IntenseDebate - Thuloid

8 years ago @ http://www.houseofpain... - The SAGA saga: models,... · 1 reply · +1 points

Central/South America might be fun. Have they done much with Finns, Slavs or Baltic peoples yet? How about the Caucasus? Seems they could expand this game indefinitely.

8 years ago @ http://www.houseofpain... - The SAGA saga: models,... · 1 reply · +2 points

Haha. I'm high on openness as well, but also fairly disagreeable, so I tend to think "Interesting, plausible, but you're wrong" a lot.

8 years ago @ http://www.houseofpain... - The SAGA saga: models,... · 4 replies · +2 points

I suppose you could take the large Somali populations in Malmo, Sweden and Minneapolis, Minnesota as evidence that Somalis are often found in the vicinity of Norse people.

That's the great thing about justification--I can come up with reasons for practically anything.

8 years ago @ http://www.houseofpain... - Fair Enough · 0 replies · +1 points

That early? I'm honestly surprised.

8 years ago @ http://www.houseofpain... - Fair Enough · 2 replies · +1 points

Yeah, that sounds better.

Eliade? Been a while since I read him. There's a serious argument to be made that linear time is a development from the Hebrew prophets.

8 years ago @ http://www.houseofpain... - Fair Enough · 6 replies · +1 points

Often enough, the gods aren't intangible at all. The sun, fire, the sky, the fertility of the earth, the clouds and waters that fall from heaven, the great bear-- early mythologies are often intensely material. Their personification is an abstraction, but the sacredness of these beings isn't necessarily abstract or invisible.

We have to be careful about reading all human worship through our particular history with a Judaeo-Christian-Neoplatonic synthesis that puts "god" at several removes from "matter." I'm inclined to say that much Christian theology has grossly overstated that point even in interpreting its own scriptures--as if what differentiated Christianity (and by implication, Judaism and Islam, as well as, from a Western perspective, "enightened" views of Hinduism and obviously Buddhism) from pagan idolatry is intangibility. Religion that has much to do with matter is "primitive." Stop me before I start babbling about the influence of German idealism on the development of both biblical scholarship and comparative religion...

You're right though, the identification and production of gods seems as innate as the instinct to suck. From a strictly biological perspective, not a clue why.

8 years ago @ http://www.houseofpain... - Fair Enough · 8 replies · +2 points

True enough, on the few data points front. Though my favorite singular data point right now is Gobleki Tepe--same as everyone else, I was brought up on the "agriculture/civilization, then organized religion" narrative. The notion that a highly complex ritual site predates agriculture and civilization is just too much fun.

8 years ago @ http://www.houseofpain... - Fair Enough · 10 replies · +2 points

Well, a good theologian (not many are) will operate on two tracks at once. ;) But then, I have both hard science and philosophy backgrounds, so maybe I'm just used to holding onto different kinds of explanation at the same time.

From what I've read, we have very early (as in paleolithic) evidence of care for group members with serious disabilities. Now, it is remarkable that at some point we started to apply this to people who do not have kinship ties to us, but there's something pretty early in human behavior that undermines a simplistically Darwinian picture.

8 years ago @ http://www.houseofpain... - Thuloid Speaks: Gaming... · 0 replies · +1 points

Sugar-coated marshmallow things, traditionally yellow and shaped like chicks. Popular at Easter. They also make bunny shapes, some halloween ones, other stuff. But almost pure sugar.

8 years ago @ http://www.houseofpain... - Fair Enough · 2 replies · +2 points

Indeed. Though "politics" in a considerably broader sense than public policy or voting.

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