• for: narratives - science and religion, stories - science and religion, symbolosphere, meaningverse, multi-meaningverse

• comment

  • Harari is saying that both science and the diversity of religions are both telling a story. Both are fictional in the deeper sense that they are all stories and stories are all created by humans in the symbolosphere
  • Science, or religion, cannot be found merely in the books that write about them, no matter how many libraries or harddrives of 1s and 0s they take up
  • How do we know this? Easy. If an ant or butterfly or sunflower is exposed to a physical book or pdf on on ANY scientific subject, or ANY religious topic, will it understand it? No, of course not. Only a human fully conditioned into the symbolosphere will be able to interact with that physical or informational object and get something meaningful out of it. That is because we have all learned to co-participate in a collective meaningverse.

En la Sorbonne, Le Bras fue maestro de Pablo González Casanova.

Sociología de la religión (ayudó a PGC vincular la emancipación humana desde la religión hasta la ciencia)

PCG lo menciona en la presentación del libro "Explotación, colonialismo y lucha por la democracia en América Latina", el 9 de noviembre de 2019, en la FCPyS de la UNAM.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goUunGy2cS4

• for: science and religion, flat earth misconception

• summary

  • Dutch historian Jochem Boodt explains how fake news isn't something new, but as old as the history books!
  • Science and religion were not antagonist in early Western history, as is believed today. This was fake news fabricated in a fascinating way.
  • He uses the example of the common misconception that before Columbus, people thought the earth was flat.

Heather Stark in I've Been To Over 20 Homeschool Conferences. The Things I've Witnessed At Them Shocked Me.

• for: colonialism - role of religion

• comment

  • Using religion as justification of violence committed against the other is liberally found throughout history

https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/17rbqaz/teaching_is_the_best_way_to_learn/

Example of someone using the phrase "Antinet Evangelistic Starter Boxes". It's a box of cards for god's sake! If you're going to productize it, then be a capitalist about it, but "evangelizing" it?!

• for: epoche, epoche - interfaith applications, bracketing, applied epoche, Deep Humanity, DH, polycrisis, political polarization, religious polarization, epoche - research application

• comment

  • I performed Google search for "Epoche and application to interfaith religion"
  • The reason is that I am exploring a hunch of the salience of applying epoche for deep interfaith understanding
  • political polarization constitutes an existential threat and is one important crisis in our current polycrisis
  • Unless we find ways to effectively and rapidly reduce polarization, the other crisis's such as climate crisis, biodiversity crisis and inequality crisis will likely not be resolved
  • religious polarization form ingroups / outgroups and is a major contributing factor to political polarization and violent conflict
  • hence it becomes important to understand how interfaith understanding can be enhanced
  • epoche appears to be one possible way to accelerate interfaith understanding

• for: epoche, epoche - interfaith applications, Deep Humanity, DH, polycrisis, poltical polarization, religious polarization, hermenneutic, hermeneutical phenomenological method

• summary

  • a very insightful paper

• comment

  • I performed Google search for "Epoche and application to interfaith religion"
  • The reason is that I am exploring a hunch of the salience of applying epoche for deep interfaith understanding
  • political polarization constitutes an existential threat and is one important crisis in our current polycrisis
  • Unless we find ways to effectively and rapidly reduce polarization, the other crisis's such as climate crisis, biodiversity crisis and inequality crisis will likely not be resolved
  • religious polarization form ingroups / outgroups and is a major contributing factor to political polarization and violent conflict
  • hence it becomes important to understand how interfaith understanding can be enhanced
  • epoche appears to be one possible way to accelerate interfaith understanding

• for: epoche, epoche - interfaith applications, Deep Humanity, DH, polycrisis, political polarization, religious polarization

• comment

  • I performed Google search for "Epoche and application to interfaith religion"
  • The reason is that I am exploring a hunch of the salience of applying epoche for deep interfaith understanding
  • political polarization constitutes an existential threat and is one important crisis in our current polycrisis
  • Unless we find ways to effectively and rapidly reduce polarization, the other crisis's such as climate crisis, biodiversity crisis and inequality crisis will likely not be resolved
  • religious polarization form ingroups / outgroups and is a major contributing factor to political polarization and violent conflict
  • hence it becomes important to understand how interfaith understanding can be enhanced
  • epoche appears to be one possible way to accelerate interfaith understanding

Ungenerous to take Alter to task for context which he might not have the background to comment upon.

