Clivedurdle

eligion

This course examines a number of key issues in the anthropology of religion:

relationships between the divine order and the social order;
the nature of ritual and different approaches to the understanding of ritual action;
classification, liminality and taboo;
religion as ideology, and the relationship between religion and the state;
spirit possession, shamanism and witchcraft;
new religious movements; and
world religions.

http://www.socanth.cam.ac.uk/current...AA/paper2.html

(University of Cambridge Dept of Social Anthropology)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liminality

Clivedurdle

Originally Posted by Clivedurdle
I know it ain't primary:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_thinking

except the tale of the termites and the house might be aposite!

Is this all not a classic magical cause and effect story? Christ comes in the likeness of humans to effect our salvation?

Browsing in Borders today, saw this

Reader in the Anthropology of Religion (Blackwell Anthologies in Social and Cultural Anthropology)

May I ask anyone who wants to pontificate that the Bible, the Greeks et al are not chock full of magical thinking kindly refute wiki and texts like the above.

I also want to strongly recommend Terry Jones' Barbarians.

Apart from discussing xian bishops in Persia in the 200's, he has a wonderful discussion about Ambrose in the 390's (Jones notes Constantine was baptised by an Arian Bishop!) when Catholicism was forced on the wicked arians of Constantinople, and a Catholic bishop later complained no one was attending communion, followed soon after by Cyril and his 500 equivalents of the Taliban!

Tampering of texts? After Eusebius most definitely! Well these catholics introduced the heresy of God being three and were proud to comment it was irrational. In fact they stated that to think rationally was pagan!

Quote:
if you remark the bath is nice, the attendant announces that the son was created out of nothing

Haran

I have no problem beleiving that pagans brought their magical notions into Christianity and that there is likely some remnant of this in the rituals that are performed today for reasons few know.

You have got to be kidding us!

Christianity was every bit as rational and perhaps more than the pagans around it. There were intellectuals at the highest levels of both Christianity and paganism.

Give up the Christian bashing and deal in history. It is much more interesting and productive than religion bashing.

Clivedurdle

I understand xianity to be a pagan religion that went completely pagan and mystical. Bread into bodies, wine into blood. Resurrections, virgin births. Where is the logic there?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism

And be careful about assertions about pagans and irrationality!

Haran

The problem Clive, is that you are being quite selective in your analysis, whether intentional or not. There are certain things that everyone, including you, believes on faith because there is no empirical evidence. You are picking out the faith-based portion of Christianity. There have been plenty of rational Christians throughout history. Even so, logic can only take us so far before it breaks down in its own contradictions. My belief is that there is something beyond logic. What is the logic and rationality of emotions, especially when they often lead us into undesirable attitudes and actions? Oh well, this is getting beyond scope. I just happen to think that you are wearing blinders with respect to Christianity.

I'm not sure what this is supposed to show. I did not say that pagans were all irrational. In fact, I distinctly remember saying "There were intellectuals at the highest levels of both Christianity and paganism."

Clivedurdle

Yup there were xians who dragged it kicking and screaming into the real world, and the Pope who excommunicated Haley's Comet in the 1400's!

Believing there is someone behind it all is an eog discussion and I wanted to discuss the evolution of various jesii - I can see several over history!

Point of link is an example of what got frozen and lost when mysticism and irrationality - Aquinas - took over!

Haran

Of course there were such incidents caused by some Christians. However, you are once again being selective and picking only those events that bash Christians. There is a guy who goes by the pseudonym Bede online and has posted here many times in the past. He has a doctorate and deals, I believe, specifically with the history of Christianity and science. I imagine he could dispell some of these notions of the irrationality of Christianity if you cared to look him up...