As I make my way through different cultures I’ll take it upon myself to describe and make fun of the spiritual beliefs that I encounter. Let me start with Australia and New Zealand since I’m about to leave them. Wait til you hear this. They think there is an old man living in the sky who created everything and has the power to make any changes to the world that he wants. When people die, there is a kind of invisible intangible part of them, called a ‘soul’ that carries on living. If they’ve been good they go up to the sky and live with the old guy but if they’ve been bad they go to another place under the ground where things are unpleasant. It sounds like a story for children I know, but this is what adults believe! The old man in the sky originally created the first man and then, to give him a companion, took one of HIS RIBS (?!) and from it created a woman! I swear I’m not making this up!
There are other crazy stories like a huge flood and a big boat that contained two of every kind of animal, a talking snake trying to convince people to eat an apple that corrupts (!), but here’s the most popular one: the old man’s son, who could do magic tricks like transforming things and making sick people well, got picked on by jealous people for saying there was an old man in the sky. They don’t just call him names, they nail his hands and feet to a piece of wood (?!). He dies, his body get put in a cave, but he is brought back to life by his dad. This seems to show that he was right all along because he says ‘I bet you feel silly now’ to his tormenters. It seems to be this hah-that-showed-you-all story that appeals most to the locals.
I wonder if I’ll encounter any other cultures that can top that lot for ridiculousness!
Come on, stop lifting Mark Twain's schtick. His letters form the Earth are great.
ReplyDeleteGlad that you are well and in the adventure. Please do keep the blog going as you get into the wilds. The concierge was likely waiting for a tip to get everything and/or just an annoying SOB.
They pull the sarong thing on all visitors as a joke, just to see you in a dress and usually ask you to pay for the photos and negatives.
By the way, a photo of you in a Sarong with the Rawls sweater would be priceless.
Cheers
Stephe
In NZ as a child I resented the fact that the bad people headed in our geographical direction, the story having been written by people in the Northern Hemisphere. Then I learned that the Earth is always turning, at 900mph give or take. So what is up and down relative to the people on Earth is always changing, which again as a child I felt made the story a bit wrong.
ReplyDeleteAs an adult, and more to the point as a lawyer, I dislike the punishment regime involved. Take the worst offender, probably Stalin across recorded history but you could make a case for others. Let’s lay say 50m deaths at his door (Hitler can be co-defendant for a decent chunk of them). Even the toughest retributionists would probably accept that 50m life sentences should do for that, but what the hey, double it and call each life term 100 years to be on the even tougher side. That makes 10000m years’ sentence, and since the conditions in the correctional facility are reputedly very tough, any reasonably fair minded person might consider an application for parole after half of that.
And yet according to the relevant text he’s there forever. Not even a trillion to the power of a trillion to the power of 999999 trillion etc years is deemed sufficient. And all because he was a miscreant over a couple of decades. That doesn’t really add up.
Hmm surely we should have a separate categories for such as Hitler, not just add up the number of people. And punishment for this separate category is eternity in hell.
ReplyDeleteThe issue of eternal damnation was addressed by that notable philosophical forum Dr Who. The Master, as ever, entered into a pact with an evil alien, who, as ever, didn't keep to the bargain or otherwise fell out with him. It said he would receive "eternal torture". The Master abandoned pride at this point and begged the Dr to help him. This the Dr did, whereupon the Master promptly escaped and taunted the Dr for his weakness of "endless compassion".
ReplyDeleteThe Dr shrugged this off, saying that no-one deserved eternal torture. I would have thought it would lose its sting after a few trillion trillion years. Wouldn't you just go insane at the prospect, thus lessening any value of the exercise?
As I said, the most anyone can commit evil for on earth is a few decades. Surely some finite number rather than all eternity can be applied, even if it is particularly steep, to the worst offenders, coupled with various opportunities in Hell to do some community service by way of redemption?
spike: I didn't know about Mark Twain's 'Letters from Earth'. I guess geniuses arrive independently at good ideas. I'll give it a read.
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