Does Alter call it a "platitude" from it's historical context, or with respect to the modern context of Donald J. Trump and a wide variety of Republican Party members who are anything but Christian?

Was ein widerlicher, selbstgerechter, überheblicher Kommentar. Menschenverachtung total. Ich schalte den hier nur frei, damit jeder sehen kann, wie manche Leute ticken. Von Karma haben Sie schonmal gehört? Passen Sie auf, dass es Sie nicht heimsucht.

danke, ich hab keine geheimnisse, und keine angst vor die dumme mehrheit : )

ich scheiss auf deine “karma” religion. dafür hast du noch nie von “intravenöses vitamin C” gehört…

sorry, wenn ich zwischen juden christen moslems wählen muss, dann wähle ich moslems.

Scott continues in his efforts not to make any main notes, but is pushing the indexing of ideas where they live directly in books using only a topic in his index and a page number.

He calls this practice, which he himself practices, sacrilegious. 00:00:27

What happened to pushing knowledge-building?!?

This is the second video I've seen him do this. (Previously: https://hypothes.is/a/28AkYFadEe6ZH_MjTZlnLQ). So his Antinet zettelkasten is now primarily an index and bibliographic cards with fleeting notes. He's specifically leaving out any of what he has previously called main notes.

In neighboring cultures in which both have oral practices relating to massebah, one is not just destroying "sacred stones" to stamp out their religion, but it's also destroying their culture and cultural memory as well as likely their laws and other valuable memories for the function of their society.

View this in light also of the people of Israel keeping their own sacred stones (Hosea 10:1) as well as the destruction of pillars dedicated to Baal in 2 Kings 18:4 and 2 Kings 23:14.

(Link and) Compare this to the British fencing off the land in Australia and thereby destroying Songlines and access to them and the impact this had on Indigenous Australians.

It's also somewhat similar to the colonialization activity of stamping out of Indigenous Americans and First Nations' language in North America, though the decimation of their language wasn't viewed in as reciprocal way as it might be viewed now. (Did colonizers of the time know about the tremendous damage of language destruction, or was it just a power over function?)

Relationship to the first two commandments against worshiping other gods and the use of idols?

How does this relate to the standing stone found in the room at Khirbet Qeiyafa from the time of David?

Dates of this text with respect to Khirbet Keiyafa?

• for: science - awakening wonder, Deep Humanity, adjacency, adjacency - science - religion

38:00 psychotherapy as entangling lies, religious confession also

• for: science and religion, Newton - religion, science and religion - Bob Inglis, CHD

• for: science - religion, science - spirituality, science and religion, science and spirituality, Isaac Newton - spirituality, Isaac Newton - religion

• comment

  • don't forget Isaac Newton!
• reference
  • https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Frsc.byu.edu%2Fconverging-paths-truth%2Fbrief-survey-sir-isaac-newtons-views-religion&group=world

• for: spirituality and science, spirituality and sustainability, spirituality - missing link, Isaac Newton
• title: Is spirituality the missing pillar of sustainability?
• author: Tom Greenwood
• date: Aug. 24, 2023

• for: quote, quote - Isaac Newton, quote - spirituality and science, quote - science and religion, quote - spirituality - science, quote - religion - science
• quote
  • • for: quote, quote - Isaac Newton, quote - spirituality and science, quote - science and religion, quote - spirituality - science, quote - religion - science
• quote
  • When I wrote my treatise about our system
  • I had an eye upon such principles as might work with considering men for the belief of a Deity;
  • and nothing can rejoice me more than to find it useful for that purpose..
• author: Isaac Newton
• reference
  • Isaac Newton, Principia, ed. Stephen Hawking (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2002), 426–27.
• author: Isaac Newton
• reference
  • Isaac Newton, Original letter from Isaac Newton to Richard Bentley, 189.R.4.47, ff. 4A-5, Trinity College Library, Cambridge, UK; found on the Newton Project website: http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00254; spelling and punctuation modernized.

