AUTHOR
T. Riggs Eckelberry
When I was growing up, we lived everywhere, and to this day I can number my friends from school on one hand. I have served as a commercial ship captain, wine importer, film production manager, and above all, technologist. Today, I’m the CEO of a public company that licenses a unique technology for treating water. I believe that technology has the potential to save the world, but also to undermine our rights and our independence. The many people working in the spiritual arena are the vital counter-balance, and I’m proud to be one of these, with my wife, Sigrid.
TOLERANCE
Attacks on religion begin with bashing minority groups—and spread from there. It is our duty and obligation to protect and respect all belief, because in so doing, we’re protecting our own.
MEDIA & ETHICS
Yes, something is changing: the rest of us, who have had to live with invasions of privacy and out-of-control attacks, are getting help from an unexpected quarter: the very wealthy. They are hitting back at media companies, who for 50 years have relied on a 1964 case that lets them publish provable falsehoods on politicians and public figures… unless they can prove “actual malice.”
COMBATING BIGOTRY & HATE
Like setting your neighbor’s apartment on fire, it worked; but as historian Dan Carlin points out in his Blueprint for Armageddon VI, burning your neighbor’s apartment can set yours on fire too.
COMBATING BIGOTRY & HATE
Can it be that governments and commercial interests have knowingly used the lunatics who reside at the fringe of our society to do their dirty work?
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
On September 11, 2001, all that changed. As the nation focused on the War on Terrorism, religious freedom was no longer a priority. That’s quite ironic, because international religious freedom may be the only way we can really eliminate both terrorism and regional wars.
TOLERANCE
We must all be vigilant for the fabricated, evil and false accusations that can hurt both individuals and communities.
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
On the first day of a four-part Open House on Religions of the World, I fulfilled my duty as a Jew. Are you surprised? Well, apparently, having an ancestor on my mother’s side named Pinkus gave me that right and obligation.
TOLERANCE
When I was a child in France, the word “culte” just meant “worship.” Still does. In fact, when intolerant types there want to disapprove of some faith, they have to call it a “secte.” Of course, in the USA a cult can be anything from “the cult of skinny jeans” to some dark, authoritarian thing.
COMBATING BIGOTRY & HATE
A religion is bad because of the horrible things done in its name. Right? That’s like saying that the institution of marriage is bad because of some people’s infidelity.
SCIENTOLOGY RELIGION
“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
