I couldn't upload a video of the tió, so I'll post pictures. This is how it works:1-the kids go to another room to pray or say a christmas verse2-they come back and take a stick and chant while hitting the log3-when the song is over they check under the tió for presents4-they repeat the same thing until there's only chocolate which means the tió is done, and won't give anymore presents...Don't ask me how kids believe this! they want to believe is my guess! (Is religion as easy as that? Just wanting to believe and not asking logical questions??)
6 comments:
No stranger of a tradition than many others that exist around the world.
Wanting to believe is the prime criteria, I think. That and suspending belief in logic.
"Wanting to believe is the prime criteria, I think. That and suspending belief in logic."
That statement applies as much to man made global warming as it does to religion, if you change just one word: “logic” to “facts.”
Logic takes you only so far in the realm of religion vs science in explaining how we all got here and why things are as they are. Given the gaping holes that exist in the theory of evolution, science fails to form a seamless, logical story that is backed up by facts.
Evolution appeals to people because it depends in large measure on things that can be seen, concrete things, such as fossil evidence. Atheism appeals to people because it eschews things that aren’t concrete: you can’t see God, therefore God doesn’t exist.
I’m not a proponent of religion, but I do believe that it is just as sensible as the alternative; it takes faith to believe in God, and it takes faith to believe evolution.
What ulterior motive could Darwin have in telling us about evolution? It didn't turn him into a god. To me, it's about facts, like you say, 2+2=4.
Religion, on the other hand, has many reasons behind, and, in my opinion, lacks logic. You have a bunch of men telling you God is there even if you don't see him. That he is good, even though you'll burn in hell if you don't believe it. That you'll be saved and there's an afterlife, even though I've never seen anybody come to life after death... And, if you don't abide by certain rules written in a book they say God inspired, you'll go to hell... Fear is one good form of mass control, and it seems to me what religion wants to do
I don’t think that Darwin had an ulterior motive; I think he told us what he believed was the truth. I think scientists who subscribe to the theory of evolution believe it is the truth.
I also think people who believe in God, Jesus, Allah or other incarnations of a supreme being believe their god is real and is the one true god. What we are talking about in both the religious and scientific contexts is “belief.”
The difference in evolution vs. religion is that evolution has some concrete evidence to support it, the operative word being “some.” What evolution lacks is evidence to connect those pieces together into a seamless, factually supported explanation. Without those factual connectors, evolution is not very different from religion, inasmuch as it requires leaps of faith to accept it as truth.
Some religious adherents maintain that God is directly responsible for evolution and cite those factual lapses as evidence of it. They maintain that if evolution was a natural process it would have to have a linear path from the first life forms to present life forms, and that we should be able to follow that path from one end to the other.
I can’t prove them wrong, you can’t prove them wrong, and science can’t prove them wrong, and at the same time, science can’t prove that its theory is fact.
So what we are left with is a dichotomy of theses, neither of which is provable. That one of these has developed into a belief system that teaches that if you do not follow its rules you will be doomed to hell may be a purposeful mechanism for controlling people, but it may be nothing more than an effort to make sense of the incomprehensible.
That the other has developed into an arrogant and condescending belief system that condemns as fools those who do not believe in it is an all-too-human result to the incomprehensible.
You are quite right in your explanation, I think. Actually, I envy people who can believe in God. It must be so comforting to think you'll never die. It can be dangerous too, if you're led to believe in holy wars and things like that.
You are certainly correct that religion has been the basis for some horrible events throughout history. The present murderous tendencies of radical Islam being only the most recent.
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