Now that your knee-jerk ego defense mechanism is out of the way, care to serious answer the question? Or should I simply take this as a "no?"
To you, it doesn't matter what I say. You just do your own thing.
:shrug:
Now that your knee-jerk ego defense mechanism is out of the way, care to serious answer the question? Or should I simply take this as a "no?"
At any rate, that image of Isis and Horus is a classic of religious iconography, so much so that it would have been known to early Christians, and no doubt served as inspiration for the image of Mary and Jesus. It isn't an accident that the two images are so similar. In fact, Isis served as a template for Mary early in Christianity.
Ever since our distant ancestors became fully bipedal (going back to Ardipithecus, 7MYA), it was the primary responsibility of the females to nurse, protect and raise the young, while the males gathered food. This came about because a biped can use both arms to carry an enormous load of food back to camp, where the women and children are in relative safety. (Ardi still had one prehensile toe, making them much better climbers than our species, so the females could even scamper up into the trees with the children in one arm if they saw predators approaching.)Another angle to consider are the state of natural humans before civilization. What were the male and female roles and does religion attempt to preserve this also, and does secular prefer something less natural? Maybe science can tell us whether the churches not only preserve long standing cultural traditions but also natural traditions.
From the standpoint of women (as I have been told by women), there's no significant difference between Christianity and the Stone Age.
My life is nothing like that. And my spouse, who is a woman, feels the same way. Life is a great adventure. Wonderful things happen every day. Today's music alone, professionally composed and performed, available 24/7, is enough to make life worth living.There is no significant difference between modern Western culture and the Stone Age: life is a fight for survival.
Mrs. Fraggle has never been expected to be like a robot, and has never acted like one. She routinely chides me for not being adventurous enough.Although the Stone Age was probably a bit easier on women than the modern age. At least they weren't fed platitudes about humanity, while being expected to be like robots.
There is no significant difference between modern Western culture and the Stone Age: life is a fight for survival.
Although the Stone Age was probably a bit easier on women than the modern age.
At least they weren't fed platitudes about humanity, while being expected to be like robots.
Hmm. None of the people I know who have died were "fighting for survival" although this was common in the stone age. Survival nowadays is a given; the fight is over how successful you want to be. I guess your experience is different than mine.
Except for the starvation, malnutrition, death during childbirth, rampant disease, lack of laws and violence. Other than that it might have been easier. Stone age women would not have to endure the horror of being offered food to eat that might make them fat, for example, nor would they ever have to live through the crippling misery of not being able to find a parking spot at the mall.
Right, they generally just died young rather than being fed platitudes. Much better off.
Actually, examination of Paleolithic bodies has yielded some surprises.Right, they generally just died young rather than being fed platitudes. Much better off.
Actually it was the Agricultural Revolution that made that happen. The domestication of grazing animals and the irrigation of cultivated plants created the first food surplus this planet had ever seen. The twin technologies of farming and animal husbandry both permitted and required people to stop being nomads and settle in permanent villages. It didn't take them long to recognize the advantages of division of labor and economies of scale, both of which are enhanced by enlarging a community.An interesting change would have been civilization. Civilization allowed higher population densities, thereby reducing local mortality as smaller tribes fighting for natural resources, are able to merge into larger communities.
Actually once agriculture created a food surplus, there wasn't much competition for resources. As I noted above, villagers were happy to invite other tribes to move in with them, because it raised productivity to an even higher level. This allowed a few people to have "careers" outside of the food production and distribution "industry." Finally there were a few full-time professional musicians, teachers, cobblers, brewers, explorers, tinkerers, etc.Or instead of killing natural competitors . . . .
Slavery was a manifestation of the Bronze Age, which didn't begin until around 3000BCE, seven thousand years after the Agricultural Revolution and six thousand years after the first cities were built.. . . .they might merge or go into slavery to create a work force that can help expand culture. Slavery is not good compared to freedom but an upgrade from slaughter.
Actually we managed to start down that road a mere one thousand years after the end of the Paleolithic Era.If you think about it, tens of thousands of years of instinctive traditions needed to be neutralized for civilization to form.
As I've postulated before, I don't believe the few hundred generations we've passed through since the end of the Paleolithic Era have been nearly enough time for any major mutations in our neural programming to evolve.The personality firmware had to evolve some new features, to overcome this instinctive inertia; human nature modernizes away from pre-human instinct. In my opinion this change in the firmware is the symbolic Adam, who has the new human temperament which was better geared to begin and sustain civilization.
Jean Auel, in the "Clan of the Cave Bear" series of novels, insists that the first religions were goddess-oriented. Based upon her copious research, she's convinced that 30KYA humans had not yet figured out the relationship between copulation and pregnancy, so the concept of "fathers" was nowhere in their culture. The Mother created everything. Artifacts from Paleolithic sites seem to support this hypothesis. The Fertility Goddess, with her wide pelvis and generous breasts, is a common trinket.I would guess that child bearing and raising was still at a premium such the females would become conscious of the change later; Eve.
Yeah, you prefer zombies over humans.
Actually, examination of Paleolithic bodies has yielded some surprises. Of course it's no surprise that infant mortality was up in the 70-90% range, since it remained there until the advent of modern scientific medicine (asepsis, vaccines, antibiotics, etc.) and public health measures (covered sewers, street cleaning, abundant fresh water, wrapped food, etc.) in the late 19th century. But for the lucky ones who survived childhood, life expectancy was up in the 50s. There was little long-distance travel so people developed immunities to the bacteria and other pathogens in their own locale--or died in childhood.
People who romanticize previous eras in the development of human culture haven't really done their homework.
Most of these wars are catalyzed by religion--especially in the past half millennium. Belief in the supernatural is surely one of our most atavistic instincts, all the more unfortunate because there seems to be no evolutionary advantage to it, even in the Stone Age. It's probably a random mutation that, by sheer chance, was passed down through a genetic bottleneck.
My life is nothing like that. And my spouse, who is a woman, feels the same way. Life is a great adventure. Wonderful things happen every day. Today's music alone, professionally composed and performed, available 24/7, is enough to make life worth living.
So sorry about your life.
As Suicidal Tendencies said in their song "Gotta Kill Captain Stupid":
99% of life is what you make of it.
So if your life sucks, you suck.
Mrs. Fraggle has never been expected to be like a robot, and has never acted like one. She routinely chides me for not being adventurous enough.
No one's entire life can be an uninterrupted series of adventures, and they occur with decreasing frequency as we get older. I'll settle for the end of mine to be quick and painless, and not to dissipate half of the estate I'm planning on leaving to several people who deserve it and a few charities. That will be one hell of a lot better than the way both of our mothers died. One of them retained enough coherence to beg for mercy, but there's no mercy in a nursing home where they get paid for every day they can keep you breathing.Surely ending your life with a helium bag will be a great adventure too.
3. Surely ending your life with a helium bag will be a great adventure too.