From: Argrath@aol.com
Date: Sat 20 Jan 1996 - 22:30:21 EET
In Glorantha Digest V2 #335, Sandy Petersen writes:
>Martin lists evidence that religion is really useful on a group
>level, not an individual, evidently paying little or no attention to
>what I said, which was "its PRACTITIONERS" consider it useful on an
>individual level, and for them, benefits to society are secondary
>concerns.
It wasn't that I paid it little or no attention, it's that I gave it my
version of the big Petersenian "so what," with a raspberry chaser. :-)
> Martin, clearly religion can benefit society, but that's
>NOT why individual people obey the religion.
Again, so what? To rephrase my point:
All organized* religions** teach their members rules which benefit the
group***; to the extent this group participates in society, the rules
benefit
society.
* Organized = where one person tells another what to do based on
religious precepts, with some reasonable expectation that the second person
will obey.
** Religion = spiritual practice OR belief or both.
*** Group = self-identified set; fuzzy, not Aristotelian, logic is
helpful in determining who is in the group and who is not.
There, is that clearer? :-)
Now, as to WHY the individual follows these rules, at obvious and sometimes
**** Religion = proselytizing religion, here. Folk religions like
non-obvious cost in money, time, energy, life, and limb, it's becuase
religion**** offers a bargain: Do (believe, practice, wear, eat, don't eat)
this and you get that. Most people consider it a much better than fair deal.
Shintoism and so-called tribal religions simply organize spontaneous
spiritual activity in a traditional, unquestioned pattern. As a Shinto
priest said to Bill Moyers, "We don't have a theology. We dance."
- -----
I heartily recommend reading the Religion page of your local newspaper to all
students of religion. Today's Washington Post had two items of interest.
One was about a liberal RC bishop who was fired from his bishopric in France
and given a diocese in southern Algeria known as Partenia--a diocese which
hasn't existed for centuries, and moreover is based in a ruined city covered
by the Sahara desert since the Middle Ages. Probably not too many Catholics
in southern Algeria anyhow. The other bit was in an article on the visit of
the Patriarch of the Armenian Church (Etchmiadzin branch) to Washington: it
mentioned a church in Armenia called "Holy Sign of the Demon Seizer." Got to
love it. (BTW, the Etchmiadzin is the Vatican-like enclave in Armenia where
the Armenian church has its headquarters. When it was under Communist rule,
a rival hierarchy arose among exiles, based in the Great House of Cilicia in
Lebanon. Shades of Malkionism!
- --Martin Crim
"I call that a bargain, the best I ever had." --Pete Townsend
------------------------------
End of Glorantha Digest V2 #336
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