• for: quote, quote - Isaac Newton, quote - spirituality and science, quote - science and religion, quote - spirituality - science, quote - religion - science
• quote
  • This Being governs all things,
    • not as the soul of the world,
    • but as Lord over all.
  • . . . The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect
  • . . . and from his true dominion it follows that the true God is a
    • living,
    • intelligent, and
    • powerful Being.
  • . . . He is not
    • eternity and
    • infinity, -but
    • eternal and
    • infinite;
  • he is not
    • duration or
    • space,
  • but he
    • endures and
    • is present.
• author: Isaac Newton
• reference
  • Isaac Newton, Principia, ed. Stephen Hawking (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2002), 426–27.

• for: quote, quote - Isaac Newton, quote - spirituality and science, quote - science and religion, quote - spirituality - science, quote - religion - science
• quote
  • Does it not appear from phenomena
  • that there is a Being
    • incorporeal,
    • living,
    • intelligent,
    • omnipresent,
  • who in infinite space
  • sees the things themselves intimately, and
  • thoroughly perceives them, and
  • comprehends them wholly.
• author: Isaac Newton
• reference
  • Isaac Newton, Opticks, 4th ed. (London: William Innys, 1730), 344; spelling and punctuation modernized.

• for: quote, quote - Isaac Newton, quote - spirituality and science, quote - science and religion, quote - spirituality - science, quote - religion - science
• quote
  • Whence is it that Nature doth nothing in vain?
  • And whence arises all that order and beauty which we see in the world?
  • Was the eye contrived without skill in optics?
  • And the ear without knowledge of sounds?
• author: Isaac Newton
• reference
  • Isaac Newton, Opticks, 4th ed. (London: William Innys, 1730), 344; spelling and punctuation modernized.

• for: spirituality and science, spirituality - science, science and religion, Isaac Newton - spirituality, Isaac Newton - religion
• title: A Brief Survey of Sir Isaac Newton's Views on Religion
• author: Steven E. Jones
• source:
  • https://rsc.byu.edu/converging-paths-truth/brief-survey-sir-isaac-newtons-views-religion
• comment
  • Newton was a serious theological scholar who was driven to use science to validate his conception of God
  • Newton's scientific work is therefore a testament to the union between the deepest, common aspiration and motivations for science and religion, that is universal wonder of being

fascinating example of anti toxic capitalism...

"vaguely spiritual NGO"!

Why can't these community activities be done in a religion-free environment? Is God actually needed here? What else could serve as the glue? Or is community itself the glue.

It's really saying something that in paragraph 2 the "sell" for religion is the health and social benefits and outcomes rather than the love or support of god(s)!

In a culture obsessed with productivity, some activities with potentially beneficial (but potentially hidden) outcomes can crowd out other seemingly more important activities, especially when one is overscheduled.

Extreme focus on financial and professional success has driven people to give less time to communal spaces and experiences including religious life.

Is this specific to America's brand of toxic capitalism or do other WEIRD economies experience this?

