Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id MAA17389 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 31 Aug 2001 12:57:33 +0100 Message-ID: <3B8F7B35.FED3E1EF@bioinf.man.ac.uk> Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2001 12:55:33 +0100 From: Chris Taylor <Christopher.Taylor@man.ac.uk> Organization: University of Manchester X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.77 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U) X-Accept-Language: en To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Some Light relief References: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D310174606A@inchna.stir.ac.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Ok I've got a problem with the major organised religions (get in line
mate, they shout from the wings). The problem is, they all have fairly
elaborate washing ceremonies. So can we really say that all competing
religions died out through typhoid, or that the inheritance of later
religions from their precursors (judaism+ -> christianity + islam) for
some reason just included this? (Yes, but...)
Because my alternative (the light relief) is aliens. When aid workers go
to some countries the main thing they push is water quality and washing,
because it's a simple and effective change to engineer. If aliens were
doing parasociological engineering on us (as experiment, or 'aid'),
they'd probably put that in there (go on, have a wash, it's great).
Taking off shoes, washing hands, you often have to have a full (if now
brief and rather stylised) bath to be a christian (dunno about the
others).
Also we have to factor in the other 'funny business':
The Jews had a super weapon (the ark - they never lost a battle with it
in train),
The Christians had a super hero (who mysteriously couldn't perform his
miracles on demand, but did quite well turning that into a virtue),
The muslims also appear to have had a super weapon (their army held for
weeks against all comers),
Now I know a lot of stuff is basically seismic (all that santorini
stuff, the fact that Jericho was on a fault line etc.) but that only
covers some of the odd things.
Then there's Moses' son et lumiere while getting the 'tablets carved
from stone' (by?), all those people 'ascending to heaven' in various
pillars of light and fire, loads of art with funny flyin flaming
chariots (including the hindu mahabharata [cannot spell that]) all sorts
of prophets doing funny stuff...
All to push religions trying to promote altruism, consideration and
stability. Sort of a galactic IMF/UN?
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Chris Taylor (chris@bioinf.man.ac.uk)
http://bioinf.man.ac.uk/ »people»chris
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