HI Billy, On Apr 12, 2010, at 1:51 PM, [email protected] wrote: > Ernie: > As you can tell, except to the extent that Shamanism is important to > understand > if you want to know about the origins of religion, or if you have an interest > in Iroquois or Cherokee culture, I'm not much for oral tradition.
I hadn't noticed, but it makes sense, and explains a few things.. > Guess this could be debated, but > would it do much good to do so ? Actually, yeah, as this comes up quite a bit in our discussion of Islam... > Religion, to me, requires scripture in something like the same way > the US requires a constitution. Without it, too much is not dependable > generation to generation. I think this may be your academic bias. Religious *consistency* may require written scripture, but religion in its *essence* certainly does not. I'll concede that the US *government* needs a constitution in order to function effectively and be held accountable. But if you date the U.S. from 1776 like most of us common-folk do, then it doesn't need a constitution to *exist*. > I'm highly suspicious of oral tradition. That's the bottom line. > Plenty of troubles with "literary religion," nobody needs to tell me, > but, again, it is like having a constitution to appeal to. Fair enough, but it does seem inaccurate/unfair/condescending to *define* religion as only being Scriptural. For that matter, what would qualify: - Buddhism - Greek mythology - Norse mythology ? -- Ernie P. > > Billy > > ================================================ > > > > In a message dated 4/12/2010 10:57:41 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, > [email protected] writes: > Hi Billy, > > On Apr 12, 2010, at 10:01 AM, [email protected] wrote: > > But it seems self-evidently true that if you are religious and > > take your faith's scriptures seriously as vital to life, you will want to > > read the texts closely to get full meaning. You will want to know > > "all the details," and find out the best ways to analyze > > various sacred writings. > > Interesting. Presumably that only applies to "literary" religious > traditions., right? I don't think animism or earth-worship benefits literacy > as much. > > -- Ernie P. > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Centroids mailing list: [email protected] > http://radicalcentrism.com/mailman/listinfo/centroids_radicalcentrism.com > Archives at > http://radicalcentrism.org/pipermail/centroids_radicalcentrism.com/ > > _______________________________________________ > Centroids mailing list: [email protected] > http://radicalcentrism.com/mailman/listinfo/centroids_radicalcentrism.com > Archives at > http://radicalcentrism.org/pipermail/centroids_radicalcentrism.com/
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