Are lies and misconceptions the basis of Christianity?

Someone using a literal interpretation as a defense of their reasonings doesn't convince me.

Human truth and deep understanding of humanity are the basis of religions. Even though many parts of some religions (e.g., buddhism) are sheer fictions, those teachings have heavy significance for the human life.

While I was writing this, the Guardian (July 29, 1991) fortuitously carried a beautiful example. It came in an interview with a rabbi undertaking the bizarre task of vetting the kosher-purity of food products right back to the ultimate origins of their minutest ingredients. He was currently agonizing over whether to go all the way to China to scrutinize the menthol that goes into cough sweets. ``Have you ever tried checking Chinese menthol... it was extremely difficult, especially since the first letter we sent received the reply in best Chinese English, `The product contains no kosher'... China has only recently started opening up to kosher investigators. The menthol should be OK, but you can never be absolutely sure unless you visit.'' These kosher investigators run a telephone hot-line on which up-to-the-minute red-alerts of suspicion are recorded against chocolate bars and cod-liver oil. The rabbi sighs that the green-inspired trend away from artificial colors and flavors ``makes life miserable in the kosher field because you have to follow all these things back.'' When the interviewer asks him why he bothers with this obviously pointless exercise, he makes it very clear that the point is precisely that there is no point:

"That most of the Kashrut laws are divine ordinances without reason given is 100 per cent the point. It is very easy not to murder people. Very easy. It is a little bit harder not to steal because one is tempted occasionally. So that is no great proof that I believe in God or am fulfilling His will. But, if He tells me not to have a cup of coffee with milk in it with my mincemeat and peaces at lunchtime, that is a test. The only reason I am doing that is because I have been told to so do. It is something difficult."

Helena Cronin has suggested to me that there may be an analogy here to Zahavi's handicap theory of sexual selection and the evolution of signals (Zahavi, 1975). Long unfashionable, even ridiculed (Dawkins, 1976), Zahavi's theory has recently been cleverly rehabilitated (Grafen, 1990 a, b) and is now taken seriously by evolutionary biologists (Dawkins, 1989). Zahavi suggests that peacocks, for instance, evolve their absurdly burdensome fans with their ridiculously conspicuous (to predators) colors, precisely because they are burdensome and dangerous, and therefore impressive to females. The peacock is, in effect, saying: ``Look how fit and strong I must be, since I can afford to carry around this preposterous tail.''

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And now to the point. Is it possible that some religious doctrines are favored not in spite of being ridiculous but precisely because they are ridiculous? Any wimp in religion could believe that bread symbolically represents the body of Christ, but it takes a real, red-blooded Catholic to believe something as daft as the transubstantiation. If you believe that, you can believe anything, and (witness the story of Doubting Thomas) these people are trained to see that as a virtue.

They hold their beliefs unexamined, and prefer that you not examine those beliefs, either

Why do you suppose that God did not have someone write down exactly what he meant so that we could have avoided all of the religious wars?

According to Muslims, the Qur`an is the exact word of God, yet you don't see religious wars being avoided there, do ya?

Personally, I've never gotten over the fact that God made light on day one, but didn't get around to making the sun, moon and stars until day 3.

caprice wrote:

According to Muslims, the Qur`an is the exact word of God, yet you don't see religious wars being avoided there, do ya?

The problem there being that the exact word was not very exact.