Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: lujvo

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 17:14:43 EDT

In a message dated 00-06-13 16:28:02 EDT, robin writes:

<< Note that the specific vector of offense for me would be if someone used
a generic expression like that ("one or more mothers of one or more
gods") to refer specifically to Christianity and its mythology. The
all-too-common assumption by Christians that their religion is the only
relevant one pisses me off. >>

Is this just a contextual thing, that you only come in contact with 
Christians, or does the same claim by virtually every other religious group 
really leave you unannoyed? Again, it is not an assumption but a carefully 
defended claim (not necessarily, for all of that, a true one, mind you) and 
it is not that their religion is the only *relevant,* but that it is the only 
*true* one. Other living religions are relevant, because they 
systematically prevent their followers from finding the truth and thus they 
continue the reign of evil in the world. (This particular form happens to 
come from Islam, by the way.)
What is true of Christianity, in the US at least, is that just about 
everybody above the age of five knows a little bit about it and thus its 
mythology (which is most of what is known) can be assumed as a common 
reference point for all sorts of other things -- humor, marketing, politics 
(if that is different), what have you. Interestingly, Judaism
seems to function almost as well in the realms of (slightly) higher culture 
-- urbane urban, say. In both cases, the cultural coin is scarcely fair to 
the religion as a whole or even any subgroup within it, but it often is the 
extent of a person's knowledgte of religion at all (even if they profess to 
belong to a more precisely defined group).