• for: transformation, inner/outer transformation, rapid whole system change, religious alienation, poverty mentality
• key insight
  • Ludwig Feuerbach
    • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Feuerbach
    • quote
      • "In the consciousness of the infinite, the conscious subject has for his object the infinity of his own nature."
      • "If man is to find contentment in God, he must find himself in God."
    • Thus God is nothing else than human: he is, so to speak, the outward projection of a human's inward nature.
    • This projection is dubbed as a chimera by Feuerbach, that God and the idea of a higher being is dependent upon the aspect of benevolence.
    • Feuerbach states that "a God who is not benevolent, not just, not wise, is no God",

-quote - religion is a place where human beings alienate their intrinsic superpowers - author - Timotny Morton, quoting Ludwig Feuerbach

Christian Faith and spiritual gifts.

n the Christian faith, it is a similar concept, but it is bestowed by the Holy Spirit, and many denominations believe it can allow someone to know whether a demonic of heavenly influence is over a person, place, or event. It is also a gift that can be requested, used, or ignored.

"religion of filmmaking"

//In Other Words - Money is the new secular reiigion

Religion was a major part of Hittite life as was the military and war. In all parts of strategy and execution, the gods were consulted before carrying out any military campaigns.

Wonderful conversation between Sheila Heti, her brother, and three of their friends, about the Annie Hall 'I need the eggs' joke that ends the film.

amen

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/20/anglicans-reject-justin-welby-as-head-of-global-church-amid-anger-at-same-sex-blessings

Recall both the seriousness and the violence and cruelty of the Salem witch trials which were roughly contemporaneous.

This site is a cesspool of authoritarian, fascist-apologist, conspiracist mind-mangling content. It's a good place to find out what kinds of bizarre notions people (particularly Catholics of an authoritarian bent) are being fed, and consuming — ridiculous fabrications and warped interpretations of the sort contributing (with giddy joy) to the suffocation of democratic inclinations and institutions.

The site does have some interesting images. I think this will be an inspiration for some dystopian and horror fiction ideas.

Origin and continuation boycott made this unique.

Protestant Paranoia: The American Protective Association Oath

In 1887, Henry F. Bowers founded the nativist American Protective Association (APA) in Clinton, Iowa. Bowers was a Mason, and he drew from its fraternal ritual—elaborate regalia, initiation ceremonies, and a secret oath—in organizing the APA. He also drew many Masons, an organization that barred Catholics. The organization quickly acquired an anti-union cast. Among other things, the APA claimed that the Catholic leader of the Knights, Terence V. Powderly, was part of a larger conspiracy against American institutions. Even so, the APA successfully recruited significant numbers of disaffected trade unionists in an era of economic hard times and the collapse of the Knights of Labor. This secret oath taken by members of the American Protective Association in the 1890s revealed the depth of Protestant distrust and fear of Catholics holding public office.

I do most solemnly promise and swear that I will always, to the utmost of my ability, labor, plead and wage a continuous warfare against ignorance and fanaticism; that I will use my utmost power to strike the shackles and chains of blind obedience to the Roman Catholic church from the hampered and bound consciences of a priest-ridden and church-oppressed people; that I will never allow any one, a member of the Roman Catholic church, to become a member of this order, I knowing him to be such; that I will use my influence to promote the interest of all Protestants everywhere in the world that I may be; that I will not employ a Roman Catholic in any capacity if I can procure the services of a Protestant.

I furthermore promise and swear that I will not aid in building or maintaining, by my resources, any Roman Catholic church or institution of their sect or creed whatsoever, but will do all in my power to retard and break down the power of the Pope, in this country or any other; that I will not enter into any controversy with a Roman Catholic upon the subject of this order, nor will I enter into any agreement with a Roman Catholic to strike or create a disturbance whereby the Catholic employes may undermine and substitute their Protestant co-workers; that in all grievances I will seek only Protestants and counsel with them to the exclusion of all Roman Catholics, and will not make known to them anything of any nature matured at such conferences.

I furthermore promise and swear that I will not countenance the nomination, in any caucus or convention, of a Roman Catholic for any office in the gift of the American people, and that I will not vote for, or counsel others to vote for, any Roman Catholic, but will vote only for a Protestant, so far as may lie in my power. Should there be two Roman Catholics on opposite tickets, I will erase the name on the ticket I vote; that I will at all times endeavor to place the political positions of this government in the hands of Protestants, to the entire exclusion of the Roman Catholic church, of the members thereof, and the mandate of the Pope.

