h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Speaking of Aboriginals...

I caught a bit of that tellything about that priest fella who's going around the world, sampling the various varieties of superstition - er - religion on offer. In Australia, he attended a 'baby smoking' ceremony in which women made a fire, covered it in leaves and sat babies on it for a moment.

Anyway...he asked one the women,
'Does this have something to do with Dreaming?'
And she said,
'Nah! It makes them strong.'

He expressed the view that it was sad that these cultural practices have got separated from their spiritual roots. But isn't that an odd view, bordering on patronising? Why expect everything to have a spiritual purpose? Why look to Australian Aboriginals as some sort of fount of deep spirituality?

Hindus who are averse to reality have much more interesting things to argue about.

See, for example, A5220 - and do read the comments.

Gif

> Why look to Australian Aboriginals as some sort of fount of deep spirituality?<

I don't really. I don't begin to be able to understand properly the whole tradition and cultural context. I fully admit, it's just a Romantic feeling.

But I do understand that much of any traditional hunter/gatherer society still have spiritual beliefs that are much more closely concerned with the process of staying alive at all, and some practices...not all...make perfect sense from a survival perspective.

My problem with so much of the Abrahmic literalist stuff is that I can't relate to it *at all* in any sense that would enrich my life. There's no wheat to sort from the chaff as it were. To me it's *all* chaff.

I wasn't saying that you did, F - I was meaning the priest.

I wonder, though - are there Atheists in hunter-gatherer societies? Are there those who roll their eyes whenever some shaman bloke starts telling them about the Great Wombat Spirit? In the Abrahamic tradition, Atheists obviously go as far back as Mosaic times, because Exodus promises to smite them.

>I wasn't saying that you did, F - I was meaning the priest<

No worries E. I wasn't thinking much about what you said really...just talking to myself if truth be told.

>Are there those who roll their eyes whenever some shaman bloke starts telling them about the Great Wombat Spirit?<

Who knows yes. I reckon 'story telling' is fundamental to most societies..but doesn't mean they take these things to be *literally true* in the way food and drink is literally true in terms of what's needed to get you through each day.

If you are still a hunter/gatherer it's probably much easier to just ignore the likelihood of old wombat being something to be taken seriously in any *literal* spiritual way if your main considerations are finding food drink, warmth and shelter every day. But if he gives you good guidance that makes sense about where the best fruit is you'll give him a nod and a wink.

I doubt 'atheism' is even an issue when you're just doing your best to stay alive at all.

(But given the recent cold snap here, I don't imagine prayer exactly rocketed in comparison to attention paid to finding ways to pay the heating bills.. It's all so much easier to give attention to spirituality once one's belly is full and the fire is on).

Maslow's hierarchy of needs.


I wonder if we maybe take (let's call it for sake of argument) 'tribal spirituality' more seriously than we ought? I don't mean this as an isult to yer tribals. What I mean is maybe we're imbueing what are - to them - only useful stories with our baggage of spirituality which comes from taking the big, western faiths seriously. Maybe it's 'Oh yeah - there's a story about a great wombat spirit who created that mountain, but no big deal' wheras in our culture, the birth/death/ressurection of Jesus *is* meant to be a big deal.

James Randi was asked when he did he realise gods didn't exist. He was suprised that there had to be this realisation as he had never believed gods existed. I am the same I have never had a time when I went from believing in a god to not believing in a god.

Gods were something people spoke about but they bore no reality to me or my existence. Obviously, there comes a point when one has the intellectual tools to realise that you have never believed in gods but that is different from suddenly realising there is no god.

I am sure without the pressures from state laws making religious education compulsary in schools. No organised religions trying to force themselves into all parts of society and, as Effers said, a rather more pressing need to kill and eat big furry animals before they do the same to you most people wouldn't give this a second thought.

Indeed, since it seems 'old wise people' are the ones that came up with this stuff one can only assume that within family groups once someone got too old to hunt they probably had other roles in the group and had more time to think thus they could start wondering about what those eys in the woods etc were.

So what you're saying is that religions are invented by people with too much time on their hands?

Indeed, I am sir!

I also like your idea about tribes having simply *cough* fairy stories to entertain each other at night that then fed into religion.

If you look at Islam, warner take note, a lot of the stuff Mohammed was supposed to have said, as remembered by word of mouth, are retelling of Bible stories, general myths from North Africa and Greek myths that presumably had percolated around the Med i.e. people taking non-religious stuff and simply saying it was religious...writing it 'a religious book' and hey presto it becomes sacred and spiritual.

Or 'It's cold and dark - let's have a party to cheer ourselves up' becomes 'Let's celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ'.

And it's even sillier when D'n'D-types throw out the Jeebers stuff and try to 'get back' to some ancient celebration of wood nymphs (or whatever).

Hi 3D, E, F,

Speaking for myself, I do find 'exotic' religions (and cultures in general) more interesting than closer-to-home ones. Not that I think they have any greater truth content particularly, but they are at least novel (to me). I think that people are so familiar with their own religions that often it's tempting to see the failings of the familiar but not of the alien.

Re Islam and paganism - look at the Kaaba.

Gif

PS: Warner, have you done the Haj? That's be

Oh, exotic religions are way . I'm a definite xenophile.

That meteorite in Mecca has certainly been eroded a bit since it taught the monkeys how to bang sticks together, no?

re: that meteorite in Mecca.



We have one of those, too: A1076861



Just imagine what would happen if a Methodist missionary loaded that black rock in Mecca into the back of his cart and hauled it off to India, where it was left to sit until somebody decided to stick it next to a dead horse's rear end in a Museum in Cairo.

It doesn't really bear thinking about, does it?

So does anyone still worship it? Or would its return just be a sop to the white, liberal conscience?

Actually, yes they do. there's always a little bit of tobacco around it and often bits of coloured cloth. The coloured cloth is much like the much larger and equally anonymous display in the grove of trees on the hilltop next to the Ribstones http://www.ammsa.com/guide/WINDGIC99STONES.html

Bit like Jim Morrison's grave, then.

Certainly. Except groupies haven't been going to Jim Morrison's grave for quite as many millenia as they've been dropping by the Ribstones.


And, for the sake of white liberal consciences, Morrison fans haven't had to face genocide, suppression of their language and culture, institutionalized physical and sexual abuse of their children, etc.

looks like the Spanish atheist bus ads might get a bit of a rougher ride than in the UK.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/atheist-bus-advertising-spain

"There's probably no God yeah tantamount to revolution. Why are the Spanish knickers in such a twist I wonder, about such a reasonable statement?

(I do so like the ruthless *honesty* of this slogan. I think that maybe their problem though).