RE: Is anything sacred? (Extra credit for specifying what it is for you.)
November 15, 2017 at 12:04 pm
(This post was last modified: November 15, 2017 at 12:17 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
(November 15, 2017 at 11:30 am)Whateverist Wrote: So how is the sacred experienced differently by theists and atheists, and what might it have looked like before the idea of God arose?
We have a pretty good idea of what it looked like, in point of fact. It was an explosion of reverence for life itself...all of it, including it's attendant savagery. A-rational, wasteful, extravagant...expensive and impractical. Shrines in the middle of nowhere, graves full of needful things. Painstakingly well crafted jewelry, ceremonial paraphernalia, and assorted goods gathered and intentionally wasted en-mass.
Puts a stuffy ass church and their puritan gods to shame.....which is, ofc, why they had to be eradicated. Beauty, and even a reverence for life itself, was pagan. The pious reject these things...and that trend began as soon as gods became a thing to be served. Asceticism has it's roots in the priestly caste.
Not that temples and churches didn't (or don't) appreciate the value of this behavior. What portion was once set aside in celebration (and expectation) of life itself...they diverted to their own coffers as a tax. It's no coincidence that religion as we know it sprung up, initially, in civilization as we know it. The gods have always been a lever of civic control in direct competition and contradiction with the urges we naturally come by to ascribe a sacred meaning to what cannot -be- controlled.
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