To all of which I do most solemnly promise and swear, so help me God. Amen.

Source: "The Secret Oath of the American Protective Association, October 31, 1893," in Michael Williams, The Shadow of the Pope (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., 1932), 103–104. Reprinted in John Tracy Ellis, ed., Documents of American Catholic History (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1956), 500–501.

This is a meaningful observation. It could be effective to avoid this in mission work.

!- Einstein : reconciling religion and science

why keep harping on this framing?

belief is a charged word when attempting to build systems for uncovering truths...

There's some flawed logic here in that Ward Cunningham outlined his version of a wiki and others who created versions thereafter modified and potentially expanded on that original "definition". We now have a general consensus of a wiki, but it's not necessarily the same for everyone. Scheper doesn't leave any fungible room in the semantics of his argument here and thereby forces one into a practicing the "one true way", which doesn't exist as even Luhmann's own practice varied over time.

Harnessing the dictionary into fronting for his zettelkasten religion?

note the pathos along with a bit of religious zeal here about the "true way".

Facundo Macías notices, as have I, a semblance of internecine almost religious/fanatical war between various note taking camps.

To get away from these we should instead on specific processes, their affordances, and their potential emergent outcomes in individual use. Most people begin these entrenched thoughts based on complete lack of knowledge. Few have practiced some of the broader methods for long enough to get to potential emergent properties.

Σωστό "Wired" link.

Coogan, Michael David, Marc Zvi Brettler, Carol Ann Newsom, and Pheme Perkins, eds. The New Oxford Annotated Bible: With the Apocrypha. Oxford University Press, 2010.

This brings in the questionability of gods omnibenevolent presence throughout religious scriptures. A common conception related to god and his purpose, is the sense of love spread through his creations. In this quote, he questions this idea, with the aspects of poverty and hard labor contrasting against omnibenevolency. The old lady is not making enough to survive in a time where others experience the same sense of dread. The "Person Of Sensibility" is allowing this to happen.

Religions are ever-evolving ideas and practices, and like rivers, which are broadly similar and recognizable even over spans of time, can never be practiced or experienced the same way twice.

Religion co-evolves with the people, places, and times in which it exists. Much like human genes, it works at the level of the individual, the local group, the larger groups and communities (of both the religion itself as well as the polities around it), and when applicable at the scale of all people on the planet.

The Selfish Religion: How far might we take this religion/gene analogy with respect to Richard Dawkins' thesis (1976). Does religion act more like a gene that is part of the particular person or is it more like a virus which inserts itself? The latter may be closer as one can pick and choose a religion rather than it being a core part of their genetic identity.

(highlight: anchor only)

Johnson, Luke Timothy. The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation. The Teaching Company, 2012, https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/the-history-of-christianity-from-the-disciples-to-the-dawn-of-the-reformation

Gotthard Deutsch (1859-1921) had a card index of 70,000 items relating to Jewish history.

There's an irony here in that this "cult" may have actually been a cult of teachers and students. Should the broader thesis bear out, we're going to have lots of references to these cults of teachers lingering in the literature....

La religion

https://twitter.com/inkasrain/status/1566410516721016833

Does anyone know what exactly this is? A friend gave it to me years ago when they visited Jerusalem. I don't read Hebrew. Is it something harmless or should it be shamshed(jew magic)? (attached photo of a mezuzah)

The idea of "magic" here within a modern religious context is interesting in that it shows the divergence of religion and magic as concepts with respect to cultural practices.

The phrasing also has a sense of othering the unknown culture with a sense of fear in the idea that the object should be smashed. There's also a lack of basic science knowledge and tinge of superstition implied by the fact that they think that smashing will somehow dissipate the unknown magic.

So many different cultural indicators of various things going on here...

