Poemranker [Replying] Thu Nov 21 12:52:09 PST 2024

Replying to a comment on:

St. Patrickâs Cathedral (Free verse) by Dovina

Familiar themes in architecture and art Bloodstained head, hands and feet A stone beside a hillside tomb The fact of death graven In skull and grave Quiet kneeling in massive hall Alcove candles glowing dim Saintsâ fixed eyes staring down Artwork preaching from thick stone walls Glass stained with Motherâs face Arms stretched to humble sheep Some may know what they seek in church And why they seek it here But in the struggle for revelation To transcend reason I must tread the lonely forests Skid about in skies and minds Looking for the strength to die Without somewhere to go

-=Dark_Angel=-, P.I.

31-Aug-04/6:35 PM

1) There is little evidence that I am aware of to suggest that believers are happier than normals. So I agree with you.

2) Of course you would have to find some way of stranding a morally untrained colony on the island; perhaps by stranding newborn babies there and using morally neutral robots to feed them. It would be pretty difficult to invent a robot that was totally morally neutral, though. Perhaps it should, at random intervals, do something naughty for no reason, like punching one of the other robots in the motherfucking face. Even if the experiment could be performed and the colony didn't slaughter or do anything too untoward, it wouldn't be conclusive. My instincts say people have an innate sense of guilt at doing certain lewds; this also seems to be the case in the animal kingdom, and perhaps it would be best to do the experiment on monkey colonies or something. Anyway my view could be utterly distorted by the fact that my upbringing as a Scholar and a Gentleman has been so austere, so fundamental to my being, that to me it seems like second nature.

3) There seems to be very little correlation between high church-going levels and low murder rate. Britain, Canada, the rest of Europe all have much lower murder rates than the USA, but the USA has a much higher rate of church going. I think religion has very little to do with making people not murder-prone. I don't think most religions say murder is wrong because God told someone it was wrong and they wrote it down, or some madman heard a voice that said it was wrong so he wrote it down; it says murder is wrong because that's what most people instinctively feel is wrong. By and large, most religions share similar basic morals, and they aren't very different from those followed by normals. Is this just coincidence? Or are such religions more likely to survive because people feel more comfortable following morals that they already believe in anyway? Of course some wallyish morals slip through...

A friend of mine is a lapsed Jewish, but he has relatives who are ultra-non-lapsed-jewishes. On a particular day of the week (Holy Saturday?) they aren't allowed to work, cook, drive a car, etc. One of the most wallyish aspects of this is that they can't turn on a light. They actually have a special device on their fridge which prevents the light from turning on when they open the door. There is clearly no practical basis for this moral, other than God told them to do it. Other, more serious wallyishnesses exist, like condemning homo lords. Now I actually think there is an inbuilt disgust towards gayness among many people, but normals can overcome this quite easily. Religious people can't because the prejudice, which was present in the elderlies who wrote their holy books, is now ingrained in their religion. So they can't tolerate gayness, lest they be deemed gay.

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