--- In [email protected], TurquoiseB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: <snip> > They've been a fixture of most religions in most > eras of human spirituality. Whether it be the Roman > Church charging for "indulgences" and promising the > faithful results or a Vedic or Hindu pundit charging > for a yagya and promising the faithful results, the > bottom line seems to me to be the same. Those who pay > do so because they have been convinced to have faith > in a priest class who perform the rituals, who, because > of how "special" they are (or the "special" knowledge > they have attained), have the ability to "intercede" > for them with God or the gods or the Laws Of Nature > or whatever and Get Things Done.
There's an interesting difference, though. The way yagyas are said to operate is quite mechanical; the laws of nature don't get to choose whether to respond. And at least as far as I've been able to observe, pundits in the TMO get the same sort of respect and "faith" as physicians, which is rather different from that accorded to priests. <snip> > The world of religion is already weird enough with > all of the odd practices people perform themselves > in the name of communicating with God or the infinite or > whatever. Paying someone else to communicate *for you* > seems to me to be like believing that you have to hire > someone to go to the phone company for you so you can > get a phone. More like believing you need to hire someone from the phone company to install phone lines in your house or fix your phone when it goes blooey, I think. Or, again, more like believing you need to pay a doctor to give you preventive care or diagnose and treat whatever's wrong with you. (Caveat for the terminally literal-minded: I am *not* claiming pundits are objectively as successful as doctors or phone repair people. I'm just talking about the *attitude* toward them, which is what Barry was addressing.)