Reiss, D. (2021, October 15). Perspective | People lie about their ‘religious’ objections to vaccines. Proving it is hard. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/religious-exemptions-law-vaccines-dishonesty/2021/10/15/df405c38-2d0d-11ec-8ef6-3ca8fe943a92_story.html

Cox, D. A. (n.d.). Social isolation and community disconnection are not spurring conspiracy theories. American Enterprise Institute - AEI. Retrieved March 8, 2021, from https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/social-isolation-and-community-disconnection-are-not-spurring-conspiracy-theories/

Sounds like his philosophy fit may have fit in with the broader prosperity gospel space, Napoleon Hill, Billy Graham, Norman Vincent Peale, et al. Potentially worth looking into. Also related to the self-help movements and the New Thought philosophies.

fascinating that he wrote a book Copywriting and Direct Marketing. This may also tie him into the theses of Kevin Phillips' American Theocracy?

Link to: https://hyp.is/E4I_qgvCEe2rQO9iXvaTgA/www.goodreads.com/author/show/257221.Robert_Collier

These always read as hyperbole to me, but it's difficult to explain the surprise and serendipity of re-finding things in one's notes on a regular basis. It's akin to the sort of cognitive dissonance that religious people have when encountering the levels of complexity formed by living systems through evolution. Not having better words for describing the experience, they may resort to descriptions of magic or religion to frame their experiences.

Offene Frage: Was uns wie eine Fiktion erscheint, die Göttergeschichten, sagen wir der Vikinger, (wir verarbeiten sie sogar in fiktionalen Geschichten, Marvel) war für die Menschen eine virtuelle Realität, durch intersubjektiven Glauben realisiert. Es gab Odin und Co somit tatsächlich, nur eben virtuell. Oder ist das jetzt eine Spinnerei von mir?

an interesting twist to American cultural life

What drives the attendance at churches like this? Socializing, friends, family? Is it entertainment, politics, solely the religious part, or a conflagration of all of these? A charismatic minister?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/06/people-of-praise-accused-child-abuse-amy-coney-barrett

Randomly came across this today. Who knew?

Is there any familial relation between William Mather and Cotton Mather or his family?

If there is, this could be even more damning. A quick search indicates that William Mather was a schoolmaster and may have been a Quaker. This means that a highly religious schoolmaster was teaching and spreading ideas about abortion in 1699.

Umberto Eco indicates that every work of art can be read in one of three ways: - moral, - allegorical - anagogical

Compare this to early Christianities which had various different readings of the scriptures.

Relate this also to the idea of Heraclitus and the not stepping into the same river twice as a viewer can view a work multiple times in different physical and personal contexts which will change their mood and interpretation of the work.

The white fellas learned very quickly from the Romans that the first thing you attack is other people's religious beliefs, which are the modern day equivalent of communication towers. That's how oral societies communicate their knowledge and culture.

via Uncle Ghillar Michael Anderson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkjf0hCKOCE

The sky is a textbook. The sky is a lawbook. The sky is a science book. —Duane Hamacher, (1:24)

Hamacher uses the Western description "method of loci" rather than an Indigenous word or translated word.

The words "myth", "legend", "magic", "ritual", and "religion" in both colloquial English and even anthropology are highly loaded terms.

Words like "narrative" and "story" are better used instead for describing portions of the Indigenous cultures which we have long ignored and written off for their seeming simplicity.

Myths about COVID-19 vaccination. (n.d.). HackMD. Retrieved March 23, 2022, from https://hackmd.io/@scibehC19vax/misinfo_myths

Jewish monotheism doesn't emerge until the end of the Babylonian Exile (~586 - 500 BCE) period and the beginning of the Second Temple period (500 BCE - 70 CE) when the religion moves from acknowledging the existence of other gods to saying there is only one god. (Isaiah 44:6).

