08AR13-16

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Apologia Report 13:16

April 24, 2008

Subject: Christian Yoga? Hindu and Christian responses

In this issue:

HAGEE, JOHN - Rolling Stone magazine issues mockery

ORIGINS - Are you sitting down? Skeptical Inquirer magazine pans the recently released film, Expelled - a nevertheless, telling review

TEMPLETON FOUNDATION - their new book promotes New Age physics

YOGA - even pluralist Hindus reject "Christian" versions of yoga

+ excellent new Christian response to the "Yoga Boom"

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HAGEE, JOHN

"Jesus Made Me Puke and Other Tales From the Evangelical Front Lines" by Matt Taibbi -- that irreverent title should be taken literally - as in deliverance ministry tell-all. (Don't bother with the original if you can't stomach irreverent foul language.)

* "I had joined Cornerstone - a megachurch in the Texas Hill Country - to get a look inside the evangelical mind-set that gave the country eight years of George W. Bush. The church's pastor, John Hagee, is one of the most influential evangelical preachers in the country - not because his ministry is so very large (although he claims up to 4.5 million viewers a week for his Sunday sermons) but because of his near-absolute conquest of a very trendy niche in the market: Christian Zionism.

* "The whole idea behind Christian Zionism is to align America with the nation of Israel so as to 'hurry God up' in his efforts to bring about Armageddon."

* A sidebar, "God's Beach Ball: Armageddon's Man in Washington" (p76), profiles Hagee's political efforts. Taibbi observes: "America will always be filled with half-clever hucksters who look for ways to live the fat life off the ignorance and loneliness of country rubes, but Hagee's particular niche is unusually sleazy, even by our already appallingly low national standards."

* Taibbi reflects on the culture of Hagee's church as he experiences it. "I could see how under different circumstances it would be easy enough to bury your 'sinful' self far under the skin of your outer Christian and to just travel through life this way. So long as you go through all the motions, no one will care who you really are underneath."

* After the deliverance service that Taibbi infiltrates gets started, the associate pastor "began to issue instructions. He told us that under no circumstances should we pray during the Deliverance.

* "'When the word of God is in your mouth,' he said, 'the demons can't come out of your body. You have to keep a path clear for the demon to come up through your throat. So under no circumstances pray to God. You can't have God in your mouth. You can cough, you might even want to vomit, but don't pray.'

* "The crowd nodded along solemnly. [He] then explained that he was going to read from an extremely long list of demons and cast them out individually. As he did so, we were supposed to breathe out, keep our mouths open and let the demons out."

* Imagine the worst. Demons of everything and anything from handwriting analysis, to philosophy, to hemorrhoids are called out. Sadly funny.

* "By the end of the weekend I realized how quaint was the mere suggestion that Christians of this type should learn to 'be rational' or 'set aside your religion' about such things as the Iraq War or other policy matters. Once you've made a journey like this - once you've gone this far - you are beyond suggestible. It's not merely the informational indoctrination, the constant belittling of homosexuals and atheists and Muslims and pacifists, etc., that's the issue. It's that once you've gotten to this place, you've left behind the mental process that a person would need to form an independent opinion about such things." Rolling Stone, May 1 '08, pp69-76, 88-89. <http://tinyurl.com/66mnxn>

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ORIGINS

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (Directed by Nathan Frankowski, starring Ben Stein, distributed by Premise Media Corporation, 2008, 105 minutes) -- freelance science writer and, in this case, reviewer Dan Whipple was invited to preview the film in January. In short, he found it "a morass of innuendo, untruth, irrationality, and fear-mongering. ...

"Some of Expelled deals with the alleged academic suppression of non-Darwinian ideas. The poster child for this is Richard Sternberg, whose tumultuous, pro-ID controversies at the Smithsonian Institution are chronicled in detail. ...

"Repression of scientific thought, we can all agree, is horrible if true. But it isn't true." Whipple does little to explain why it isn't true. He dismissively points out: "This is a dispute among academics. ...

"Sternberg never worked for the Smithsonian, so the Smithsonian couldn't threaten his job there. He was a visiting scholar with research privileges and an office. He still has both the office and the research privileges." Whipple doesn't consider whether Sternberg may have been threatened with loosing them. (For the most balanced description we've seen of the Sternberg controversy, consider the Wikipedia entry on the subject [http://tinyurl.com/2ubg6m].)

