Aug 05, 2004 23:05
Well, there goes the neighborhood; I've been thinking again.
Lansing, Kenyatta and I were discussing religious parallels throughout the world, and decided that most of the big ones are fundamentally the same. Seeing as how people are willing to thow their lives away because someone else is eating crackers is beyond me. Maybe they've got a line on something, but who am I to judge? Personally, faith is something that will never be able to be described in a book. Sure, the Torah, Koran, and the Bible (to name a few books of faith) all have relevant and insightful things to say about it, but I don't think any one of them truly nails it. The church was created out of fear, fear of the unknown. If you look back, most faiths have a great flood story. The Epic of Gilgamesh was first, with the Torah/Bible a close second. At the time of the writing of the Torah (or the beginnings of it anyway), the Babylonians had just served the Jews an extreme ass-whupping. They tried to imprint the Jews with their "pagan" religion, but we all know how that resulted. The Jews gave the Babylonians a curveball; they took the Epic's stories, and made them into the Torah, therefore validating their religion. It was in retaliation of the oppressive Babylonians. Even the Greeks and Romans have one. Also; a divine being being sacrificed for mankinds' flaws. Jesus for the Christians, any number of prophets for the Hebrews, Hinduism has one I can't place, and Prometheus for the Romans.
This terrorism crap isn't about religion.
We might as well just terrify ourselves by looking in the mirror or something.
Goodness.