Polytheism was the cultural norm during the First Temple period. It wasn't until the reforms of King Josiah described in 2 Kings in the second half of the 7th century BCE that other Semitic gods were actively removed from the Temple and parts of culture in favor of Yahweh.

Storm gods like Baal are commonly seen defeating the sea in legends in the ancient Near East.

Link this to mention of Rahab in Job 26:12.

Mot, one of the other sons of El, is described as a deity who has a son in Job 18:13 and as one who opens his mouth wide and swallows souls in Habakkuk 2:5.

1 Kings 15:13, 2 Kings 23:14 and 2 Kings 23:14 indicate that the symbols of the goddess Asherah, a consort of El, were in the earliest Temple of Jerusalem as these sections describe the fact that they were removed.

In Deuteronomy 32 the gods El and Yahweh are separate deities which, over time, became conflated into one god as indicated in Exodus 6:3.

In the West Semitic pantheon of gods, El was the father of Dagon who was in turn the father of Baal. El Elyon is mentioned in Deuteronomy 32:8-9 and his name is a root word of the endonym Israel.

Biblical passages like Psalms 18:12-24 may be indicative of Yahweh subsuming the powers and attributes of other regional gods like Ba'al.

This makes one wonder if Yahweh evolved from other cultures into the one true god of the Hebrews?

Andersen, K. (2022, January 25). The Anti-vaccine Right Brought Human Sacrifice to America. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/human-sacrifice-ritual-mass-vaccination/621355/

source?

Is there a link to religion and the connection and potential conversation provided by it that provides an evolutionary advantage? Is there a psychological change in attention or self-consciousness?

Why is this framed with Joseph's name instead of Mary?

https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/en/2021/11/birth-of-the-gods/

This is a good example of the default "ancestor worship" and "rituals" label on archeological finds of ancient peoples

What is the actual basis for assigning these labels? Is there any real evidence or is it just become the default in the literature.

Personally I'm building evidence towards a more comprehensive thesis for what these practices may have been used for.

Tradents in Tibetan religious literature often copied unattributed texts forward and backward in time without attribution. They often weren't inventing new material, but copying it forward.

This seems incredibly similar to the traditions of oral cultures as explored by Milman Parry and Albert Lord in the work on orality which was followed up by Walter Ong and others. Examples include the poets known as Homer in the Greek Tradition and the guslars of Yugoslavia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_Rock,_Georgia

Note the proximity to New Echota, the capital of the Cherokee nation.

The Western word "ceremony" is certainly not the best word for describing these traditions. It has too much baggage and hidden meaning with religious overtones. It's a close-enough word to convey some meaning to those who don't have the cultural background to understand the underlying orality and memory culture. It is one of those words that gets "lost in translation" because of the dramatic differences in culture and contextual collapse.

Most Western-based anthropology presumes a Western idea of "religion" and impinges it upon oral cultures. I would maintain that what we would call their "religion" is really an oral-based mnemonic tradition that creates the power of their culture through knowledge. The West mistakes this for superstitious religious practices, but primarily because we can't see (or have never been shown) the larger structures behind what is going on. Our hubris and lack of respect (the evils of the scala naturae) has prevented us from listening and gaining entrance to this knowledge.

I think that the archaeological ideas of cultish practices or ritual and religion are all more likely better viewed as oral practices of mnemonic tradition. To see this more easily compare the Western idea of the memory palace with the Australian indigenous idea of songline.

he = Mark Noll

I love the phrasing of this.

What part does The Great Resignation have in part of this? Any? Is there overlap for any of the reasons that others are resigning?

What about the overlap of causes/reasons for teachers leaving the profession since the pandemic? What effect does the hostile work environment of politics play versus a loss of identity and work schedule during a time period in which closures would have affected schedules?

What commonalities and differences do all these cases have?

This sounds like some of the remnants of the Scots/Irish fighting spirit renewed.

What does the overlap of this look like in Appalachia within the American Nations thesis?

This sort of power dynamic in smaller individual churches sounds like the problems of power in the centralized Catholic church. In this case it's decentralized into thousands of smaller churches.

