Religion- 3

Do Las Vegas (the Gambling Capital) Churches accept gambling chips? This may come as a surprise to those of you who are not used to the ways of religion. Believe me, there are more churches than casinos in LA. Not surprisingly, some worshipers in Sunday services give casino chips rather than cash as offerings when the basket is passed. Since these churches get chips from many different casinos, they have devised a method to cash them. These churches send all the collected casino chips to a nearby monastery for sorting and then the chips are taken to the respective casinos (of origin) to cash in. This is done by the chip- priests, as they are called. You never thought this could ever happen, right?

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  Thomas Mathew Paravaneth This is a sort of custom which is acquired due to the surrounding mushroomed gambling institutions. Now a days in here Kerala, we may hear the auction of Rum bottles and Whisky bottles in temples to make money. Man becomes more practical now a days than experiencing what is church and what is temple.

  February 8 at 7:04pm · Edited · Unlike · 2
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  Mathew M Ninan Already wine bottles are on auction in Harvest festivals

  February 9 at 7:18am · Unlike · 1
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  Prof. Alex Odikandathil Ph.D. Thanks to the triumvirate, above. Yea, most likely they will start selling alcohol from the churches to make more money and it is easy to do so since many churches already have government approved distilleries to produce wine. They will then start bottoms up/ pole dance, if not nude dance, to attract new members to fill its coffers...

The Silk Road(s)

China's “slower economic activity" still means a staggeringly impressive annual growth rate of 7% which is now the globe’s leading economy. Internally, an immensely complex economic restructuring is underway as consumption overtakes investment as the main driver of economic development. At 46.7% of the gross domestic product (GDP), the service economy has pulled ahead of manufacturing, which stands at 44%.

Geopolitically, Russia, India, and China have just sent a powerful message westward: they are busy fine-tuning a complex trilateral strategy for setting up a network of economic corridors the Chinese call “new silk roads” across Eurasia.

Meanwhile, Moscow and Beijing are at work planning a new high-speed rail- remix of the fabled Trans-Siberian Railroad. And Beijing is committed to translating its growing strategic partnership with Russia into crucial financial and economic help, if a sanctions-besieged Moscow, facing a disastrous oil price war, asks for it.

To China’s south, Afghanistan, despite the 13-year American war still being fought there, is fast moving into its economic orbit, while a planned China-Myanmar oil pipeline is seen as a game-changing reconfiguration of the flow of Eurasian energy.

And this is just part of the frenetic action shaping what the Beijing leadership defines as the New Silk Road Economic Belt and the Maritime Silk Road of the twenty-first century. We’re talking about a vision of creating a potentially mind-boggling infrastructure, much of it from scratch, that will connect China to Central Asia, the Middle East, and Western Europe. Such a development will include projects that range from upgrading the ancient silk road via Central Asia to developing a Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar economic corridor and a new maritime silk road that will extend from southern China all the way, in reverse Marco Polo fashion, to Venice.

Don’t think of this as the twenty-first-century Chinese equivalent of America’s post-World War II Marshall Plan for Europe, but as something far more ambitious and potentially with a far vaster outreach.

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  Prof. Alex Odikandathil Ph.D. For all the ambitious talk, details remain scarce on how this vision will be implemented. Will the land- and sea-based Silk Roads be limited to a string of bilateral agreements between China and individual countries, or between China and regional groups like the European Union and ASEAN? Is there a grander vision, such as a regional free trade zone incorporating all the Silk Road countries? Or will China be the tie that binds it all together, with no special agreements directly linking, say, Kazakhstan and Germany? Yet to be seen. The Silk Road is envisioned to create not just an economic trade route, but a community with “common interests, fate, and responsibilities. The Silk Road represents China’s visions for an interdependent economic and political community stretching from East Asia to western Europe, and it’s clear that China believes its principles will be the guiding force in this new community in the new era. “China’s wisdom for building an open- world- economy and open international relations is being drawn on more and more each day,” Xinhua (official press agency of the People's Republic of China), wrote.

Happy Valentine's day!

Hey, its Valentine's Day and our entire thoughts revolve around romance.
Falling in love, or failing to do so, can literally transform a person.

See how Dr. Larry Young and Brian Alexander explain it in 'The Chemistry Between Us': "When neuro- chemical circuits in our brains are activated, we're flooded with elation and the whole world seems brighter. It turns out that all kinds of love- for friends, family, and lovers- are induced by a similar brain function.