As is often the case when debate reaches emotionally high levels, there is evidence that the opponents are speaking past each other. Whipple claims that Darwinism "has nothing whatsoever to say about the origin of life. ...

"Frankowski and Stein ridicule the hypothesis proposed some years ago called 'directed panspermia.' This conjecture ... is that life originated elsewhere in the galaxy then was planted on earth, perhaps delivered by alien visitors. ... This is exactly ID's hypothesis: some super intelligent being planted life on earth. ...

"While Frankowski preaches about evidence of design in Expelled, he presents none. Nor does he present any evidence of holes in evolutionary theory, though he claims that scientists fearful of exposure have found many of them. ...

"The film, more than any other creationist/ID effort I've seen, is antiscientific and antirational." Waiting until he approaches his conclusion, Whipple reveals a final gripe: "as entertainment, Expelled is dull and depressing." Skeptical Inquirer, May/Jun '08, pp52-53.

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TEMPLETON FOUNDATION

In its efforts to promote unity between religion and science, the Templeton Foundation Press catalog for Spring 2008 announces Tibetan Buddhism and Modern Physics, by Vic Mansfield [1]. "[T]his book shows how the principle of emptiness, the philosophic heart of Tibetan Buddhism, connects intimately to quantum nonlocality and other foundational features of quantum mechanics. Detailed connections between emptiness, modern relativity , and the nature of time are also explored." <templetonpress.org>

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YOGA

"Hindu Leaders Question Yoga for Christians" -- from Hindu Press International (Apr 1 '08), a whole new perspective: "It's hypocrisy, says Maha Sabha the head, but Catholic teacher says it has helped her draw closer to Christ. A Catholic spiritual teacher who encourages her pupils to find God through yoga has been criticized by Hindu leaders. Winnie Young, 96, has spent most of her life teaching yoga after studying under one of the world's leading yogis, Yogacharya BKS Iyengar. Young, who founded a national yoga institute in 1975, said people had a misconception of yoga as a religion. Her institute believed yoga was a tool to connect to God.

"However, religious leaders in the Hindu community have criticized her, saying it is impossible to teach yoga from a Christian perspective. Young said yoga had helped her draw closer to Christ. Her institute practices hatha yoga, which advocates controlled breathing to calm the body and cleanse the mind in an effort to achieve nirvana, an elevated mental state.

"'I have been led by my Christian beliefs, but I don't do indoctrination. I teach as a Christian, my Christian principles guide me.' In her book Yoga for the Christian [2], Young says while she realizes that yoga is based on an Eastern philosophy, she can draw from the technique and knows where to draw the line. She concedes that there are certain Hindu beliefs incorporated in yoga that Christians cannot accept.

"But the head of the South African Hindu Maha Sabha, Ashwin Trikamjee, is critical of Young's teaching. 'It's hypocrisy of the highest order. I don't understand how anyone can teach yoga from a Christian background. It is an indisputable fact that yoga has its origins in the East and in Hinduism,' he said." (HPI story from <http://www.thetimes.co.za/PrintEdition/Article.aspx?id=736015>)

"The Yoga Boom: A Call for Christian Discernment" by Elliot Miller -- this introductory essay, first of a lengthy three-part series, establishes an important starting point: "Yoga is derived from the Sanskrit word yug, which means 'to yoke.'" It is the system Hindus developed to create a yoke between God and man.

Miller discusses the historical and conceptual foundations of yoga, describing the four major approaches which exist in India: bhakti, Jnana, karma, and raja - the last of which has become most popular in the West with its derivative, hatha yoga. "Whether hatha yoga can be separated from its Hindu roots and practiced by Christians will be a major subject in parts two and three, which will examine yoga in its contemporary context."

He explains: "The thesis I will be arguing ... is that when someone participates in a practice that was developed with a specific purpose in mind by someone else, it is possible and even probable that on subtle levels the participant who does not have the original purpose in mind nonetheless will be moved along in the direction of fulfilling that purpose." Christian Research Journal, 31: 2 - 2008, pp10-21.

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Sources, Monographs:

1 - Tibetan Buddhism and Modern Physics, by Vic Mansfield (Templeton Fndn Prs, 2008, paperback, 192 pages)

<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/159947137X/apologiareport> (Take a look at who Amazon credits as having written the book's forward, "Lama Dalai.")

2 - Yoga for the Christian, by Winnie Young (I have been unable to find any source for this book. - RP)

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