From: Paul Reilly (paul@phyast.pitt.edu)
Date: Thu 14 Apr 1994 - 19:26:31 EEST
Sandy writes:
>statement. I think that rape among humans expresses hostility, not
>dominance. Among animals that perform dominance "rape" (at least
Good point, but I think it represents a mix of dominance and hostility. Especially when you look at date rape & seduction (in the Latinate sense of the word). Certainly the idea of 'scoring' seems to be based on dominance.
>The lower-ranked animal sometimes even invites the
>superior to mount, to demonstrate friendliness and subservience. This
>is NOT the case among humans.
Hmm. Perhaps not the case among Americans. How about ancient Persia? Human culture is surprisingly elastic, and while I do think humans have instincts, a given instinctive behavior may be suppressed in one culture and encouraged in another.
Sandy wrote:
>>Most faiths on Earth proclaim similar acts as "good", from Muslim to
>>Judaism
I replied:
>Like when Yahweh orders the Jews to kill all the Canaanites in a
>town, sparing neither the women and children nor the domestic
>Or when the Moslems exploded across the world, killing any (apart,
>theoretically, from Peoples of the Book) who would not convert?
Sandy replied
>Let's not start a pro/anti-religion thread in the Daily, huh?
> In any case, your examples are pitifully bad. When's the last
>time the Jews killed all the population of a town? And though lots of
During the Iron Age, the period supposedly most like Glorantha. I find my 'pitifully bad' examples drawn from Iron Age and 7th-8th century AD religions more pertinent than your apparent desire to model Gloranthan religion on 'nice' 20th century religions. In any case you say "Most religions" exhort the same kind of 'good' behavior. I think many, many, religions exhorted behaviors that other religions would NOT recognize as 'good'. Compare Jainism and Aztec religion for an extreme example. Or modern Christianity's view of the Crusades or the Inquisition - and modern Christianity is a lineal descendant of those.
Since my examples are pitifully bad, let me give some more:
Xipe Totec worship
Jainism
Iroquois False Face Society
The religion of the Mae Enga, prescribing warfare and revenge
Buddhism
Early Christianity -renounce all violence
The Sikhs - all must go armed
Islam
The religion of the Yanomamo.
OK, Sandy, what are the acts recognized as good by the majority of the
above religions? Or pick any ten relatively unrelated religions and
boil down their ethics to a set of 'good' behavior. I am ready to be
convinced.
> I consider this thread closed unless you can find me an
>example of a large-scale religion that thinks it's good to rob and
>kill on an everyday basis, w/o special permission from God.
Does it have to be a modern religion? And are people outside the in-group considered human? If not, consider:
The Roman National religion - killing people or taking them as slaves and stealing their stuff was considered virtuous - you got a Triumph for it, and the more booty you brought (including slaves) the more honored you would be.
The Aztec religions - examples unnecessary, I hope. Millions of people followed this religion.
10th century BC Judaism - towards non-Jews
I could go on, but I won't for now. However if Sandy wants to restrict humanity to the in-group (extended tribe) of whatever the religion in question is, I could agree with him.
guys were killed by the Moslems, they did not kill everyone who failed to convert, though non-Moslems had to pay extra taxes.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.7 : Fri 10 Oct 2003 - 01:33:41 EEST