BBC News - 'End of virginity' if women drive, Saudi cleric warns Unless 'drive' is a euphemism in Saudi perhaps
Hmm, maybe he thinks that all the virgins would get into cars, drive, and keep driving till they reach a country whos laws are based on reality rather than something completly insane?
It's sad really ... different cultures and every culture believes that only their beliefs are correct ... aqnd everyone else is wrong Jewish say it's gross to eat Pork .... go to Tel Aviv and ask for a pork chop in a restaurant and you will get lynched ... Germans love it (nothing better than an Eisbein/pork knuckle) ... English love pork bangers ... some chinese relish rhino horn and not so long ago, People in New Zealand wanted to eat captain Cook Religion: many believe in Jesus .... Jewish crucified him and said he was a phony .... some believe in Buddha ... some are into scientology ... some are into spiritualism... and others are into Allah ... and everyone believes that they are correct and everyone else is wrong so, depends where you are brought up, what your mates believe and how your teachers taught you... and how easily influenced you are at the end of the day, many of us are influenced by what our forefathers preached .... some think a bit deeper and question, but they are often ridiculed I have mates from all creeds, cultures and nationalities and it's always interesting discussing 'deeper' issues .... but I always listen carefully and try and understand how they think and how they are/were influenced Take that away, and they are just normal folk who always enjoy a good laugh and try their best and, thats one of the reasons behind many of the wars`... always has been and always will be
I was brought up as a Christian, but I do have half a brain and worked out from a young age that I was being taught other peoples superstition & stories, presented as facts. I questioned the preachers, they didn't like it, as they had no answers, only Dogma. The main thing I remember my "teacher" getting cross with me about was the Adam/Eve/Cain/Abel story. Quite simple really, 4 people on the planet, one kills his brother, making 3. Brother goes to the land of nod & "knows his wife." Now, unless that was his Mum, which the Bible neither denies or confirms, there must have been someone else on the planet, in which case the Bible is bearing false witness and therefore not trustworthy, or, it is advocating incest. Either way, not something you should be teaching kids from, yet this seems acceptable to a lot of people who would otherwise be offended by similar literature
Sorry, but this is totally untrue. You mentioned Buddhism. Is you are familiar with Buddhism you will know that one of it's core teachings is that we should respect all living beings equally (and in buddhism, pretty much everything, real or mythological, is a living being). Then there are all the shamanic cultures. In many such cultures the shaman will routinely assist with the rituals of other religions, just because they are available to lend a hand. In Taoism, which has to be about the simplest of all the belief systems, the teach that things are just the way they are, and the reason is that it just is. Its an observation of the nature of reality. Us gardeners are Taoists. I bet there aren't many among us that really understand how a plant works, or the very technical and scientific reasons why we plant our tatties and harvest them about 4 months later (why does it take 4 months? It just does, it is Tao, or 'the way'). Leaving religion out of it, there is no such thing as a culture. You said yourself that no matter where people live they are fundamentally the same. That means there will be ignorant people living next door to open minded people, and that's equally true whether you live on my street or in some poor neighbourhood half way round the world. Whether Saudi has it wrong on not is not for us to decide. It is for the people affected to decide. I personally don't like the idea of women being treated as second class in some way, but those women might not mind. However if they do mind, as evidenced by recent rumblings in such parts of the world, then we have to conclude that something is wrong there. And even if we mustn't interfere, at the very least we can have a laugh at some insane guy that thinks there's a connection between letting women drive and there being any virgins left.
I've got no problem with them in their own back yards, they can do what they like. Trouble is they want to do as they like in other peoples countries. Nearly 3,000 'Honour Attacks' In UK Last Year - Yahoo!
First off, the cleric is partially right With the current laws, the women are effectively chained Of course it all already goes on but not to the extent it would if they were free to come and go as they pleased, thus if they were allowed to drive they would be free, to be coersed or generally exploited to make money for others, not all obviously but a lot more goods than presently available Now to the Bible. it was written in Europe/middle east If God created the world how come in the Bible NO Kangaroos, Koala bears, or Emus went into the arc two by two, Nope they do not get a mention, as for the Madagascar and Americas none of them get a mention either Surely if he had created them they would at least get a mench Jack McH
Clueless, well written. Beliefs usually arise out of stories, incidents or facts and it's, nowadays, sometimes difficult to determine which. As some of you know, I love my food so tend to study things about it. The idea of not eating pork arose from empyrical evidence and was particularly important in hot countries. Moslems and jews and, probably, other religions don't eat pork because of this historical evidence. Without refrigeration the flesh of dead pigs goes off quicker than almost all animals. In hot countries where there was some form of civilisation (mainly middle east and asia) the ruling class (usually priests etc) found that this was one of the major causes of illness and death from food poisoning. As most of the population were uneducated peasants there was no point in trying to explain the reasons for the problem. So it was much easier to make it a law and say that God had decreed that you shouldn't eat it. So this became a law and a tradition. The reason remains the same but modern science has made it unecessary to follow it blindly. Nevertheless, it has now become embedded in the religions and, in this instance, does no damage at all. Many moslems and jews know it's not necessary any more but they don't eat it because of tradition. It is a similar reason that shellfish shouldn't be eaten. This is because most shellfish, although filter eaters (plankton etc), are bottom eaters and suck up and filter the plankton from the bottom of the sea. The bottom of the sea also tends to have all the crud (hope this avoids the treetree filter ) in it. You can read up on the bacterium vibrio vulnificus or the protein tropomyosin (a pan-allergen) if you want to frighten yourself. It's for these reasons that shellfish are still causing the most illnesses and deaths (from food) around the world. I suppose, to a certain extent, it's like telling a young child not to stick their hand in the fire. Prevention is better than cure. As for women not driving!!!!
Very informative post Shiney. You kind of touched on my theory about the origins of religion. I'd love to take the credit for it, but my theory is also based on something I once read in a book about Norse pagan beliefs. As you mentioned, it is easier to just say god ordered something than to explain the reasons why, in much the same way that a young child, who doesn't yet understand death and pain beyond scuffing their knee, that the reason why we check the road before stepping onto is that you could get killed. You tell the child that they may not under any circumstances go onto the road except while holding mammy's or daddy's hand. Going back to what I read about the norse pagan beliefs, the theory put forward in the book was that all of the many gods from the belief system were just labels for natural things that had been observed. It may have been easier to say that we should stay indoors with our fires lit during the dark winter months because Odin was out collecting the souls of the lost, than to explain to kids at length that you don't go out into the forest in winter because it is easy to become disoriented in a blizzard, get lost, freeze to death, get buried under several feet of snow, and then not be found until spring when a wolf is more likely to find you than anyone else. Or to say that Oestre returns to breath new life into the land, rather than explain that at some point the days will get long enough, and the energy of the sunshine will return to high enough levels to enable the snow to melt and the new plants to grow.
Had a look at how they'd get out of that one, they say that as it was before the flood, there were no oceans & that all the creatures were everywhere. Someone asked how they got back to Australia after the flood, that got em wriggling a bit
They have a standard answer. The Lord moves in mysterious ways. Translation: We have no idea. We know it makes absolutely no sense, but it is written, and therefore it is true.
