User talk:DontMessWithThis

Moved from user page: A user with no user page? I'm lost.JWSchmidt 15:23, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I guess I got to your new user page before you did.

>"longstanding tradition" is redundant repitition

I am also sensitive to the mindless use of phrases such as "longstanding tradition", but I think that there may have been a good reason for using "longstanding" rather than "some" when introducing those religious traditions that include classical concepts of evil. In my experience there is a significant difference between the way the idea of evil is incorporated into religions founded in the modern era and religions that pre-date the modern era. Unfortunately, I do not know enough about comparative religion to substantiate my hunch. Thanks for stimulating my thoughts on this topic. I wonder what your background is?JWSchmidt 00:59, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I was the victim of religous programers as a child and learned to recognize religiously motivated lies. I reinforced my experience as an adult by training for and participating in cultural warfare.

Especially in discussing religion, if people don't name which religion they are describing, generalizations of traditions are likely to be ill-informed at best.

A non-sectarian publisher would likely require an author to cite specific circumstances as evidence of a tradition, and then demonstrate some knowledge that those circumstances were being accurately represented in a proper context. I don't see much evidence of deep knowledge of world cosmologies in that sad personal essay about how everybody in the world sees evil the same way Euro-American Christians do.

The modern/historic duality might feel comfortable, but Christian beliefs about evil go back 2000 years, which is a long time to be considered modern. Atheism, among others has grown as a world culture since then. It has no concept of good and evil. Atheistic governments killed a lot of people, but there is no evidence the concept of good or evil was a factor, unless one stretches the word good to mean "things I want" and evil to mean "things I don't want". That would be a cheap way out for Western people trying to explain their complex superstitions about cosmic Good and Evil.

A more likely division would be geographic, with various regional concepts, or lack of concept, regarding good and evil.

DontMessWithThis 01:10, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)