@Ionus,
Quote: Would I be right if I said you believe the Bible version of creation to be literally and logically true ?
You would not. The Old Testament is a collection of tribal codes. These codes are connected with the basic values for the existences in which they appeared. To do with family and chattles in the main. There are many other codes. Deuteronomy is Jewish from about 620 BC. Chapters x11-xxv1 represent a code of laws the tribe had at that time. Something called Priestly History (450BC) is now given as the 2nd, 3rd and 4th books of the Pentateuch (Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers). They are foundations of legal and ethical thinking of the time and designed to keep the tribe in business in the circumstances they live in.
There are codes of Visigothic, Ostrogothic, Burgundian, Frankish, Lombardian origin and others. There is the famous Justinian code.
One might gauge how fundamental fundamentalists are from the chapters in Deuteronomy where people were enjoined to marry their brother's widow and could only refuse in a tribunal where a rejected widow might be free to spit in the mans face and "loosen his shoe". Thereafter he would be known as "him that hath his shoe loosed". From which might derive that beating of Saddam's statue with shoes and the throwing of shoes at Mr Bush. They were also enjoined to carry a "paddle" with which to bury their excrement.
One might just as well ask the modern fundamentalists why they don't carry out those injunctions as ask them why they don't stone homosexuals and adulterers. People who harp on endlessly about the latter are either stupid or think they are addressing stupid people.
The Jews derived most of the content from Babylon and the Germans most of their's from remnants of Urbs Roma.
Norman law, derived from the Frankish code, drove out Saxon law after 1066 and that has developed into the law of Europe and it's colonies. It is essentially Germanic. Thus monogamy. And the science of dynamic space. The Magian codes had no such science. Their science was bound to the here and now and by the horizon. The infinite was taboo. There was no perspective. The science of dynamic space is unique to western Christian culture.
But really, it is very complex and I don't claim to have studied it in depth. That is the work of many lifetimes.
Looking at the differences in architecture and music is a useful starting point but now we have Dylan's "long black cloud is comin' on down" from the depth of Africa. And rock and roll.
Codes in narrow zones, men meeting, influences, receptivity and new codes continually being refined to suit the circumstances until a UN agreed world code comes in and then it all becomes moribund. The end of history.
These guys on here know nothing about it all and just spout inane platitudes which they think justifies certain self indulgencies mostly in the rumpy-pumpy arena. Darwinists they ain't. More like David Copperfields in a playpen.
The fundamental bottom line of religion is the priest/altar situation. Its existence as a focus. What happens is secondary. The idea of equality is ridiculous. NFL is religious through and through.
So also is academic ritual. Solemnities, vestements like cap and gown, feast days, special words, evening dress, decollete for ladies (tit flashing), ceremonial rules, apostolic successions and such like are obvious examples of the production of spectacular effect and a felt need for archaic symbolism. Entirely religious. Priest/altar. Conspicuous waste as a signifier of reputability and subservience.
These anti-IDers are not attacking religion. They are attacking religions which are not their's. And they are hardly even altar boys. They know nothing about the subject. That's why assertions like that I "don't get it" abound in their silly contributions.
Even this post goes nowhere near doing the subject justice. But I needs must try to be short to match the attention spans of the nitwits I'm up against who are basically on an aggression orgy.
