Not so much a train of thought, more a replacement bus service of godless waffle, jokes and memes with a snifter of wine and craft-beer related stuff on the side..
Monday, October 11, 2010
Dawkins must be stopped..
This made me chuckle..
"Dawkins must be stopped from calling us 'primitive', get me a wax doll and some pins..."
Nice one, and raises an interesting cultural point.
These days most people would refer to this as "voodoo". But of course it's nothing to do with said Haitian religion. There's an incident in Hardy's Return of the Native where somebody sticks pins in a wax doll - and the victim subsequently drowns. Obviously being Hardy you could guarantee they'd all die horribly anyway, so no real suggestion that Hardy thought this kind of magic worked. Keith Thomas's "Religion and the decline of Magic" (brilliant book, well worth a read) distinguishes magic as being an attempt to co-erce a result, whereas religion is worship & prayer to a god (and therefore not guaranteed to work - you know what gods are like). So the difference between magic and science is one of results rather than method - put simply, one works and the other doesn't.
6 comments:
Nice one, and raises an interesting cultural point.
These days most people would refer to this as "voodoo". But of course it's nothing to do with said Haitian religion.
There's an incident in Hardy's Return of the Native where somebody sticks pins in a wax doll - and the victim subsequently drowns. Obviously being Hardy you could guarantee they'd all die horribly anyway, so no real suggestion that Hardy thought this kind of magic worked.
Keith Thomas's "Religion and the decline of Magic" (brilliant book, well worth a read) distinguishes magic as being an attempt to co-erce a result, whereas religion is worship & prayer to a god (and therefore not guaranteed to work - you know what gods are like). So the difference between magic and science is one of results rather than method - put simply, one works and the other doesn't.
G, I dunno, religion & magic look pretty similar from where I'm standing; I suppose at least if you go to church you avoid Paul Daniels :)
Actually, being in the place where I could guarantee Paul Daniels not being was how I ended up in Church in the first place...
Hey G, where's your blog at these days?
I've restored the "old" ones, mostly, but the one that is actually being updated at http://cyber-coenobites.blogspot.com/
Thanks G, sorry I asked this again (I just spotted your previous post back in September! - doh!) now bookmarked :)
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