On Being with Krista Tippett

What is prayer? I make a list. Praise. Gratitude. Begging pleading cutting deals. Fruitless whining and puelling. Focus.

There's a new hospital donated by the Swedes or the Japanese and new school funded by the Canadians, the Baptist Clinic, the flower mill that was signed posted a gift of the American people.

These were like inspired Christmas presents, the sort that stopped running when the batteries die or that break and aren't fixed.

The projects would become wrecks every one of them because they carried with them the seeds of their destruction.

There's a new hospital donated by the Swedes or the Japanese and new school funded by the Canadians, the Baptist Clinic, the flower mill that was signed posted a gift of the American people.

These were like inspired Christmas presents, the sort that stopped running when the batteries die or that break and aren't fixed.

The projects would become wrecks every one of them because they carried with them the seeds of their destruction.

Yes, up to page 3.

I read the whole thing.

I would not look actually got me thinking about this in a new way.

There's a new hospital donated by the Swedes or the Japanese and new school funded by the Canadians, the Baptist Clinic, a flower mill that was signed posted a gift of the American people. These were like inspired Christmas presents, the sort that stopped running when the batteries die or that break and aren't fixed. The projects would become wrecks every one of them because they carried with them the seeds of their destruction.

I read the whole thing. I would not look actually got me thinking about this in a new way.

There's a new hospital donated by the Swedes or the Japanese and new school funded by the Canadians, the Baptist Clinic, a flower mill that was signed posted a gift of the American people. These were like inspired Christmas presents, the sort that stopped running when the batteries die or that break and aren't fixed.

The projects would become wrecks every one of them because they carried with them the seeds of their destruction.

There is a very interesting book written by Michael Schluter, S.C.H.L.U.T.E.R.

And that's a very good book because it relates the Bible in a very simple and understandable way to what's going on in our world.

And demonstrates that God had made clear to human beings through the Jewish people exactly the kinds of principles on the basis of which he wanted human life to be constructed.

There is a very interesting book written by Michael Schluter, S.C.H.L.U.T.E.R.

And that's a very good book because it relates the Bible in a very simple and understandable way to what's going on in our world.

And demonstrates that God had made clear to human beings through the Jewish people exactly the kinds of principles on the basis of which he wanted human life to be constructed.

But even if we kept very simple things in mind they would make a lot of difference.

She is a Buddhist teacher, and she's author most recently, of The Kindness Handbook.

You've been listening to Buddhist teacher and author, Sharon Salzburg. She is author most recently of The Kindness Handbook and you can learn more about her teaching at SharonSaltspirg.com.

Studies across several scientific disciplines are accumulating evidence that modern free economies can only function if most people behave most of the time, behave morally.

Surprisingly, this research also shows that the freedom to exchange in markets may itself lead to a society where individuals have stronger moral values. Put more succinctly, markets depend on and promote virtue.

I think in that same essay, I said even the most ardent capitalists get a small thrill when they see the kind of evil-doing CEOs do the perp walk, the Jeffrey Skillings and Kenneth Lays. And we like to see people who have cheated punished.

I'm going to stick by that. I think the news is overwhelmingly about stories of the things that go wrong in the world.

I think what we found in this recession is that we didn't have a sufficiently strong framework within the financial services industry.

Studies across several scientific disciplines are accumulating evidence that modern free economies can only function if most people behave most of the time, behave morally.

Surprisingly, this research also shows that the freedom to exchange in markets may itself lead to a society where individuals have stronger moral values; put more succinctly, markets depend on and promote morality.

Now that is not the story we would tell ourselves about the reality of the economy as it started to reveal itself to us in the latter months of 2008.

I'm going to stick by that. I think the news is overwhelmingly about stories of the things that go wrong in the world.

He's co-author of several books, including most recently Darwin's Sacred Cause, how a hatred of slavery shaped Darwin's views on human evolution.

He's co-author of several books, including most recently Darwin's Sacred Cause, how a hatred of slavery shaped Darwin's views on human evolution.

James Moore has written that Darwin's idea of creation by evolution was a belief born of theological humility.

James Moore is co-author with Adrian Desmond of several books, including Darwin the Life of a Tormented Evolutionist and most recently, Darwin's Sacred Cause, how a hatred of slavery shaped Darwin's views on human evolution.

