Learned a little something

[pasithea]

One point of ire for me in dealing with religious people is this whole 'un(dis)provable' notion of a 'reward after death'. To me, it seems idiotic. I mean, live happy, enjoy your life, and unless theres a God and he happens to be a total flaming dick, the after life will take care of itself (Or, much more likely, it doesn't exist but people can't generally cope with the idea that they'll be dead)

But I see now in reading the bible that they're taught again and again to wait. God is apparently a master in procrastination. When God says he's going to give you some gift, he doesn't mean now, or even tomorrow or next week. He's talking about like 50 years from now. So the timespans of events in the bible serve two purposes. 1) Makes it sound more dramatic and epic. 2) Conditions people to wait for miracles, so they'll do what you say for the maximum amount of time. Pretty clever device actually.

Also, a word on this 'seven days' stuff. I was reading some native american folklore this evening and the editor mentioned that the Penobchot stories had been heavily revised due to their 4 centuries of contact with western religions. Anyhow, the '7 days' bit came into the story as a religious element and I wondered if this was a western cultural influence. I imagine it probably is, but I also considered the idea that possibly this is common to many religions. The length of the lunar cycle is roughly 28 days, the gestation time for many plants is about 14 days, and it's an easy way to keep track of time when you say it 'When the moon is 1/2 full, it will be time' instead of 'Seven days from now.'

Interesting stuff. Also the obvious western influences (for instance, their enemies riding on horseback) so I'm sure the writer wasn't completely crackers in saying that the stories may have been altered from what they might have been 2 generations prior.


Anyhow. falling asleep. Nightnight.

Comments

[kyhwana.livejournal.com]

The seven thing crops up a lot ;)

[kyhwana.livejournal.com]

Also, the after life thing bothers me, too.
Of course, they talk about how the second coming is coming any day soon, so all your hard work for god will be vindicated! Except of course it never comes...

[moonscream.livejournal.com]

Native American stuff is not as polluted as most white folk would like to think. It simply *does* have similarities to various stories from Christiandom. There are even MANY legends of a 'white brother' walking among them like Christ, from long before white man even figured out how to sail past his own coastlines.

The writings of various NA legends by whites tended to have a slant put in by those collecting the stories, too, and mistranslations/things that couldn't be translated. Usually the slants were of the 'poor savage/ignorant animal copying the civilized whites' types, even up until the 1950's.

--Zhora