This is a really fascinating thread, and I'm sure it easily go on for at least a few hundred more posts. (Part two, anyone?)

I'll do my best to keep my comments brief and save my essay on how Matt Wagner's fundamentalist upbringing affected his work on GRENDEL for later....

Goin' back to the views of our new Governor here in Minnesota, I just wanted to say that I don't consider his condemnation of religion to be an altogether positive thing.

To be sure, I am no fan of the Religious Reich and consider their influence in Minnesota politics to be quite negative. However, there are many people involved in the church who have stood firm in protest to certain immoral wars and have fought hard for social justice causes that I very much believe in. In fact, much of the positive things happening in the inner city today are because of faith-based organizations. So, certainly, at least in a utilitarian sense, I think the church is often an extremely positive force.

When Jesse goes blathering away about organized religion, I don't see Jesse The Enlightened Social Critic so much as I see Jesse The Outrageous Ignoramus.

In other words, faith-based organizations can be the defenders of the disenfranchised...people Jesse often doesn't seem to understand or care about.

(By the way, I have posted an essay I wrote on Ventura at http://www.mediawarpcomics.com/Jesse-Ventura.html . I've put in full display some of his quite ignorant remarks regarding Indian treaty rights and single moms.)

I do see a lot of positive in Ventura in the sense that he isn't owned by large monied interests, but the guy isn't always doing his homework. To be quite honest, I'd rather have the Rev. Jesse Jackson as our Governor.

(*************)

In case anyone's curious about my own religious views, I'm a critic of much of western culture because it's part of a long, patriarchical tradition. Frankly, quite a few earth- and goddess-based religions have been wiped out in the name of Christianity. I'm intrigued by beliefs like Gnosticism (go to http://members.tripod.com/~aos/general/gnostic.html for more info) and Wiccanism.

However, I was raised in the Methodist church and in fact have friends who do great things within the Methodist Church and the Lutheran Church, and, yeah, I'm a fan of liberation theology.

Interestingly enough, a large part of the reason Rabble-Rousin' Rob Walton's RAGMOP and GRENDEL TALES work "clicks" with me in because he seems to have views on these things that run similar to mine. I SUSPECT that Jeff Zugale is into these kinds of ideas as well.

I'm actually quite fascinated with Carl Jung's ideas and am surprised he hasn't entered this discussion, since it seems his ideas have had an impact on the work of Veitch and Gaiman. It's actually occurred to me to join a Jungian society before, but I've just been too busy I guess.

It's inaccurate to call me an atheist (although arguably I'm an agnostic), but I'll take atheists for social justice like Joe Zabel over the likes of Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson any day.

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Ben "The Goddess is alive and magic is afoot" Adams

"I like to play poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and five people died." -Steven Wright


[This message has been edited by Ben Adams (edited 10-25-1999).]

Hey Ben, I've never read either of those... I know, shoot me, I'm way behind on my comics. But yeah I'd probably be into it. [img]http://207.69.158.95/ubb/smile.gif[/img]



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Jeff Zugale
Pagan City Comics
www.pagancity.com

Getting back to comics ... Warren Ellis claimed on his forum that Stormwatch was an atheist superhero book, especially Change or Die. Thoughts?

Johanna

Ben said, 'certainly, at least in a utilitarian sense, I think the church is often an extremely positive force.'

I agree, although with some reservations. I'm concerned when the organization is more concerned with proselitizing than helping.

Atheists interested in social action often do so within a faith-based organization, since, there are often no viable alternatives. Because they are such a small and unorganized minority, atheists haven't formed any of their own charitable organizations.

Also, I personally think that maintaining the social safety net is a government responsibility; leaving it to community voluteer organizations is bad social policy, since the benefits of this would be so unevenly distributed.

Interesting note about Warren Ellis. Afraid I find his stuff generally unreadable, though.

Joe said:


Joe, I agree with you totally. I think the reality, though, is that most of the politicians interested in working for the social justice issues that we are both concerned about need to work with and rally faith-based organizations to tackle these problems.

I personally see a mixture of good and bad in organized religion, and I think a lot of politicians sensibly see more gains to be made for the poor by working WITH some factions of organized religion.

What's ironic about Ventura is that, even though he castigates organized religion, he believes that the government should provide less financial support to the poor and that the slack should be picked up by charities ... which are run by those people he's blasting.

(**********)

I haven't yet read Warren's work on STORMWATCH (I've been meaning to), so I really can't comment on it.

However, I have read a lot of GRENDEL, and, naturally religion figures very heavily into it ...as it does into Jim Starlin's WARLOCK, James O'Barr's THE CROW and loads of other mainstream, alternative, and underground comics.

I'd love to hear Charles Vess' views on religion, since I suspect he may agree with me on a thing or two.

This definitely is a really great topic.

Ben-- Make sure you check out the Secular Humanist website I recommended in the first post to this thread. They have a lot of constructive things to say about social policy.

I certainly advocate making alliances with anyone who shares my goals, regardless of any irrelevant detail of their background. I've got friends who believe in all kinds of different religions (or at least I used to-- oops!)

But being religious doesn't necessarily make one progressive on social policy-- in fact, the opposite is often true. I listened to Republican Prez. candidate Rev. Alan Keyes say last night that he wanted to completely eliminate the federal income tax, and have all benefits for the needy taken care of by voluntary charitable contributions.