James Moore is co-author with Adrian Desmond of several books, including Darwin the Life of a Tormented Evolutionist and most recently, Darwin's Sacred Cause, how a hatred of slavery shaped Darwin's views on human evolution.

James Moore is co-author with Adrian Desmond of several books, including Darwin the Life of a Tormented Evolutionist and most recently, Darwin's Sacred Cause, how a hatred of slavery shaped Darwin's views on human evolution.

Jennifer Michael Hecht...most recently The Happiness Myth why what we think is right is wrong.

This book I wrote is called The Old Wins of New Mexico, if you're pardon me mention it the book I wrote but it's about elderly people in Northern New Mexico and I met them because I was talking with children of Spanish speaking background.

I did bring copies of the first two books because I thought those were what you were going to talk about. Those are the ones I want to start with and talk about mostly.

But what I discovered as I was writing was that I'm bilingual religiously but I am a Jew.

And that's really the underlying theme in both the sparrow and Children of God, that God paints on a vast canvas and that his brush is time.

Humans and their ilk were God's problem as far as Shahn Fine was concerned, and the Almighty was more than welcome to them.

Genesis for Shahn was literal, let there be sunlight to power the system and the whole bias fear comes alive. God's chemistry with its swimming, dancing, fornicating ions, its tangled profligate undergrowth of plant legnons and cellulose, the matte-like hymns and porphorans, the helical proteins winding and unwinding. This was a glory Shahn Fine could appreciate.

If it is a mistake to hope for such a world then it is a magnificent mistake.

Whenever he looked in the mirror he would see his mother's eyes, China blue and frightened, frightened of dirt, of her husband, of illness and of God.

This year, Sullivan published a book, The Party Faithful, How and Why Democrats Are Closing The God Gap.

In 2003 in a Democratic publication...until professional Democrats get over their aversion to all things religious, they will continue to suffer the political consequences.

It's been really instructive for me personally...to explain that no, that's not being an evangelical. It's not a political definition. It's a theological one.

One of the things I found was his running mate at the time, John Edwards, has a leather bound embossed copy of the Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren.

This year, Sullivan published a book, The Party Faithful, How and Why Democrats Are Closing The God Gap.

Until professional Democrats get over their aversion to all things religious, they will continue to suffer the political consequences.

I think one of the reasons that the discovery of some of Jeremiah Wright's more fiery and controversial sermons surprised Democrats as well as Republicans is that Democrats for so long had thought of black churches is kind of these innocuous places where you could hear good gospel music, good brunch after the service.

In a way, there's two halves of me. There's the person and there's the scientist.

But what happened is that I had written, I was asked to write an article for the scientific American on the science of the mind body connection.

And so I published the article my own way, which was talking about stress and illness.

And so I started writing the book proposal with this editor and I was sitting in my new house. I just moved into a new house and I was sitting there on the computer writing.

But then the more I thought about it, the more I thought that there are a lot of indirect pieces of evidence that one can piece together to construct a logical argument that believing.

In the 1880s said that the principle cause of nervousness in modern civilisation are there are five causes, the periodical press, the telegraph. The steam railroads, the sciences and the mental activity of women.

stress is the body's non-specific response to any demand.

It's not the stress that makes you sick. It's that the stress response, those hormones and nerve chemicals, go to the immune system through the bloodstream, through the nerve endings that then hit immune cells that are nearby, and change how immune cells work.

When I began this book, I started from the Purch of the Scientific Skeptics.

My guest today, Adrian Ivakev is a professor of environmental thought and culture at the University of Vermont in the author of a scholarly study, Claiming Sacred Ground, pilgrims and politics at Glastonbury and Sedona.

In editing my 2006 interview with Adrian Ivaki, we had to admit stories about the difference between pagan revivals in Europe and the US.

Adrian Ivaki is an associate professor of environmental thought and culture at the University of Vermont.

