TEXAS FAITH 104: Is Belief Overrated?

Dallas Morning News,

Each week we will post a question to a panel of about two dozen clergy, laity and theologians, all of whom are based in Texas or are from Texas. They will chime in with their responses to the question of the week. And you, readers, will be able to respond to their answers through the comment box.

Let’s return to an issue that we dealt with back in April, when I asked you all a question about belief. The question dealt with what it means that we may believe differently about different things. You can read answers at this link.

A couple of weeks ago, Keven Willey, the Morning News‘ editorial page editor, passed along this essay from Stanford anthropologist T. M. Luhrmann, author of “When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God.” As you will see from this link as well, Luhrmann gets into several lines of thought about belief and how we arrive at it religious convictions.

What I would like you to comment upon is this part of her New York Times essay:

“The role of belief in religion is greatly overstated, as anthropologists have long known. In 1912, Emile Durkheim, one of the founders of modern social science, argued that religion arose as a way for social groups to experience themselves as groups. He thought that when people experienced themselves in social groups, they felt bigger than themselves, better, more alive — and that they identified that aliveness as something supernatural. Religious ideas arose to make some sense of this experience of being part of something greater. Durkheim thought that belief was more like a flag than a philosophical position: You don’t go to church because you believe in God; rather you believe in God because you go to church.”

Applying that thinking to religion in general, not just churches, here is the question for the week:

Is belief overrated?

NITYANANDA CHANDRA DAS, minister of ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness), Dallas 

Belief is not only generally overrated, it is most often fallacious, because it is based on the material mind.

To say it is overrated is to say that it has some value. Blind faith and blind doubt are to be avoided in spiritual life.

(Atheist state that the theist's belief in God is as reasonable as believing in a flying spaghetti monster)

The saintly do not believe in God, they experience and know God. Just as the educated do not believe that one plus one is two, the experience and know it.

Faith means a hope in an anticipated outcome. There is nothing that we do in life that does not involve faith. We perform our daily actions on the premise of some expected hope. However faith can be solidified by experiencing the applied hypothesis’ desired result. One needs only a small amount of belief that the experiment is worth one’s endeavor.

Information regarding non-material subjects can only come from a non-material source. The material mind, its senses, and the instruments of such senses, will never be able to validate, disprove, or discover something beyond matter.

The initial belief needed to apply the experiment of spiritual life grows from association of those are expert in the practice. Experiencing the expert’s difference in consciousness and hearing the sound philosophical principles they teach, attracts one to take up the experiment of spiritual life.

If the experiment is valid, then the result will be experienced. When the result

is experienced, the hypothesis is verified.

Therefore what Durkheim stated can be said to be true, as many religious adherents fanatically believe something yet there is no change away from exploitative consciousness.

The last consideration is that spiritual information can only remain intact if it is passed down in a teacher to disciple lineage. Just as the science of medicine cannot be preserved in books alone.

To see all responses of the TEXAS Faith panel click here.

TEXAS FAITH 103: Are Interfaith Marriages Good for Couples?

Dallas Morning News,

Each week we will post a question to a panel of about two dozen clergy, laity and theologians, all of whom are based in Texas or are from Texas. They will chime in with their responses to the question of the week. And you, readers, will be able to respond to their answers through the comment box.

Naomi Schaefer Riley has a new book out with the title Til Faith Do Us Part: How Interfaith Marriage is Transforming America. You can read about that book at this link and then this link.

Interestingly, Riley, a former Wall Street Journal editor who has written extensively about religion and culture, notes that 45 percent of all U.S. marriages in the last decade were between people of different faiths. Naturally, we may look at that as a sign of greater acceptance and tolerance, which a broad society needs to remain dynamic and growing.

But Riley also reports that marrying across religious lines may be very difficult for the couples involved. Their deeply-held differences may eventually become a problem, especially when it comes to raising children.

There are a number of ways we could go with this question, including why dating couples may spend more time worrying about political differences than religious distinctions. Feel free to chime in on that aspect, if you like. But the main point I would like you to consider is this:

Interfaith marriages may help the broader society, but are they good for the couples?

NITYANANDA CHANDRA DAS, minister of ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness), Dallas 

Generally no. Couples who have different life goals will find conflicts. However, there are two circumstances where one would expect less conflict:

First, for many people religion is like a label. Their life, their habits, and their goals may not really differ from others. So no real conflict there.

