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Pastimes : History's effect on Religion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Greg or e who wrote (233)	8/6/2005 12:23:07 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Respond to of 520

"literalist" did not sound pejorative to me. It seems to describe the method of belief fairly accurately. "Fundamentalist" on the other hand, is subject to many interpretations. But let's move on to the broader question. I am not interested in "political correctness" here. There is nothing wrong with calling a spade a spade, if you word it the right way. I am interested in civil objective discourse. And I am mostly interested in the evolution of religion as oppose to its merits or righteousness. Let me illustrate these points through some examples. One could say Buddhism is nothing but hallucinations of a starving nutcase...and this would be totally unacceptable. Or he could say that Buddha's visions at the tree may have been the result of his extreme fasting and then provide some reasoning for that statement. This would be fully acceptable. Although both statements may seem the same thing, there are a few big differences. The first statement is an empty opinion and voiced in an incendiary manner. The second provides some analysis and reasoning. And it is worded in a way that prompts discussion rather than name calling. The above was an example on style. Now let's move on to another example that illustrates what is good content and what is not. Saying that Christianity is anti-science and tries to keep the masses ignorant, or any of the "classic" religion versus science arguments is not really on topic here, even if the author can factually show that has been the case. On the other hand, discussing what the motivations and histories were for including "Scientific" postulations within Christianity is on topic. It would be an even greater contribution if the author could trace this history all the way through to pope John Paul II's statement that evolution was "no longer a mere hypothesis". ST