I think there's a basic problem with having this issue framed in terms of morality. It obviously doesn't work, since the overwhelming majority of very religious people are conservatives who are against social spending.

I don't have the statistics handy, but isn't it true that the trend in rising religiousity has corresponded with falling levels of charitable contributions?

It's much more effective to frame the issue in terms of self-interest. All of us benfit from a safe and prosperous society. Of course there are mitigating factors-- people must have an incentive to work, and our budget should be balanced.

If we consistently focused on the best interests of the majority in terms of economic opportunities, universal health care, education, a clean environment and a decent, unprejudiced society, we'd be able to make our points. If instead we portray it as a 'cause' for 'do-gooders', we trigger the guilt reflex, which only gets us a short term commitment before guilt-fatigue sets in and the public turns us off.

That website again is: http://www.secularhumanism.org/pr/

PS: I just checked out another website that lists a lot of famous atheists. You'd be surprised how many cartoonists are on it! It's at something something atheism.miningco.com-- I don't have the right address, but you can link to it from the humanist website above.

[This message has been edited by joezabel (edited 10-29-1999).]

"I think there's a basic problem with having this issue framed in terms of morality. It obviously doesn't work, since the overwhelming majority of very religious people are conservatives who are against social spending."

That's just not the case. For every "conservative" Christian I know (can't speak for members of other religions), I know of a "liberal" Christian who is very progressive when it comes to social issues. You're letting the media cloud your perceptions--the Christian Coalition by no means speaks for the majority of Christians, nor do any of the other so-called "religious right" groups. Just because they're allowed to blather at microphone does not mean they're the mouthpiece for an entire religious group. Oddly enough, I know some conservative Christians who do not support the agendas of those organizations either.

I mean no offense when I say this, Joe, but time and time again you've made sweeping generalizations that just aren't true, like: "Of course, I understand that religious parents want to protect their children from ideas that are destructive of their religious faith. This is especially understandable, since often the parents' own faith is barely holding on by a thread. It takes a very strong exertion of will to continue to believe something that isn't true." and other such statements that show just how limited your knowledge is in certain areas. I would never presume to make sweeping generalizations about athiests, mainly because I am not one and am not qualified to say what they may or may not believe in, etc.

I have now become a casulty to Mr. Reese's justice. Hemlock, anyone?

I am honored to be presecuted in such manner.


A headless Sam

I'm coming back in Sleepy Hollow, so watch out!

William--

If you can make some constructive suggestions of how I can discuss this topic without making generalizations, I'll be glad to hear them. But I view religion as a social phenomena, and think it's appropriate to judge its effects in terms of the average or typical adherent, rather than individual cases.

I don't have a set of poll numbers handy, but I gather from the way political campaigns are run that the conservative religious outnumber the liberal religious. Also, my own observation is that the liberal religious have a more sane, less intense religiosity (note that I referred to the 'very religious.')

But even if that isn't true, it doesn't invalidate my point, which is that religion is no predictor of compassion and charitableness.

You said, 'the Christian Coalition by no means speaks for the majority of Christians, nor do any of the other so-called "religious right" groups. Just because they're allowed to blather at microphone does not mean they're the mouthpiece for an entire religious group.'

If that's so, I wonder why the other religious groups let them get away with it.

You quoted me as saying '... often the parents' own faith is barely holding on by a thread...' and criticized me for making a sweeping generalization. But this is no generalization. Note the use of the word 'often,' which does not mean 'always' or even 'most of the time.'

If the faith of the religious is seldom or never in jeopardy, why do sermons put so much emphasis on keeping the faith and believing?

I stand by the statement that 'It takes a very strong exertion of will to continue to believe something that isn't true.' This is a well-substantiated psychological fact. That's why it's necessary to invent hell myths, to instill fear in the person of the consequences should they begin to doubt the local witch doctor.

As for being ignorant of religion, I certainly am not. I paid my dues as a regular church goer for much of my long lost youth. Regular church attendance builds strong atheism.

As I said somewhere above, I referred J.M.'s query about remarkable cures to the 'answer man' at the Committee for the Scientific Investgation of the Paranormal. Here's the reply. This is rather sketchy; maybe if J.M. can cite a more recent specific case which has been written about in the media, the Answer Man would have more to go on. [img]http://207.69.158.95/ubb/smile.gif[/img]
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Firstly, is it possible that people can experience rapid and unexplainable
healing? Yes. But can this be linked conclusively to faith or some spiritual
powers? Not really.

Regarding Lourdes, I'd say the following:

D. J. West (a physician with special qualifications in psychological
medicine) wrote the book "Eleven Lourdes Miracles" (London: Duckworth, 1957)
as an investigation of the amazing events that were alleged to have
occurred. Among his conclusions was: "The rarity of the cures, and the
incompleteness of the medical information on most of the cases put forward
as miracles, makes any kind of appraisal exceedingly difficult. As far as it
goes, and taking the documents at their face value, the evidence for
anything 'miraculous' in the popular sense of the expression is extremely
meagre."

If he thinks Lourdes is a good example of the type of healing he's talking
about I would question his investigative skills. I don't know what type of
evidence he claims to have but it is very difficult to keep track of every
possible variable in a person's recovery. Simply stated, there is little
evidence that anything other than proven remedies (and sometimes unproven)
and the natural healing process of the body is responsible for its recovery,
whether fully understood or not.

We apologize for the delay in responding to your message.

Answer Man http://www.csicop.org