The Council of Nicea is a fine example of "Religous Knowledge" and its capability to change. Back in 332 AD there was a decision on the status of Jesus as the Son of God as well as being God and also the being of "holy Spirit" getting into the mix, thereby establishing the Holy Trinity as it is roughly known today.
While this stands as a good example of the doldrum pace of change (seeing as this is a tenant of the faith for most Christian sects to this day) it also shows that Religious knowledge is flexible and dynamic. The Old Testament is full of Imagery from the Caananite religious tradition, co-opted no less, and yet the Isrealite people were admonished for partaking in their religous ceremonies on a regular basis.
These ideas were also taken from the Babylonians, and the Ancient Egyptians... sheesh, they stole from everybody. Romans co-opted the Greek Pantheon... and so on.
If we refer back to the idea that religion is used for social engineering or "Social Control", it can then be justified (perhaps) to argue that religion has to be adaptive and changeable. (In so much as the ability of people for change.)
Now here comes the fun part. All of this discussing of ideas is all based on knowledge obtained from sources that vary in their reliability from .99 to .01. I wouldn't go so far as to say that the book-learnin' stuff was on the low end of the spectrum but the ideas in my head may be closer to that. Point, though, is that this is all knowledge that can and will change as well. I spouted off the stuff about the early origins of god without really knowing that information for certain, just going off of what I've read and heard from sources that have the appearance of being reliable. As a professional skeptic, these are only there to be proven untrue.
Isn't that what life is about? Proving it untrue?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
kbarri@artic.edu
Wow, that's two email addresses from women in two posts. Mostly I just get death threats on my blog. I guess we're just arguing the timing of dogmatic change. In science something wrong gets changed fairly quickly. Look at the speed at which Pons & Fleischman had their paper on Cold Fusion retracted.
More recently, an issue I was periferally involved in came to light. The belief that Extasy burns holes in the brain came from one paper published in Science. Science is a journal with such credibility that one paper is frequently all it takes to set public policy or recommend entire new avenues for other scientists to explore. After years of other credible scientists failing to reproduce the results the author re-evaluated his method and found that his test materials had been mislabled. His supplies of MDMA and methamphetamine were mishandled by his source at the NIH. The labels were switched. The high dose of his control analyte, methamphetamine, given in place of the experimental MDMA is known to cause that kind of damage. The industry is changing it's evaluation of MDMA now that it's no longer considered so harmful and many are now petitioning the DEA to grant it experimental theraputic status.
How many hundreds of years did it take the church to admit they never should have prosecuted Gallileo? Religion may change but it does so at a glacial pace. Even then only when politically necessary to do so.
zachy, are you so low you have to debate a homo-phobe and racist. are you that low in life. i know better of you.
you must be bored out of your mind to entertain this bull shit.
Dear anonymous.
I was not aware that there was a homophobe/racist involved in my blog discussion. (I did say "discussion" rather than "debate" because this is not a debate. It is a series of ideas that will lead somewhere, or nowhere.)
As for the mal-labeled individual I'll send out the Troops to rectify the ills that this does to everyone everwhere.
Also, if you know better of me, please inform me how to correctly and perfectly live my life in a manner that suits the universal objective of perfecting life. I'm not bored as far as I can tell. But then again, I don't know anything about what it is to have an inkling of what makes me better or worse.
Please, in the future, keep your dislike/distrust of others and their "opinions" confined to your own forums. As much as I hate people, I tolerate them if they prove that they have ideas that they want to share in a manner that is considerate of others.
My blog is not a place for you to post hate.
As for the homphobes and racists, I'm a black Lesbian, if you have a problem with that, tough shit, I ain't talking about that here and I expect others to do the same.
I'm probably the homophobe racist in question. Blunt honesty is often a threat to those who gave up their soul for political correctness. Sure I called Ted Kennedy a cocksucker and made reference to my favorite lesbian couple. But you see, those lesbians in question are some of my dearest friends and among our circle they are simply known as 'The Lesbians' a moniker that causes them absolutely no distress what so ever. As for racism I'm flat out at a loss for that one. Classism yes. Racism, no. Maybe it's not me. In any event, it's your forum. I hope that I've conducted myself in accordance with my hosts wishes. If I have not all you need to do is advise. If I've offended others elsewhere it's up to them to come to my site for debate. And Ted Kennedy is a cocksucker.
Dude. It's a blog. Go look at porn.
Yeah! I'm going to talk about nothing but party-ing!!!
Post a Comment