This seems to be getting at the "personal Jesus" and personal faith that Colin Woodard mentions as well.

• Alan Jacobs

This would seem to indicate that culture and politics are taking precedence over the religion and faith portions of these churches.

This is a good alignment showing that at the deepest level, the fundamental aspiration and values of science and religion are the same: interconnectedness.

Context: Sonia was watching Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath: Season 3: "Episode 1" and had previously been watching a documentary One of Us about people who had left oppressive seeming Hassidic Jewish communities.

I can't help but that that every culture could be considered a "cult" in which some percentage of people are trapped with comparison to all other cultures on Earth. Based on one's upbringing and personal compass, perhaps living and submitting to one's culture can become oppressive and may seem particularly unfair given power structures and the insidiousness of hypocrisy.

Given this, could there logically be a utopian society in which everyone lives freely?

Even within the United States there are smaller sub-cultures withiin which people feel trapped and which have the features of cults, but which are so large as to not be considered such. Even the space in which I freely live might be considered a cult by others who don't agree with it. It's only the vast size of the power of the group which prevents the majority who comfortably live within it from viewing it as a bad thing.

A Democrat may view the Republican Party as a cult and vice versa, something which becomes more apparent when one polarizes these communities toward the edges rather than allowing them to drift into each other in a consensus.

An African American may think they're stuck in a broader American cult which marginalizes them.

A Hassidic Jew may feel they're stuck in a cult (of religious restrictions) with respect to the perceived freedoms of broader American Culture. Some may feel more comfortable within these strictures than others.

A gender non-comforming person living in the deep South of the United States surrounded by the Southern Baptist Convention may feel they're stuck in a cult based on social norms of one culture versus what they experience personally.

What are the roots of something being a cult? Could it be hypocrisy? A person or a broader group feeling as if they know "best" and creating a rule structure by which others are forced to follow, but from which they themselves are exempt? This also seems to be the way in which authoritarian rules arise when privileging one group above another based solely on (perceived) power.

Another potential thing at play here may be the lack of diversity within a community. The level of cult within a society may be related to the shape of the bell curve of that society with respect to how large the center is with respect to the tails. Those who are most likely to feel they're within a "cult" (using the broader definition) are those three or more standard deviations from the center. In non-diverse communities only those within a standard deviation of the norm are likely to feel comfortable and accepted and those two deviations away will feel very uncomfortable while those who are farther away will be shunned and pushed beyond the pale.

How can we help create more diverse and broadly accepting communities? We're all just people, aren't we? How can we design communities and governments to be accepting of even the most marginalized? In a heavily connected world, even the oddball teenager in a small community can now manage to find their own sub-community using the internet. (Even child pornographers manage to find their community online.)

The opposite of this is at what point do we circumscribe the norms of the community? Take the idea of "Your freedom to strike me ends at my nose." Perhaps we only shun those extreme instances like murder and pornography, and other actions which take extreme advantage of others' freedoms? [This needs to be heavily expanded and contemplated...] What about the over-financialization of the economy which takes advantage of the unprivileged who don't know that system and are uncapable of the mathematics and computation to succeed. Similarly hucksters and snake oil salesmen who take advantage of their targets' weaknesses and lack of knowledge and sophistication. Or the unregulated vitamin industry taking rents from millions for their superstitions? How do we regulate these to allow "cultural freedom" or "religious freedom" without them taking mass-scale advantage of their targets? (Or are some of these acculturated examples simply inequalities institutionally built into societies and cultures as a means of extracting power and rents from the larger system by those in power?)

Compare with Hester Prynne and Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter.

Religious and national divides were likely very important here as authority from above would have been even more important than in modern time. Related to this is the change in mnemonic traditions due to religious and political mores around the time of Peter Ramus.

Back when [[political correct]] did not dissallow [[Asimov]] to claim religious people have been duped due to fear.