Recent content by TarSpiel

There's definitely some hostility between the groups. I think Trumpism definitely appeals to some hispanics who think, "Oh, we're not *those* kinds of latinos." Their mistake is thinking that Trump or MAGA or any of those knuckleheads know or care about the distinction they're trying to make.

I think in that example, I can see some meaningful connections. Thanks for sharing it. And for what it's worth, New Orleans is my favorite city I've ever been to. I had a hard time leaving, and was seriously considering moving there for months after my visit.

Well, the Australian beliefs and practices are our best window into Paleolithic religious beliefs and practices. They're the cornerstone out of which all other religious traditions evolved. That's the basic logic behind it. And more "advanced" religion still bear many traces of their ancestral...

I completely agree on both points. Part of the problem, though, is viewing religion as a sort of proto-science - which it really isn't - that has somehow been surpassed by science - which it hasn't. Religion deals with basically different aspects of the human experience than science does. If...

Aren't you in effect saying that the non-overlapping magesteria are in fact overlapping, and that the rules designed to gain knowledge in one sphere (the material) should also apply to the other (what you referred to a couple of times as "numinous")? And I think you put a bit too much faith in...

Well, I really don't know much about philosophy in general, and next to nothing about Schleiermacher, so I don't think I have anything helpful to add on that score. I could probably count on one hand western philosophers who I find interesting. I do think the mystical, what you referred to as...

No, what I was trying to do was explain what Durkheim - and many sociologists in the century after he wrote "The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life" - thought about the origins of religion, which he founded on the practices and social organization of Australian Aborigines. These guys did...

The bars in my small town are filled with alcoholics trying to get away from their families & responsibilities. A lot of it is just pretty sad, all in all. Maybe Vera is at one of those ones.

Sorry, I just can't wrap my head around the idea that going to the bar is the same thing as going to a religious service.

I'm just shaking my head, wondering what I did wrong in life to be in a discussion with someone who thinks that going to the bar is the same thing as going to a religious service, and claim that they are LITERALLY (all caps) the same thing. SMH. In order for going to a bar to be remotely...

It literally does not. And for the record, I did not talk about "ritualistic behavior." I talked about rituals. All of those rituals, in religious traditions all over the world and from the dawn of time, are imbued by the participants with a sense of the sacred. It's nothing like going to a bar...

Yea, they're all just a bunch of drunks, just like native americans.

Eh, not really, unless drinking with others is as deep as your social relationships go.

I have this great book, "10 Theories of Religion" by Daniel Pals, which gives great intros to the major theoretical approaches to religion (among the 10 are E.B. Tyler, Freud, Marx, Weber, Durkheim, EE Evans-Pritchard, William James, Geertz, etc). I had read Durkheim in the past, but one...

I don't think I've said this yet, but dude...you're just amazing