Human Sacrifice and cannibalism was rampant in many parts of the world
in ancient times. Many tribes in ancient Americas sacrificed their own
children if they lacked prisoners. Child sacrifice was practiced in India to
Goddess Kali,.. more so 150 years ago.
KIRK: What does GOD need with a starship?
KIRK: Why... is God... angry?
SPOCK: You have not answered his question. What does God need with a
starship?
<The Being's countenance turns dark. Another bolt shoots from his eye and
heads for Spock. Spock is knocked to the ground.The Entity turns to McCoy.>
BEING: Do you doubt me?
<McCoy looks at The Being's handiwork -- his injured friends.>
McCOY: I doubt any God who inflicts pain for his own pleasure. A God who
inflicts pain on others is not a God at all.
--- On Tue, 10/20/09, TurquoiseB <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
Subject: [FairfieldLife] Jargon Fascists
Date: Tuesday, October 20, 2009, 11:01 AM
One of the reasons I love language is that it can
be used to detect religious intolerance. For example,
if I were to describe a spiritual practice as, "Don't
tell anyone, but on the pagan day of the sun god Ra,
I kneel at the foot of an ancient instrument of torture
and consume ritualistic symbols of blood and flesh,"
some people would instantly be put off and possibly a
bit uptight because of the association of paganism,
torture, and cannibalism with something that someone
else considers a "spiritual" practice.
If I were to tell them that the words in quotes above
are not mine but author Dan Brown's, and that he was
using them to describe Holy Communion at his college's
Catholic Church, many of them would become much MORE
uptight. Some would lash out at the author for being
religiously intolerant.
But the way I see it, those who bristle at a literal
and *accurate* description of their spiritual practices
or the stories in their scriptures merely because the
person saying these things is not using the language
*they* would prefer him to use are the ones displaying
religious intolerance. On this forum we have seen people
bristle and lash out when others quoted *dictionary
definitions* of terms that they use with regard to
meditation, because they weren't the definitions that
*they* wanted people to use.
Call me crazy, but I think that the folks denying others
the right to describe religious or spiritual practices
any way they want to are the religiously intolerant among
us. I call them "jargon fascists."
Everybody's got a right to believe whatever fool thing
they want to. They have an equal right to make up jargon
to describe those beliefs. They could even go so far as
to call the gods and goddesses whose portraits are in
front of them as they pray to them in a traditional
religious ceremony "impulses of creative intelligence"
and claim that they are not praying but performing a
scientific experiment.
But others have an *equal* right to point out what they
are doing as seen from *their* point of view. In the example
above, that description might be something more along the
lines of, "What I see is a bunch of people all dressed the
same [as they would be at, say, a MERU celebration] bowing
to portraits of Hindu gods and goddesses and making offerings
to them and praying to them for favors."
The second description is neither inaccurate nor insulting.
It's how the second person sees the practice that the first
person describes as a "scientific experiment." And my contention
is that the second person has as much right to describe the
practice the way he sees it as the first person has the right
to describe that same practice the way he sees it. If the
first person tries to deny the second the right to describe
the practice the way he sees it or calls them names for doing
it, THAT is intolerance.
