Hi David,
At 08:48 PM 2/12/00 -0700, dfsiemensjr@juno.com wrote:
>Please, Glenn, don't twist my words.
I am not trying to twist your words. It just seemed to me that you were
rejecting the on the ground observations made by Bridges and offering no
evidence to support your countercontention. I thought I would call you on it.
I made no challenge to Bridges'
>observations. Indeed, his comments on the people who came through and
>"described" the Ona rings a bell with me. Many years back, an "authority"
>on missions came through the station where my folks were working. His
>trip was presented to the constituents in the States as a fact-finding
>mission. But he asked nothing from the people on the ground. Instead, he
>spent the entire time telling them how things were. When he published his
>results, they did not approximate reality, either in connection with what
>my folks knew first hand, nor in what their fellow missionaries reported.
I agree with you here. This is the same thing I have seen too many
christians do when it comes to geology. What many of the YEC apologists say
about geology has no connection to reality at all, just as the case you
cite above about another subject. It seems to me that above all, christians
should strive for honesty. Unfortunately, that is often the first thing to
go when preconceptions are challenged.
>
>Note that what I have done is challenge his and your definition of
>"religion." Both of you hold that it cannot be religion without some sort
>of ritual or worship. However, the individual whose god is money does not
>build an altar surmounted by a dollar sign on which he can place candles
>and to which he can direct his prayer. The same is true of the worship of
>self. The person whose god is himself does not hire a priest to conduct
>services.
I guess we will have to disagree about the definition of religion. From
your response to George, you define religion as"
>a god is anything which is the primary source of good
>and authority, with or without ritual,...
As I understand your definition it is that which we expect something good
from or which we can placate to avoid evil. I would contend then that I
must be worshipping an oil company. Here is why:
1. I expect them to give me good things, like a paycheck which brings many
blessings upon my family.
2. Over the last 10 years I have survived 11 layoffs and 1 merger whose
total casualty rate has been 99%. (yes that is 99% of my colleagues have
been laid off over the past 10 years) Much evil was visited upon those who
were laid off--marriages failed, suicides took place, bankruptcies
occurred, houses were lost and illness resulted. In order to avoid that
evil and placate the evil oil company who has authority over me, I, and
most of my colleagues spend about 12 hours per day and many a Saturday
working. By our sacrifice we hope to get that next paycheck and avoid
having the ultimate evil befall us. Mostly we have to placate the high
priest of the oil company--the exploration manager or vice president. They
are the ones who tell us what behaviors will be acceptable to the company
and which ones aren't. My small part in all this is to convey to the people
who work for me those requirements.
3.We also have other gods, like the god of sand. We study the sand god for
hours at a time. We make it sound scientific by saying that we are studying
sandstone depositional systems but in reality, like a true religionist, we
spend hours reading our 'scriptures'. We are seekiing to be nearer to sand
with our oil wells. Someone once made up a song, "Nearer my Sand to thee"
but it didn't go over very well and so they changed the words. We expect
good things from sand and if we don't find oil in the sand, the mean oil
company will visit evil on us by laying us off. Thus we do everything we
can to understand sand depositional systems and find the sand god as he
snakes his way through the subsurface.
Now, if you find this to be a silly example of what you mean by religion it
is. But it does illustrate the problem with your definition of religion.
No one worships the oil company; similarly the Ona didn't worship either.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution
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