Re: MD Access to Quality

From: ian glendinning (psybertron@gmail.com)
Date: Fri Apr 22 2005 - 06:06:17 BST

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    Joe,

    It is interesting that you raise the etymology of "religion" - I threw
    in an aside earlier, that despite my apparent hostility to religion,
    it does have a useful valid purpose.

    What I reject is any fundamental / expalantory / causal purpose in religion.

    What I accept is the kind of thing implied here. When explantory
    stories, derived over time, get too complicated, carrying all sorts of
    baggage and flaws, juggling too many balls in the air at once - it
    helps if the peers in a space can agree a summary - an agreed working
    statement, in order to move on for 99% of practical life. The mistake
    that gets made is when that working agreement gets treated as dogma,
    or something of fundamental knowldege ... then ... well just look at 2
    millenia of history.

    Magic, thanks for that Joe.
    Ian

    On 4/22/05, Joseph Maurer <jhmau@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
    > On Wednesday 20 April 2005 11:54 AM Ham writes to Ian:
    >
    > Hi Ham, Ian and all,
    >
    > > snip>
    > > Although most of us have reservations about religious doctrine as a source
    > > of knowledge, there should be no need to attack either a spiritualistic
    > > belief or a particular religion on rational grounds. Religion has nothing
    > > to do with rationalism. (I'm told that the name stems from the Greek word
    > > "religio", meaning "to bind"; so it's not surprising that religious
    > > leaders
    > > seek to perpetuate their faith by holding believers to traditional
    > > ecclesiastical dogma and symbolism.) Eastern mysticism, shorn of its
    > > folklore and rituals, is something else again; to me, its most valuable
    > > teaching is the Oneness of the universe.
    > >snip>
    >
    > "Religion has nothing to do with rationalism." I do not agree. I accept that
    > Thomas Aquinas drew a distinction between Faith and reason. Through history
    > there has been an oddity on this planet: individuals of the highest evolved
    > species kill each other on a massive scale. IMO this defeats continued
    > evolution by destroying many fine things that had already been achieved.
    > Some very fine people have tried to elucidate ways of behavior that would
    > eliminate this problem e.g., Buddha, Moses, Astrology from India and Greece,
    > Jesus, Mohammed, Lama are the most recognized.
    >
    > IMO the etymology of the word 'religion' according to Thomas Aquinas has two
    > branches from Latin words: re-legere to read again, or re-ligare to bind
    > again. In either case whether binding or reading again, there is the
    > assumption that the former script has been somewhat corrupted.
    >
    > Joe
    >
    >
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