govern point

We all know someone who is a mason, but I’ll be darned if I really know what that means.  Most of us are like:

I think my pappa was one, not sure what it means though.

My uncle used to go to Masonic meetings I remember him picking up Dad a couple of times. That’s about all I know.

So What is Freemasonry?

Masonry (or Freemasonry) is a fraternity. The actual origins have been lost over time. Often thought to have grown out of the guilds of stonemasons who built cathedrals in the Middle Ages.  Stretches exist to the Knights Templar.

A Fraternity or a Religion?

It ultimately a little of both.  Freemasonry refers to the principles, institutions, and practices of the fraternal order of the Free and Accepted Masons.  Freemasonry is an organization of men based on the “fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man”.   The religion comes with the belief in a Supreme Being and in the immortality of the soul as two key requirements for membership.

Core Tenants?

Take care of yourself, do good and be honorable.  Masonry teaches each person has a responsibility to make things just a little better in the world.  Masonry is deeply involved with helping people through non-profits — it spends more than $1.4 million dollars every day in the United States, just to make life a little easier.

The lodge and the brotherhood lets men associate with other men of honor and integrity.  In some ways, Masonry is a support group for men who are trying to make the right decisions.  A collaborative life coaching group if you will.

President Barack Obama quoted the Bible and provided the biggest jab at the former administration during his inauguration — when he said, to put away childish things. Most people probably didn’t even understand it was biblical, but it is.

The childish things could be anything, since he didn’t let it out. Let’s guess:

• The thought that one could generate wealth by continuously exchanging paper of company 1 to company 2
• The concept that one really does need an interest only load for a 6000 sq. ft. house
• The hubris that the US should just go anywhere on the planet and impose our will
• That two wars can simultaneously be waged successfully

We can break down the financial mess to a failure of personal decision making and accountability, a lack of transparency and the desire for easy profits. Don’t need to be religious to think these things are childish, but isn’t that what religion has historically provided?  A moral compass.

That being said, what have churches done to challenge a culture that honors free-market ideology and consumerism, a secular concepts that challenge many religious insights into flawed humanity. Think the seven deadly sins.

Shouldn’t churches be a moral counter weight that calls on its own traditions to push back against greed? Seems like times they are changing, churches are being a little less aggressive on these warnings. Perhaps it is un-American to push back. At this point, religious voices are now virtually absent from ethical debates about bailouts, deficits and war.

I guess it makes sense that a new Gallup Poll says religion’s social influence is waning. 2/3’s of Americans say religion is losing influence on life. Just a couple of years ago it as 1/2 – mmm….

Maybe we are all looking to the government to provide the moral guides and influence, maybe we need to look somewhere else, but maybe not.

We examine empirical evidence for religious prosociality, the hypothesis that religions facilitate costly behaviors that benefit other people. Although sociological surveys reveal an association between self-reports of religiosity and prosociality, experiments measuring religiosity and actual prosocial behavior suggest that this association emerges primarily in contexts where reputational concerns are heightened. Experimentally induced religious thoughts reduce rates of cheating and increase altruistic behavior among anonymous strangers. Experiments demonstrate an association between apparent profession of religious devotion and greater trust. Cross-cultural evidence suggests an association between the cultural presence of morally concerned deities and large group size in humans. We synthesize converging evidence from various fields for religious prosociality, address its specific boundary conditions, and point to unresolved questions and novel predictions.

Ara Norenzayan & Azim F. Shariff

Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, 2136 West Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada.

Swearing on the bible has been a long held tradition for the Innauguration, if Mike Newdow has his way, it won’t be for long.  From a MSNBC news article:

A California atheist who sued to remove religion from the past two presidential inaugurations and lost will try yet again before Barack Obama’s swearing-in ceremony.

Michael Newdow, of Sacramento, Calif., said he and others will file suit Tuesday in a D.C. court in an attempt to remove all references to God and religion from the ceremony…

Not sure where it will fall, but it might best be Barack’s decision and no one else’s.  Just a concept.

Related articles:

• Minnesota Atheists Join Michael Newdow to Seek Injunction
• Lawsuit wants ’so help me God’ out of inaugural
• Michael Newdow Fights To Eliminate Prayer From Inauguration
• -Atheists Sue to Remove God From Inaugural