Recently a Mormon tried to convince me of the pedigree of their magic book. I was supposed to believe that a 17 year old man found in the wilderness of upstate New York a set of golden tablets written in "reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics" and translated by means of magic translating stones. The solid proof was that others living in that hotbed of religious revivalism and experimentation (historians call it "the burnt over district") claim to have witnessed the event.
Lots of people have magic books and claim excellent pedigrees. Muslims tell great stories about the veracity of theirs. Jews can attest to the veracity of Torah. Protestants and Catholics each tell stories of their versions of the Bible -- often blaming the other for hiding the true version. Hindus have many books they discuss. Buddhists have magic books. Even Confucians. Ba'hai do too.
While we're at it, Scientologists have the magic books of L. Ron Hubbard. Christian Scientists have their own. As did Shakers.
A thousand other groups have magic books and they all tell stories of veracity. Each one believes that the other thousand groups have it wrong, or at least not quite right. Besides, it is logically impossible for them all to be right since they disagree on fundamental issues. Odds are that they are all wrong and the tendency to tell stories about magic books tell us something about being human.
Somewhere Nietzsche writes that perhaps God has a speech impediment, for He is certainly having difficulty getting His Word across.
Showing posts with label Muslims. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Muslims. Show all posts
Jesus says not to bother washing
Jared Diamond writes in Guns, Germs, and Steel about why Europeans infected Native Americans with deadly diseases rather than the other way around. Diamond writes about their close contact with domesticated animals, which Native Americans did not have. After thousands of generations, the remaining Europeans were tolerant of the germs and diseases that the domesticated animals carried while Native peoples were not.
Gregory Clark writes in A Farewell to Arms about the same issue and focuses his attention on the peculiar European habit of living above your fecal waste. This had the same evolutionary effect: only those who could survive this germ-fest lived to reproduce, thereby making Europeans in general more resistant to diseases that wiped out Native populations.
Both authors are afraid to look at how ideas influence behavior, and so they fail to understand why premodern Europeans had such negligent bathing habits. The answer is easy. Jesus says not to bother washing your hands before you eat since what goes into the mouth cannot defile you, only what comes out can do that. Jesus is following Plato and developing a metaphysics in which spiritual truths are divorced from physical reality.
Both Homer and Hesiod emphasize for ancient Pagans the importance of washing, especially your hands. Jews ritually wash their hands during Sabbath. Muslims ritually wash their whole bodies five times a day. Only Christians are allowed to be filthy; and, despite their howling rejection of evolutionary theory, being filthy gave Europeans the evolutionary advantage of being resistant to many dread diseases for the simple reason that those who were not naturally resistant simply died leaving only the powerfully filthy ones to conquere the world.
Gregory Clark writes in A Farewell to Arms about the same issue and focuses his attention on the peculiar European habit of living above your fecal waste. This had the same evolutionary effect: only those who could survive this germ-fest lived to reproduce, thereby making Europeans in general more resistant to diseases that wiped out Native populations.
Both authors are afraid to look at how ideas influence behavior, and so they fail to understand why premodern Europeans had such negligent bathing habits. The answer is easy. Jesus says not to bother washing your hands before you eat since what goes into the mouth cannot defile you, only what comes out can do that. Jesus is following Plato and developing a metaphysics in which spiritual truths are divorced from physical reality.
Both Homer and Hesiod emphasize for ancient Pagans the importance of washing, especially your hands. Jews ritually wash their hands during Sabbath. Muslims ritually wash their whole bodies five times a day. Only Christians are allowed to be filthy; and, despite their howling rejection of evolutionary theory, being filthy gave Europeans the evolutionary advantage of being resistant to many dread diseases for the simple reason that those who were not naturally resistant simply died leaving only the powerfully filthy ones to conquere the world.
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