Re: religion [OT]

On 2007-10-05, Gerry Quinn <gerryq@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article <47053e4a$0$79868$742ec2ed@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, bear@xxxxxxxxx
And then you get to ritual. "This is my body and blood..."
ritualized cannibalism, anyone?

Heh, take it to alt.atheism, and you'll probably raise a fine chorus of
'ayes'. But it is a strange argument coming from someone in a society
that regularly employs 'hi-tech' cannibalism such as blood transfusions
and organ transplants, and sometimes even forces individuals such as
Jehovah's Witnesses or their children to engage in these acts. Let's
not even mention processing human embryos to make cells that supposedly
can be used to make extend the lives or make temporarily ambulant the
bodies of moribund individuals who had the advantage of being born

At the risk of further perpetuating this hideous abomination of an
off-topic guaranteed-flamewar-generating topic:

There's a big difference between doing a thing and venerating it.

Or maybe it just could be that what *you* see is not the be-all and
end-all of what should be seen?

"What should be seen" is properly read as "what the advocates intend to
be seen." That said, rather than focusing on the details to make this
argument, perhaps one should focus on the overall theme:

"It's all flowers and eternal happiness _after_ you die."

....Meaning, of course, that the entire point of life is to die with the
most good deeds, and thus make it to the Grand Prize. An ideal life
(from the owner's perspective!) in some variants of Christianity is to be
born, be baptized, and be run over by a truck while still young, before
you really have figured out how to sin properly. Thus, you enter the
Kingdom of Heaven, having spent as little time as possible in the
intermediate stages where you can screw it up and go to Hell.

It is a fact that we will all die, but the point of life (at least,
of mine!) is not _solely_ to die, and this is possibly what the OP
finds disturbing.

--
Derek

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