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Author Topic:   This belief thing
Tangle
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Posts: 9486
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.6


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Message 1 of 3 (782551)
04-26-2016 12:13 AM


For the past month or so I've been travelling across South East Asia - Singapore, Vietnam (north and south), Taiwan, China, Japan.
Everywhere I went there were temples and shrines to various gods and belief systems, Buddism, Taoism, Confusionism, Shintoism and various sects and divisions within each. Everywhere too was some form of Christianity. Many also worhip ancestors and have various and differing beliefs about them. One guy I met in Vietnam (Saigon) explained that he was a Christian because the missionaries had free schools but you had to convert to go there.
One temple in Hue, Central Vietnam has Terry Pratchett's turtle god.
In Hong Kong, they have what they call 'traditions' of palm and card readings, head readings, future forecasting using caged birds and so on. These practices were once rife in mainland China but quashed by the communist regime - the practitioners fled to the liberal Hong Kong but are now being tempted back in China proper before they lose the arts completly.
Everywhere supertitions and proverbs were rife. Each country seems to have it's own versions of auspicious omens, charms and lucky numbers. In Vietnam it was 3, Hong Kong 8 and so on. The daft things that we have about astrology they take very seriously, as they do with their year of birth - dog, rat, monkey etc.
This is just a topic to muse on and it's obviously not a unique thought that each civilisation has made up its own belief systems and in the absence of real understanding, created its own ways of dealing with life here being 'short and brutish'.
But when you see all this first hand one after another in quick succession - all the bell ringing, incense burning, joss stick lighting, bowing, praying, fasting, food fetishes and dietary retrictions - you have to come to the conclusion that we just made it all up and people will believe just about anything at all if it's taught them young enough and the promises that the belief systems give them are attractive enough - and/or the penalties for disbelief unattractive enough.
There's no consistency and there's no rhyme or reason to it. If there is a God he's having a laugh.

Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien.
Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved."
- Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.

Replies to this message:
 Message 2 by AdminPhat, posted 04-26-2016 4:10 AM Tangle has not replied

AdminPhat
Inactive Member


Message 2 of 3 (782559)
04-26-2016 4:10 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by Tangle
04-26-2016 12:13 AM


If there is a God he's having a laugh.
And whose to say He doesnt embrace a bout of laughter---as a part of an overall integral health management system.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Tangle, posted 04-26-2016 12:13 AM Tangle has not replied

AdminPhat
Inactive Member


Message 3 of 3 (782562)
04-26-2016 4:12 AM


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