[geeks] Goodbye, I guess

[Sandwich Maker]

" From: Phil Stracchino <phil.stracchino at speakeasy.net>
" 
" Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
" > Phil Stracchino wrote:
" >> In fact, I personally believe the indoctrination-from-birth method is
" >> the only way most of the world's religions maintain more than maybe
" >> about 10% of their followers.  I suspect that if left to decode for
" >> themselves as young adults, most people would say, "OK, so I should
" >> believe in God/Allah/Vishnu, but not in the Easter Bunny or the Tooth
" >> Fairy, *WHY*, exactly...?"
" > 
" > Hinduism encourages you to ask that particular question.

i rather like the buddha's philosophy -- you will never know how many
angels can dance on the head of a pin, because a priori you can't
access the data - so don't waste your time.  work instead on things
you can affect, like poverty etc.

of course, after he was dead and could no longer object, the first
thing his followers did was deify him and start worshipping...  makes
me think of john cleese's favorite 'life of brian' moment:
brian:	nobody can give you the answers.  you must work them out for
	yourselves!
crowd:	nobody can give us the answers.  we must work them out for
	ourselves!
[long pause]
crowd:	tell us more!

so many folks want someone else to do the mental heavy lifting.

" > Much of our scripture deals with the answer.
" 
" Yeah, I have the impression many of the Indo-Asian-origin faiths
" encourage believers to think about these things (and to think in
" general), whereas Western-origin ones mostly seem to want their
" adherents to just sit down, shut up, and believe as they're told.

well, christianity and islam certainly.  judaism seems to have
absorbed a large dose of greek philosophical ovjectivity, but i don't
know if there's enough known about the practice of previous western
religions to truly say what they were like.
________________________________________________________________________
Andrew Hay                                  the genius nature
internet rambler                            is to see what all have seen
adh at an.bradford.ma.us                       and think what none thought