Unfortunately, many of our cultural myths, from fairy tales to rom- coms, paint a very distorted picture of love. In stories, love is projected as a static reward- you go out and find your prince or princess, overcome whatever obstacles the world throws in your way, and achieve a state of romantic happiness. Believe me, love is not the pot of gold waiting at the end of our quest incarnated in a single perfect partner. Instead, it's something that we need in every step of our way- Love energizes, encourages and guides.

Love is, perhaps, the most powerful drug mankind is aware of.
Happy Valentine's day!

*******************************************************************************

Sunday, February the 15th, 2015.

And here follows my observations on a post- Valentine's day: 
Living with a manipulative partner is like walking on a minefield. You can’t relax, you can’t just love them for who they are, and you’ll always have to be on guard. And that’s not really the recipe of a happy relationship, is it? If you can’t feel care- free happiness in your lover’s arms, is it worth staying in that relationship?
If your partner doesn’t try to change even after you’ve given them enough chances, walk away for good. Chances are, their manipulative behavior is too deeply ingrained in their mind to (ever) change. And you’re better off leaving the relationship, than letting this person break your spine and your morale, which would only lead you to getting used and manipulated by everyone else in your life. (Note: Manipulation is a behavior pattern in which one person tries to change the mind of another person without confronting them directly. Manipulators use deception, trickery and threats to get what they want from people who are willing to give in to them. God-men, god- women, church hierarchy and religious organizations are all examples of super- manipulators).

Religion- 2

Early death:

In today's world that is armed with pipe bombs and machine guns and drones and nuclear weapons, we don’t need defenders of religion’s status quo- we need real reformation, as radical as that of the 16th Century and may be, much broader. It is only by acknowledging religion’s worst ideas that we have any hope of embracing the best. Ironically the mindset that our sacred texts are perfect, betrays the very quest that drove our ancestors to write those texts. Each of the men who wrote part of the Bible, Quran, or Gita took his received tradition, revised it, and offered his best articulation of what is good and real. We can honor the quest of our spiritual ancestors, or we can honor their answers, but we cannot do both.

“Because the faith of Islam is perfect, it does not allow for any innovations to the religion,” says a young Muslim explaining his faith online. His statement betrays a lack of information about the origin of his own beliefs. But more broadly, it sums up the challenge that all religions face in moving forward. Imagine if a physicist said, “Because our understanding of physics is perfect, it does not allow for any more innovations in the field.” Perfection in itself is a utopian idea. Even emperors need maids to cook and engineers to build; nothing is complete in itself.

Some of humanity’s technological innovations are things we would have been better off without: the medieval rack, the atomic bomb and powdered lead potions are just a few. Religions tend to invent ideas or concepts rather than technologies, but like every other creative human enterprise, they produce some really bad ones along with the good. Here is one of the worst of humanity’s moral and spiritual concepts: blasphemy. This dubious concept promotes conflict, cruelty, suffering and death rather than love and peace. To paraphrase Christopher Hitchens, it belongs to the dustbin of history just as soon as we can get it there. Blasphemy is the notion that some ideas are inviolable, off- limits to criticism, satire, debate, or even question. By definition, criticism of these ideas is an outrage, and that is precisely the emotion the crime of blasphemy evokes in believers. The Bible prescribes death for blasphemers; the Quran does not, but death-to-blasphemers became part of Shariah during medieval times.

The idea that blasphemy must be prevented or avenged has caused millions of murders over the centuries and countless other horrors. As I write this piece, blogger Raif Badawi awaits round after round of flogging in Saudi Arabia- 1000 lashes in batches of 50- while his wife and children plead from Canada for the international community to do something. What a horrid shame!

Adherents who think their faith is perfect, are not just naïve or ill-informed. They are developmentally dwarfed and in the case of the world’s major religions, they are anchored to the Iron Age: a time of violence, slavery, desperation and early death.

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  Prof. Alex Odikandathil Ph.D. "Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd", said Voltaire

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  Prof. Alex Odikandathil Ph.D. " I have always questioned if Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton were really priests since they have no church. So, when I heard Al Sharpton was guest preacher at a black Houston Church, I decided to check him out in person and see what he was all about. I...See More

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  Mathew M Ninan Good. Real experiences rather than sermon heard make us think more and learn more.