Second, for the few who are spiritually mature, they may be able to appreciate their partner’s devotion to the same Lord who is known by different names. So for such people there may no conflicts.

To see all responses of the TEXAS Faith panel click here.

TEXAS FAITH 102: What does it mean to be an American today?

Dallas Morning News,

Each week we will post a question to a panel of about two dozen clergy, laity and theologians, all of whom are based in Texas or are from Texas. They will chime in with their responses to the question of the week. And you, readers, will be able to respond to their answers through the comment box.

What does it mean to be an American today?

This question is more than an academic one. It goes to the heart of the immigration debate that is growing hot in the Senate this month.

The Senate is debating a reform bill that could come up for a final vote by July 1. A part of that legislation focuses on institutions that help immigrants become part of American society. I recently wrote a column about this aspect of the bill, which you can read at this link.

Tamar Jacoby of Immigration Works USA has written extensively about the concept of assimilation. As she has pointed out, what it means to be an American today is vastly different from what it meant in, say, the 1950s.

Almost a decade ago, Jacoby wrote this:

“We may need a new definition, or new understanding of assimilation — a definition that makes sense today, in an era of globalization, the Internet, identity politics, niche advertising and a TV dial that offers a choice among a hundred or more different channels.
“Even as they live out the melting pot myth, today’s immigrants and their children are searching for new ways to think and talk about it, and together, they and the rest of the nation face the challenge of updating the traditional ideal.”

(For more of her essay, see this link)

I would say we still are searching for an update for that ideal, including how immigrants become part of the mainstream without losing their ethnic identity.

This is obviously hard work. As our society becomes more diverse, America develops a broader and richer culture. At the same time, nations depend upon some common core of values, beliefs and identity to hang together. And that requires some kind of definition of what it means to be an American.

So, how would you define being an American today?

NITYANANDA CHANDRA DAS, minister of ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness), Dallas 

The Motto on every dollar bill is “In God We Trust”

The highest ideal would be that Americans embody this motto by becoming a nation of God-conscious people. For without God Consciousness, or Krishna Consciousness, society blindly wanders after the temporary.

Those who chase after temporary gains may sometimes be lawful or may sometimes be unlawful and exploitative. However in either case such hungry souls are never satisfied. They consume, they use, they exploit, they justify, and teach others to do the same.

Only those who are invested in the eternal can be satisfied and thus be peaceful. That society whose very example is of internal peace, are the ones fit to hold the influential position in the world that is known as America.

To see all responses of the TEXAS Faith panel click here.

TEXAS FAITH 101: Should Americans boycott sweatshops in places like Bangladesh?

Dallas Morning News,

Each week we will post a question to a panel of about two dozen clergy, laity and theologians, all of whom are based in Texas or are from Texas. They will chime in with their responses to the question of the week. And you, readers, will be able to respond to their answers through the comment box.

Should we Americans boycott sweatshops in places like Bangladesh?

That’s the question many people are facing after a horrific fire in a Bangladesh sweatshop recently killed more than 1,100 workers. But it isn’t always an easy one to answer.

As New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof explains in this link, workers in some underdeveloped nations see a sweatshop as preferable to conditions they otherwise might work in. Here’s how Kristof put it in a 2009 column:

“I’m glad that many Americans are repulsed by the idea of importing products made by barely paid, barely legal workers in dangerous factories. Yet sweatshops are only a symptom of poverty, not a cause, and banning them closes off one route out of poverty. At a time of tremendous economic distress and protectionist pressures, there’s a special danger that tighter labor standards will be used as an excuse to curb trade.”

In essence, sweatshop employees may be making a rational decision to work in places most Americans would not set foot in. The demand for their goods leads to jobs that pay better than in other parts of a developing nation’s economy. And in better conditions, as hard as that might be to imagine

On the other hand, our demand for their goods is why sweatshops exist. And while those facilities may be better than others in a country, they also can be exploitative and even deadly.

I am also including a link to an interview that ran in The Dallas Morning News Points section. The Q&A is with Texas Tech professor Benjamin Powell, author of the forthcoming Sweatshops: Improving Lives and Economic Growth. He explains why he thinks Americans should not boycott sweatshops.

What do you think?

NITYANANDA CHANDRA DAS, minister of ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness), Dallas 

The exploitation is a symptom of a greater spiritual problem. Sharing on a practical level how one can get rid of the exploitive nature through spiritual realization is more productive than fighting the symptoms. Don't blow on the boil, operate!

To see all responses of the TEXAS Faith panel click here.