It's my view that one of the earliest reasons for the creation of religion was to try to encapsulate scientific knowledge.
If you are living one crop failure away from starvation, it's pretty important to know what time of year it's going to start raining, snowing, etc. Having a gigantic festival every spring (for instance), and thanking "the powers that be" for sending in those spring rains again, right on schedule, seems like a pretty good way to remind everyone who needed to know (the whole "society", if you will) about what turns out to be a (now) scientifically-explained phenomenon, the changing of the seasons.
This sort of basic codification of (what turn out to be) scientific principles can be seen throughout ancient (and modern) religions. This is not to discount people's belief in "a higher power", whatever name that power takes. Science hasn't explained everything there is to know about the universe, yet.
However, the fact that the church once sponsored scientific research (and the archival of the resultant research) is completely unsurprising, and even necessary, until the scientific community was itself organized enough to have its own sponsors, and until secular bodies had the clout (and the cash) to take over where the church started.
The moral? Just because it comes from the church doesn't mean it's bad. Doesn't mean it's necessarily good, either. It's up to an open mind to decide in each circumstance.
Personally the trend to insist on all households being dual income sickens me. I really believe that children benefit more from having a stay at home parent than they do from having money.
I couldn't agree with you more. One has to ask which state of affairs creates more wealth in the long run:
a) Generation after generation of children taught by the television that being "good little consumers" is the path to happiness, or
b) Generation after generation of children raised by loving, caring, and present parents, at least one of whom is often around to help each child understand the ever-more-complex world around them
With only one income in our household, my wife and I may not be able to afford that SUV, because our consumer society is priced for dropping your kids in front of $199 TVs thus "allowing" both parents to work. However, it's my hope that the gain in prestige of parenting well-adjusted citizens will be worth the loss in prestige of driving the bestest gas-guzzler in existence.
Get back to me in 30 years or so, and I'll tell you how the experiment went.
Steven Brust's Dragaera work is all wonderful (some more wonderful than others, obviously, but for you to decide which):
Jhereg series (aka "Vlad the Assassin" series)
Khaavren Romances
Viscount of Adrilankha
Exactly so. However, it seems that it might make a pretty good stand-in for that "Save to VCR" function...
Keep your Tivo, add a DVD burner (let it be a backup TV recorder if you must, but I'd just ignore the PVR part), and voila! All the Buffy you could ever want, on nice, unmarked DVD-Rs that you don't have to explain to Mom.
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It's my view that one of the earliest reasons for the creation of religion was to try to encapsulate scientific knowledge.
If you are living one crop failure away from starvation, it's pretty important to know what time of year it's going to start raining, snowing, etc. Having a gigantic festival every spring (for instance), and thanking "the powers that be" for sending in those spring rains again, right on schedule, seems like a pretty good way to remind everyone who needed to know (the whole "society", if you will) about what turns out to be a (now) scientifically-explained phenomenon, the changing of the seasons.
This sort of basic codification of (what turn out to be) scientific principles can be seen throughout ancient (and modern) religions. This is not to discount people's belief in "a higher power", whatever name that power takes. Science hasn't explained everything there is to know about the universe, yet.
However, the fact that the church once sponsored scientific research (and the archival of the resultant research) is completely unsurprising, and even necessary, until the scientific community was itself organized enough to have its own sponsors, and until secular bodies had the clout (and the cash) to take over where the church started.
The moral? Just because it comes from the church doesn't mean it's bad. Doesn't mean it's necessarily good, either. It's up to an open mind to decide in each circumstance.
Personally the trend to insist on all households being dual income sickens me. I really believe that children benefit more from having a stay at home parent than they do from having money.
I couldn't agree with you more. One has to ask which state of affairs creates more wealth in the long run:
a) Generation after generation of children taught by the television that being "good little consumers" is the path to happiness, or
b) Generation after generation of children raised by loving, caring, and present parents, at least one of whom is often around to help each child understand the ever-more-complex world around them
With only one income in our household, my wife and I may not be able to afford that SUV, because our consumer society is priced for dropping your kids in front of $199 TVs thus "allowing" both parents to work. However, it's my hope that the gain in prestige of parenting well-adjusted citizens will be worth the loss in prestige of driving the bestest gas-guzzler in existence.
Get back to me in 30 years or so, and I'll tell you how the experiment went.
Steven Brust's Dragaera work is all wonderful (some more wonderful than others, obviously, but for you to decide which):
Jhereg series (aka "Vlad the Assassin" series)
Khaavren Romances
Viscount of Adrilankha
Read Jhereg first.
Exactly so. However, it seems that it might make a pretty good stand-in for that "Save to VCR" function... Keep your Tivo, add a DVD burner (let it be a backup TV recorder if you must, but I'd just ignore the PVR part), and voila! All the Buffy you could ever want, on nice, unmarked DVD-Rs that you don't have to explain to Mom.