| The tyranny of scripture |
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Humanity in chains.
Saudi police raid "gay wedding"
http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?id
Category=33&idsub=125&id=15836&t=Saudi+police
+raid+gay+'wedding'
Anglicans in conflict over female and gay
bishops
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5g_qFWRaqE
D_10PSnvSL6pgMet42A
and
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/243786
8/Bishops-boycotting-Lambeth-Conference-are-w
eakening-churchs-efforts-to-resolve-crisis.ht
ml
Creation museums
http://www.nwcreation.net/museums.html
Creationism in Louisiana
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg1992664
3.300
Creationism in the UK
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/dec/16/reli
gion.world
You can download an audio version of this
video at http://patcondell.libsyn.com/
Tags : atheist atheism religion faith scripture dogma creationism evolution |
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Affichage : 110538
Durée : 408 s |
| Is religion a museum piece? |
 |
The video introduces St Mungo Museum of
Religious Life and Art in Glasgow, which has
been described as the first public museum of
religion in the world. Do note, however, that
the Museum of Religions at the University of
Marburg, Germany was founded in 1927 by
Rudolf Otto. It contains a considerable
number of artefacts and iconographic
materials drawn from religions across the
world (information provided by Professor
Michael Pye, University of Marburg). There is
also the Lenin Museum of Religion and Atheism
in Moscow, but that institution makes no
attempt to present religion in either an
objective or comparative fashion. Of course,
no museum can be described as value-free;
none are objective or exist outside their
social, political and funding contexts. The
St Mungo Museum was not a planned museum: the
building was constructed as a visitor's
centre for Glasgow Cathedral, with which it
shares a site, but the Cathedral abandoned
the project owing to financial difficulties.
This left the city council with a
functionless, half-completed building in an
area of Glasgow visited by many tourists.
Finally, it was decided to use the already
existing resources in the Glasgow Museums'
collections to open a specialist centre
around the theme of religion.
The Museum is divided into three parts: one
houses a collection of religious art from
various traditions, another is devoted to the
human lifecycle as it is
understood/celebrated across a range of
religious traditions, and the third
concentrates on the history of religion in
Scotland. While you may initially see the
museum depicted in the video as a tranquil,
typical and uncontested example of public
education, in reality it has been the centre
of heated debate since it opened. Especially
soon after its opening, the Museum has
generated considerable controversy, ranging
from complaints about perceived unequal
treatment of traditions, to actual physical
attacks on exhibits.
Some members of particular traditions have
complained about being included in a
comparative display with other religions that
they consider to be 'false', while other
members of the same groups have felt that
their traditions were under-represented in
the displays. An interesting feature of each
room is the bulletin boards, where visitors
are actively encouraged to respond to the
exhibits. The notes make it clear that
religion and how it is represented is still
capable of rousing passionate feelings in
many. One offended visitor in 1993 wrote,
'St. Mungo's; where Satan is free to run
rampant'. However, the majority of comments
are positive.
As the senior curator of Glasgow Museums
explained, the St Mungo Museum set out to do
something different, something contentious:
If the aim was to communicate something of
the meaning of the objects, we had to reverse
the usual process in museums of draining them
of their dangerous meanings to render them
safely aesthetic, historical or
anthropological. In the case of religion
'meaning' has an emotional and spiritual
dimension that can be described much more
powerfully by those who experience it than
those who have simply studied it.
(O'Neill, 1994, p.28)
As a result of this approach, the Museum
decided to interview 'ordinary' believers and
incorporate their comments into the displays,
rather than relying on the views of priests,
religious professionals or scholars. The
Museum wanted to portray the traditions
sympathetically, yet retain the right to
criticize: this has proved a difficult
balance to achieve. For example, the owners
of material that had once belonged to the
missionary and explorer David Livingstone
threatened to withdraw it unless the Museum
altered the text of a caption that expressed
the view that missionary work had damaged
indigenous cultures. Others have shown
offence at photographs of the face of a girl
undergoing ritual circumcision; still others
have physically attacked non-Christian
artefacts, damaging an important bronze image
of the Hindu god Shiva (Figure 3). Some
cathedrals have signs reminding visitors that
they are places of worship, not museums. In
contrast, St Mungo's is a museum where, as
with the Victoria and Albert example shown in
Figure 1, some people interact with the
exhibits in a devotional manner. The museum's
stated goal, however, is a more neutral one
(or is it?): 'to reflect the central
importance of religion in human life'
(Arthur, 1993, p.232).
Museum's website:
http://www.glasgowmuseums.com/venue/index.cfm
?venueid=13
Source:
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/resource/view
.php?id=153917
Creative Commons license:
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 UK:
England & Wales
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/
2.0/uk/
Tags : religions museum faith tolerance art world religious mungo life |
|
Affichage : 1450
Durée : 583 s |
| Fact? or Fiction? (Royal Ontario Museum) |
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The devious curatorial staff of Toronto's
Royal Ontario Museum attempt to outwit
participants at Fact? or Fiction?, an annual
guessing game and fundraising event in
support of the ROM research endowment fund.
For tickets visit
www.rom.on.ca/factorfiction.
Going into its 12th year, Fact? or Fiction?
is renowned for fantastic food and
tantalizing tales of mysterious objects from
the collections. The ROM is Canada's largest
research museum, and this event helps make
possible ROM curatorial research here and
around the world.
Tags : ROM museums curators artifacts collections history science education scholars charity culture toronto canada ontario |
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Affichage : 19326
Durée : 285 s |
| Anatomy / Forensic Museum in Bangkok |
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If you're into weird, this is it. Located in
the grounds of the like weird and macabre -
this is it. Preserved corpses of convicted
killers like Thailand's most famous mass
murderer See-Uey, the Chinese cannibal. Also
exhibited are murder weapons, a gut-wrenching
exhibition of autopsy photos and glass jars
in containg stillborn children pickled in
formaldehyde. Close to museums of anatomy,
parasitology, medical history, and
anthropology. The Museum of Anatomy next
door, in an old 1930's building contains a
very close up and personal look at the human
body. Visited by medical students it's
fascinating in a weird kind of way.
Tags : caro weird macabre bangkok hospital museum corpses convicted killers murderer See-Uey thailand cannibal fornsic jars |
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Affichage : 14998
Durée : 235 s |
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