Religion-1

The Arabic din signifies an entire way of life. The Sanskrit dharma is also “a total concept: untranslatable covering law, justice, morals, and social life.”
The Oxford Classical Dictionary firmly states that no word in either Greek or Latin corresponds to the English ‘religion’ or ‘religious'. The idea of religion as an essentially personal and systematic pursuit was entirely absent from classical Greece, Japan, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran, China, and India. Nor does the Hebrew Bible have any abstract concept of religion. If the Buddhist non- violence is spoken about, soon we hear that Buddhism is not a religion but a secular philosophy. Our world is dangerously polarized as humanity is more closely interconnected- politically, economically, and electronically than ever before. People from different strata of society- from American commentators to psychiatrists and from London taxi drivers to Oxford academics- reiterate that religion has been the cause of all major wars in history.

Pre-eminently Christian Thoughts.

One of the most extensive works covering the symbolic meanings of the Book of Revelation was written by Emanuel Swedenborg titled the 'Apocalypse Revealed.'

Apocalypse is commonly used in reference to any prophetic revelation or the so-called End Time Scenario. Typically, the messengers of the apocalyptic revelation are described as angels. In the Book of Revelation, the author writes about the revelation of Jesus Christ as Messiah, and about present tribulations leading to the ending of this age and the coming of God's Kingdom. Hence the term 'apocalypse' has come to be used, very loosely, for the end of the world. In letters to the Corinthians and the Thessalonians Paul expounds the destiny of the righteous. He speaks of the simultaneous resurrection and transformation of those who are in Christ (or Messiah).

In the Hebrew Old Testament some pictures of the end of the age were images of the judgment of the wicked and the glorification of those who were given righteousness before God. In the Book of Job and in some Psalms, the dead are described as being in Sheol awaiting the final judgment. The wicked will then be consigned to eternal suffering in the fires of Gehinnom, or the lake of fire as mentioned in the Book of Revelation. Are you, clergy and bishops, ready?

Some Christian movements in the 18th and 19th centuries were characterized by a rise of Millennialism- why many Christians had a Millennial expectation of the glorification of the righteous. The poetic and prophetic literature of the Hebrew Bible, particularly in Isaiah, were rich in millennial imagery, and New Testament writers after Pentecost carried on with this theme. During his imprisonment by the Romans on the Island of Patmos, John in the Book of Revelation (chapter 20), receives a vision of a thousand-year reign of Christ/Messiah upon the earth.

All Christian apocalyptic eschatology has been concerned with the two themes referred throughout the Bible as "this age" and "the age coming". Evangelical Christians have been in the forefront popularizing the biblical prophecy of a major confrontation between good and evil at the end of this age, a coming Millennium to follow, and a final confrontation whereby the wicked are judged, the righteous are rewarded and the beginning of Eternity is viewed.

Some evangelical Christians have taught a form of millennialism known as Dispensationalism, which arose in the 19th century. Dispensationalists see separate destinies for the Christian Church and Israel. Their concept of a "Pre-Tribulation Rapture" of the Church has become better known, thanks in part to the Left Behind series of books and films. Dispensationalists find in Biblical prophecy predictions of future events: the throne of God in heaven and his glory; specific judgments that will occur on the earth; the final form of Gentile power; God' re-dealing with Israel based upon covenants mentioned in the Hebrew Old Testament; the second coming proper; a one-thousand year reign of Messiah; a last test of mankind's sinful nature under ideal conditions by the loosing of Satan, with a judgment of fire coming down from Heaven that follows; the Great White Throne judgment, and the re-creation of the current heavens and the earth as a "New Heaven and New Earth" ushering in the beginning of Eternity. And are you, guys, ready?

To my students: the genre of revelation aims to show God's way of dealing with humankind and His ultimate purposes and its writers often reveal the meaning of present events in connection with the ending of the present age. You come across the same idea in the words of John Milton in Paradise Lost: "Of Man's First Disobedience" (I, 1) so that he can "assert Eternal Providence, / And justify the ways of God to men" (I, 25-26).

Too big to be proud...

I had the rare privilege of being the key-note speaker in a huge, colorful function a few years ago. When I stepped out of my car at the venue, children came running all around; shaking hands with me, touching and poking me, waving at me. In fact, I was trying to keep my balance while being carried up several flights of stairs into the auditorium. I was literally carried away by the warmth of reception I received. I felt like the queen bee with a million bees buzzing around. Interestingly, I was yet to learn that I got all this misplaced accolade just because I was the first to arrive at the scene where they were expecting Mr. N. L. Balakrishnan who would give away tons of prizes to the student- achievers. My heart-felt condolences to the genius who departed us on 25/12/2014.