(no subject)
This article and this article are great. These are what friend E.'s humanist group will be discussing today.
Two things:
One of the comments on the first article makes a great point. Why are psychologists and anthropologists so bound up in the "theory of mind" and the imaginative powers that go into religious myth and ritual? They're missing a basic component of religion--the moral systems. One of the reasons religion has helped us is that it's helped us deal with the fact that there are lots of other humans, and we shouldn't kill our "neighbors" (a group that one facet of religion has been widening over the ages, just as other facets make killing in the name of God a good thing). So, why not look at the ethical dimension of religion, and how that's helped the survival of our species?
Another, which I've been laughing over, and it looks like a hard-boiled theist has put it into the comments of the first article as well: It'll be awfully easy to get people working on these branches of science, because they can just as easily be used to support religion. Of course we developed the ability to imagine God; of course we developed the ability for religion--God made it that way, so that we could get to know him! (Now let's go study how he did it...)
I'm actually glad that this "evolution of God" thing can be seen from two sides. It's one of those weird crossroads of religion and science, where they could very easily agree about something, just for very different reasons.
And now, because the internet occasionally likes to make my day month year:
After the kidlet had borrowed a copy of TFU, which I finished in a couple of days, we finally bought our own copy. Which I have the itch to play through again. And again. And again. All those arguments about the origins of the Rebel Alliance? Just plain flat weird. You'd think SW fans woulda gotten used to the retconning by now.
And now, because I love combining the two above subjects:
Retconning is apologetics. No, really. Religion has to jump through hoops to show that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. (Usually boils down to a combination of "sin is our fault and we should be grateful" and "we must have free will, otherwise we wouldn't be free to be horrible" and "God loves us so much that he let the Holocaust happen.")
SW has to jump through hoops to keep its wild 'n' wacky continuity from falling apart into a million vaguely related sub-universes (even though that's really what SW "continuity" is!). Boba Fett and Jaster Mereel weren't really the same person, Jaster just had a leetle identity crisis, is all!
...I'm actually looking forward to seeing the great big pink-and-purple-with-yellow-polka-dots-and-let's-light-them-on-fire hoops they jump through with the new brand-o-Mandos. If they actually do it.
A thousand years from now, the new religious wars will be fought over whether retconning is or is not the will of the Force.
Two things:
One of the comments on the first article makes a great point. Why are psychologists and anthropologists so bound up in the "theory of mind" and the imaginative powers that go into religious myth and ritual? They're missing a basic component of religion--the moral systems. One of the reasons religion has helped us is that it's helped us deal with the fact that there are lots of other humans, and we shouldn't kill our "neighbors" (a group that one facet of religion has been widening over the ages, just as other facets make killing in the name of God a good thing). So, why not look at the ethical dimension of religion, and how that's helped the survival of our species?
Another, which I've been laughing over, and it looks like a hard-boiled theist has put it into the comments of the first article as well: It'll be awfully easy to get people working on these branches of science, because they can just as easily be used to support religion. Of course we developed the ability to imagine God; of course we developed the ability for religion--God made it that way, so that we could get to know him! (Now let's go study how he did it...)
I'm actually glad that this "evolution of God" thing can be seen from two sides. It's one of those weird crossroads of religion and science, where they could very easily agree about something, just for very different reasons.
And now, because the internet occasionally likes to make my day month year:
Click to viewAfter the kidlet had borrowed a copy of TFU, which I finished in a couple of days, we finally bought our own copy. Which I have the itch to play through again. And again. And again. All those arguments about the origins of the Rebel Alliance? Just plain flat weird. You'd think SW fans woulda gotten used to the retconning by now.
And now, because I love combining the two above subjects:
Retconning is apologetics. No, really. Religion has to jump through hoops to show that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. (Usually boils down to a combination of "sin is our fault and we should be grateful" and "we must have free will, otherwise we wouldn't be free to be horrible" and "God loves us so much that he let the Holocaust happen.")
SW has to jump through hoops to keep its wild 'n' wacky continuity from falling apart into a million vaguely related sub-universes (even though that's really what SW "continuity" is!). Boba Fett and Jaster Mereel weren't really the same person, Jaster just had a leetle identity crisis, is all!
...I'm actually looking forward to seeing the great big pink-and-purple-with-yellow-polka-dots-and-let's-light-them-on-fire hoops they jump through with the new brand-o-Mandos. If they actually do it.
A thousand years from now, the new religious wars will be fought over whether retconning is or is not the will of the Force.