sen, i'm quite right in specific as well...:-) :"these religious practices are often simply arbitrarily chosen markers of religious identity." well...yeah. Jews don;t eat pork becuase hogs are sacred to She Who, as are rabbits and eggs...which is of course why Christians have the easter (Ishtar, Astarte) bunny brings eggs for the ham (or lamb) supper, and many cultures celebrate with the easter braid, a tupe of bread outlawed by jeremiah about 750 years before Christ (ocean: knead cakes, Queen of Heaven) trichinosis etc didn;t keep the philistines et all from being tough opponents. those arguments ere invented later. the praxes of differentiation did...see samson, etc. :"remembers who he or she is, and what that means. : when they don;t, the Law is hollow...thus, as i see it, Jesus mentioning that the 613 praxes of seuteronomy are dhikr, not ways to get a merit badge. one can currently (more/less) see this in the Aqdas and the history of the fast. :"However, in your account of alcohol, you make no mention of alcoholism. That is a rather large omission, is it not?" no. it's seperate issue.
:" It is like vaccinating all children to eliminate a disease which would only kill a few of them." the lady who draws the most of my attentons these day spent a month nearly dead from pertussis, on the basis that vacinations are a govt plot to induce autism--and was thence further seperated/differentaited by being home-schooled as a necessary side effect of her parents refusal to yield authrity over the body of their daughter to the state... that's the same isue as above. show me the genetic marker for bottle opening and i will show u alcholism. in ur core stregnths, what's an -ism? the same genetic/environmnetal factors that cause alcohol to be an appropirate ism cause irrational relationsdhip, gambling, cocaine, marihuana, pornography, fill in the blank with ur 6 favorites, to be -isms. having forgotten God, a hole exists wihich needs be filled with something. 12 step types refer to this as what it takes o "live inside ur own skin." i am regularly ofered cocaine and marijuana, halluncinogenic mushrooms, and the occasional hit of mmda. i spend enormous time in bars and dives. for some people, recalling who they are under such circumtancs is difficult. for others not so much. is that genetic? :"But in practice the elimination of alcohol by legislation and enforcement is impossible and should not be attempted, as we saw in Prohibition days in the USA." folk myth. alcohol was never banned in the usa. beer above 3.2% was bannd, and alcohol without a prescription or review by a harmancist as banned, cerating an enormous profit margin for selling such at prices that had govt taxes going to the distributor,m and not the feds. in fact, if u look at the statistical ab of the usa, alcohol consumption per capita began going down hard during prohbition, and has kept going down ever since. for some context, here's adecent link: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/miami/peopleevents/pande06.html the ciritcal part of the page, in terms of our discussion above is: :"It also defined intoxicating liquor as having .5 percent alcoholic content; but liquor used for medicinal, sacramental or industrial purposes, no matter the alcoholic content, was legal. Likewise for fruit or grape beverages prepared at home. As the '20s wore on, Prohibition was blamed for distorting the role of alcohol in American life and for escalating disregard for the law. More concretely, Prohibition was held responsible for the rise in organized crime in American cities." the infalllible and beloved Guardian suggests somweehre or other that >>>>materialism<<< is the source of such societal decay, and therefore lowering standads of chastity--which incudes in my wotld view, using chemicals to interfere with dhikr, ot just using people to interfere, is a sign of matierialism.....not alcohol's "demon" properties. and now we're right back to history joining science as as being based on the stories we tell ourselves. The information contained in this e-mail and any attachments thereto ("e-mail") is sent by the Johnson County Community College ("JCCC") and is intended to be confidential and for the use of only the individual or entity named above. The information may be protected by federal and state privacy and disclosures acts or other legal rules. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are notified that retention, dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error please immediately notify JCCC by email reply and immediately and permanently delete this e-mail message and any attachments thereto. Thank you. __________________________________________________ You are subscribed to Baha'i Studies as: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: send a blank email to mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe: send subscribe bahai-st in the message body to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe: http://list.jccc.edu:8080/read/all_forums/subscribe?name=bahai-st Baha'i Studies is available through the following: Mail - mailto:[email protected] Web - http://list.jccc.edu:8080/read/?forum=bahai-st News - news://list.jccc.edu/bahai-st Public - http://www.escribe.com/religion/bahaist Old Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] New Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]
