes that no God or gods exist.  They cite lack of physical or observable evidence for the existence of the divine.  There are two types of Atheism: implicit and explicit.  Implicit Atheists are those who do not hold Theistic beliefs, but have not consciously rejected these beliefs either.  An example would be a newborn baby, who neither believes in religion, nor has it consciously rejected religion.  Another example would be someone who was born and raised in a remote village in which the divine had never been heard of.  An explicit Atheist is one who has consciously rejected religion and the divine, and considers them to be non-existent.  Atheists can still have morals that are comparable to those who are religious, they just do not accept them to have been set forth by a divine source.

Agnosticism, on the other hand, consists of people who have not yet decided if God exists or not.  These people reason that God may exist, or he may not, but we will never be able to proove one or the other.  Interestingly enough, there exists a middle ground between the Agnostic and those who believe in God.  The “Agnostic Theist” is someone who does not know if God exists or not, but chooses to believe in that God anyway.  This really interested me because it seems like quite a few people I know would fall under this category, despite the fact that they consider themselves to be Christians or Jews. 

Though many people use Atheism and Agnosticism interchangeably and nobody stumbles over the point they are trying to make, there really is a fairly large difference.

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Jihad: Holy War.  This is meaning of the word Jihad as it is interpreted by most Americans and non-Muslims, and rightfully so.  The events of the past few years, or even the past decade, make it easy to draw conclusions about other cultures and religions.  While most Americans have heard the word jihad broadcast on one of the uncountable news bulletins from Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Iran, or any other hot bed of Islamic violence, the vast majority do not know anything about the Islamic culture, let alone the true meaning of jihad.  We are trained by the media to associate the word jihad with bloodshed, terrorism, and suicide bombings.  It is not really trickery on behalf of the media, but rather the fundamental stretch of application that is employed by the Islamic extremists.  Before we delve into this, let’s take a look at the meaning of Jihad.

While I am by no means an expert on Islamic culture, I have taken classes on the subject.  The hardest part of the academic study of religion is the required detachment from your own views and the beliefs, and the objective observation of the culture you are studying.  As for myself, I am a Protestant Christian though my father and his family are Jewish.  Enough background info for now. 

Let’s look at the term jihad from the perspective of a Muslim.  The true meaning of jihad is “to strive for moral and religious perfection”.  Now what exactly does this mean?  This means living in accordance with the five pillars of Islam.  For those of you not familiar with the five pillars, they are Confession of Faith, Prayer, Alms Giving, Fasting, and the Hajj.  The Hajj is a pilgrimmage to Mecca that every Muslim must undertake at some point in his or her life.  So back to our examination of the concept of jihad.  You might be asking how people can misinterpret it as a Holy War when the meaning is so far from that.  Well, there is more to the idea of Jihad. 

Jihad is composed of two parts.  There exists both an Internal jihad and an External jihad.  The external jihad is the part that throws most Americans off track.  Now the confusion of jihad meaning “Holy War”  stems from what Muslims call the “Little Holy War”, or the external jihad.  The concept of external jihad is fighting in the defense of Islam.  Obviously, we see many Muslims refering to the jihad as cause for terroristic attacks, including 9/11.  The key word, however, is defense. The term jihad cannot be used to label an offensive, as the Qu’ran lays out a law that force and violence are prohibited as a means to convert others to Islam. 

“Defend yourself against your enemies, but do not attack them first.  God does not approve of the aggressor.” -The Qu’ran

The quote above comes directly from the Qu’ran.  As you can see, you fighting in the name of Islam is allowed, but strictly as a defense.  This brings us to the stretching of the concept that is occurring today.  We see terrorists and Islamic Extremists declaring jihad in taped messages, and claiming that their actions are valid in God’s eyes.  Unfortunately, they are using the term to cover attacks which are certainly not defensive.  Flashback to 9/11.  While we have had conflicts with the Middle Eastern countries in the past, how have we threatened the Islamic faith? What provoked this attack?  You can’t label the terrorism that is rampant today as jihad, because their is no defensive stance to it.  Their actions are not sanctioned by God, even if you examine from their belief system.  While one could make the argument that our Western way of life is starting to make its way to the Middle East, you cannot blame the choices of your children on us.  We do not force our music, food, or clothing on the Islamic culture. 

Islamic countries operate on the concept of Islamic Law.  This means that all law is based on the Qu’ran.  Many Islamic manuscripts have been written in order to layout the guidelines for armed conflict.  Even these conflict with what is occuring today.  Among the most important laws of armed combat is the prohibition of killing women, children, and non-combatants.  Each and every terrorist attack volates these strictly layed out laws. 

The main focus of the word Jihad is on the internal side of things.  The internal jihad is the struggle within oneself to submit to the will of God, or in other words, the struggle to act as God would have you act, as opposed to how you want to act.  To hammer home the point that this is the main form of jihad, I leave you with the Islamic name for internal jihad: “The Great Holy War”.

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