He's also the author of an academic study, Claiming Sacred Ground, pilgrims and politics at Glaston Berry and Sedona.

where knowledge is concerned the loss of faith changes nothing where morals are concerned the loss of faith changes nothing or next to nothing that you have lost your faith does not mean that you will suddenly decide to betray your friends or indulge in robbery rape assassination and torture

if God does not exist says Dostoevsky's Ivan Karamazov everything is allowed not at all for the simple reason that I will not allow myself everything as Kant demonstrated either morals are autonomous or they do not exist at all

if a person refrains from murdering his neighbor only out of fear of divine retribution his behavior is dictated not by moral values but by caution fear of the holy policeman egoism and if a person does good only with an eye to salvation she is not doing good since her behavior is dictated by self-interest rather than by duty or by love and will thus not be saved this is Kant the enlightenment and humanity at their best

where knowledge is concerned the loss of faith changes nothing where morals are concerned the loss of faith changes nothing or next to nothing that you have lost your faith does not mean that you will suddenly decide to betray your friends or indulge in robbery rape assassination and torture if God does not exist says Dostoevsky's Ivan Karamazov everything is allowed not at all for the simple reason that I will not allow myself everything as Kant demonstrated either morals are autonomous or they do not exist at all if a person refrains from murdering his neighbor only out of fear of divine retribution his behavior is dictated not by moral values but by caution fear of the holy policeman egoism and if a person does good only with an eye to salvation she is not doing good since her behavior is dictated by self-interest rather than by duty or by love and will thus not be saved this is Kant the enlightenment and humanity at their best Alain puts it beautifully in his letters to Sergio Solmi on the philosophy of Kant ethics means knowing that we are spirit and thus have certain obligations for no bless oblige ethics is neither more nor less than a sense of dignity there is no need to believe in God one need believe only in one's parents and mentors one's friends provided they are well chosen and one's conscience

if there is a major tension between an approach like religious naturalism and the monotheistic traditions it centers on the question of whether or not one believes in a personal god most people raised in the context of theistic traditions would probably say that being religious means believing in god

indeed when reminded that personal gods are not inherent in such systems as Buddhism or Taoism they would likely question whether these traditions are really religions and not something else like philosophies for me and probably for all of us the concept of a personal interested god can be appealing often deeply so in times of sorrow or despair

i often wonder what it would be like to be able to pray to god or Allah or Jehovah or Mary and believe that i was heard believe that my petition might be answered when i sing the hymns of faith in Jesus love i am drawn by their intimacy their allure their poetry but in the end such faith is simply not available to me i can't do it i lack the resources to render my capacity for love and my need to be loved to supernatural beings and so i have no choice but to pour these capacities and needs into earthly relationships fragile and mortal and difficult as they often are

theism versus non-theism the choice has been presented to us as saved versus damned holy versus heathen but when i talk to thoughtful theists i encounter not a polarity but a spectrum belief and faith in supernatural beings when deeply wrought are as intensely personal and individual and dynamic as our earthly relationships they add another dimension another opportunity for relationship to be sure but those of us incapable of embracing that dimension remain flooded with opportunities to open ourselves to human relationship and hence to fill our lives with the religious experience of love

if there is a major tension between an approach like religious naturalism and the monotheistic traditions it centers on the question of whether or not one believes in a personal god most people raised in the context of theistic traditions would probably say that being religious means believing in god indeed when reminded that personal gods are not inherent in such systems as Buddhism or Taoism they would likely question whether these traditions are really religions and not something else like philosophies for me and probably for all of us the concept of a personal interested god can be appealing often deeply so in times of sorrow or despair i often wonder what it would be like to be able to pray to god or Allah or Jehovah or Mary and believe that i was heard believe that my petition might be answered when i sing the hymns of faith in Jesus love i am drawn by their intimacy their allure their poetry but in the end such faith is simply not available to me i can't do it i lack the resources to render my capacity for love and my need to be loved to supernatural beings and so i have no choice but to pour these capacities and needs into earthly relationships fragile and mortal and difficult as they often are theism versus non-theism the choice has been presented to us as saved versus damned holy versus heathen but when i talk to thoughtful theists i encounter not a polarity but a spectrum belief and faith in supernatural beings when deeply wrought are as intensely personal and individual and dynamic as our earthly relationships they add another dimension another opportunity for relationship to be sure but those of us incapable of embracing that dimension remain flooded with opportunities to open ourselves to human relationship and hence to fill our lives with the religious experience of love