03-01-2014, 10:27 PM
Interesting article about a topic that tends to come back to this forum again and again. I enjoyed reading it and hope some of you do, too.
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/at...ntPage=all
Mel Brooks’s 2000 Year Old Man, asked to explain the origin of God, admits that early humans first adored “a guy in our village named Phil, and for a time we worshipped him.” Phil “was big, and mean, and he could break you in two with his bare hands!” One day, a thunderstorm came up, and a lightning bolt hit Phil. “We gathered around and saw that he was dead. Then we said to one another, ‘There’s something bigger than Phil!’ ”
...
It is not an accident that the crucial moment of voting in the British Parliament is called a “division.” Our politics are a mirror not of our similarities but of our differences. That’s why they’re politics. We were less divided than our politics made us seem right on the brink of the Civil War, too. We were just divided on one big point. And the big point that divides us now is that the Super-Naturalists don’t want only to be reassured that they can say their prayers as much as they like to whomever they like. They also want recognition from the people they feel control the culture that theirs is an honored path to truth—they want Super-Naturalism to be respected not just as a way of living but as a way of knowing.
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/at...ntPage=all
Mel Brooks’s 2000 Year Old Man, asked to explain the origin of God, admits that early humans first adored “a guy in our village named Phil, and for a time we worshipped him.” Phil “was big, and mean, and he could break you in two with his bare hands!” One day, a thunderstorm came up, and a lightning bolt hit Phil. “We gathered around and saw that he was dead. Then we said to one another, ‘There’s something bigger than Phil!’ ”
...
It is not an accident that the crucial moment of voting in the British Parliament is called a “division.” Our politics are a mirror not of our similarities but of our differences. That’s why they’re politics. We were less divided than our politics made us seem right on the brink of the Civil War, too. We were just divided on one big point. And the big point that divides us now is that the Super-Naturalists don’t want only to be reassured that they can say their prayers as much as they like to whomever they like. They also want recognition from the people they feel control the culture that theirs is an honored path to truth—they want Super-Naturalism to be respected not just as a way of living but as a way of knowing.