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From: ddb@mrvax.DEC (DAVID DYER-BENNET MRO1-2/L14 DTN 231-4076)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Sacred Cows
Message-ID: <2814@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 24-Jul-84 09:20:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: decwrl.2814
Posted: Tue Jul 24 09:20:15 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 27-Jul-84 03:33:20 EDT
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Organization: DEC Engineering Network
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I agree with Jerry Nowlin's feeling about sacred cows (the real ones) --
IF you assume a western culture and economic level.  Now, obviously the
people in India don't, for the most part, live at our economic level.
The book Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches (which everyone here ought to be
familiar with) presents an interesting economic analysis of the sacred
cow, suggesting that the value of the cow alive is MUCH MUCH greater to
society than the value of the cow dead; in other words, that cow warship
makes good economic sense.

I'm not competent to judge whether this analysis is really accurate (never
having been to india, and not being an anthropologist, economist, or
sociologist).

(I can't believe I did that; at the end of the next-to-last line of the first
paragraph, please pretend it says "worship")

Now, good religion may not always make good economic sense.  But when it does,
I have less quarrel with it than usual; at least it is filling an important
role in society.

Anyway, before criticizing the Hindu's for keeping their cows, I'd want to
be convinced by a careful analysis that they are really worse off because
of them.  I have not ever seen such an analysis, and I've seen at least
one suggesting the cows are worth the trouble, so at the moment I'm keeping
an open mind, inclined slightly towards thinking they're right (after all,
it's at least somewhat more likely that a useful practice will become
enshrined in religion than that a destructive one will.  Isn't it?).

				-- David Dyer-Bennet
				-- ...{shasta|ihnp4|decvax}!decwrl!rhea!mrvax!ddb