Gee, Noctes, that fisheaters.com could make me swear off fish (and Catholicism) for a lifetime!

Every once in a while, Steve Shaw posts a snippet of something that makes me think he's almost on the brink of understanding all this. Example: What makes it all even worse is that you only tell them all this because you happened to be born here. Had you been born in India the story would be different. In the Australian outback, different again. In Iran, different yet again. To you, though, these considerations are minor inconveniences. But you have the neck to convince them that they will find deeper truths and happiness if only they espouse this nonsense. It's in your heart, it's sacred to you, you don't need to defend it, etc. Yet it's indefensible, even if you're a believer.

But then he posts another twenty posts that show he still doesn't have a clue. It's true that every culture has sacred stories, sacred myths, that form the basis of the religious practices of that culture. And while these stories/teachings/myths may not be "true" in Steve's semi-scientific understanding of the word "true," these stories hold and convey profound truth drawn from many generations of the wisdom of that particular culture. It's a challenge for people of one religious culture to accept and learn from the wisdom of another religious culture, but it does happen - and it seems to be happening more and more in the current age. I wonder if it will ever happen that our "born-again" atheists, Christians, Muslims, or whatever will be able to learn from religious thinking of various cultures with the realization that they can learn from others without being required to espouse their belief systems.

As I've said before (and Steve has not responded), Europeans tend to disregard and destroy the wisdom and religious practices of every culture they have conquered, attempting to replace such "primitive" thought with their own "enlightened" thinking - just as they have politicized and destroyed the ancient wisdom of their own culture. Alliance with European government has not done Christianity any favors, and Christianity is finally learning that lesson after being in bed with government for most of the last 1500 years or more.

As I've said so many times before, there is much wisdom in the world and through the centuries that is not in the realm of scientific inquiry. It is not in conflict with science, but it is in a different realm.

-Joe-