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From: laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Followups and Conclusions
Message-ID: <1440@utcsstat.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 16-Nov-83 06:16:53 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsstat.1440
Posted: Wed Nov 16 06:16:53 1983
Date-Received: Wed, 16-Nov-83 08:36:35 EST
References: pyuxn.348 <6228@unc.UUCP>, <351@pyuxn.UUCP>
Organization: U. of Toronto, Canada
Lines: 39

The problem with asking Tim Maroney and me to "get another word" is that
it is not just us. You are going to have to ask Buddhists, Taoists, and
a huge branch (at least, perhaps the whole thing, for I really don't
understand it that well) of Hindus. This is a *lot* of people. Then you
are going to have to rewrite all the "World Religions" courses and
books, because by your defintion they are not about religion, right?
Hmm. Better check out all the books that have been written about thse
not-religions. Do you still have any time? Start tracking down those
lesser known not-religions. I suspect that you could spend several lifetimes
finding out exactly what it is that various Neopagan groups are doing.
Still working at it? Well, try every cult (or so-called cult), and the
secret societies that you can discover.

Gee. It sounds like a very huge project, open-ended and likely to
require many lifetimes. And I can't help but theink that since the Hindus,
Taosists and Buddhists were here long before the Humanists (as a
contemporary movement -- I am not implying that nobody beheved as a
humanist until recently!) that it is Rich Rosen and his friends that
are going to have to globally change all references of 'religion' into
'authoritative and one-supreme being based religions' or even
'religions which do not promote the aims of humanism because it is
contrary to the tenets of the religion'. 

i know. it's a mouthful. However, I do not think that your proposed
solution will work because it is not backwards-compatible enough. In
general, I get the impression that in your critique of religion what
you really wanted to do was criticise Christianity, or perhaps
Christianity and Judaism. if that was your intent, perhaps you should
have phrased it that way. 

Even then you are going to have problems, because the Christianity of
Saint Theresa (the little flower) and St. John of the Cross (for example)
is very different from the Christianity of Anselm of Cantebury, is
different from that of Martin Luther is different from...

Somehow I think that this problem is the smaller of the two, however.

Laura Creighton
utzoo!utcsstat!laura