This statement from an Inuit elder reveals the logic of hunting magic:
Now that we have firearms it is almost as if we no longer need shamans, or taboo, for now it is not so difficult to procure food as in the old days. Then we had to laboriously hunt the caribou at the sacred crossing [...]
Tags:amulets·game spirits·hunting·hunting magic·Inuit·magic·ritual·shamans·taboo
When attempting to determine whether something is “natural ” (vis-a-vis yesterday’s post on Catholicism and homosexuality) one good way of investigating the issue is to use the genealogical method. So far as I can tell, there are no hunter-gatherer or pre-Neolithic societies that had taboos against homosexuality. We can therefore trace the history of the [...]
Tags:Assyria·Assyrian Empire·Aztec sacrifice·Babylolian captivity·Catholicism·Christians·demographics·demography·early Christianity·Egyptian captivity·fertility·group size·Hebrews·homosexuality·India's sacred cow·Jewish diaspora·Jews·Judaism·Levant·Lost Tribes of Judah·marriage·Marvin Harris·Mesopotamia·Michael Harner·Mormons·natural law·persecution·pork eating proscription·procreation·prohibition against homosexuality·Ralph Tanner·ritual regulations·same-sex preference·sin of sodomy·slavery·sodomy·taboo·taboos·The Social Ecology of Religion·Vernon Reynolds·warfare
Today’s title riffs on the seventh installment of William Saletan’s Slate series on the memory researcher, Dr. Elizabeth Loftus. In several places in the article, one could simply replace words or phrases and the result would be an accurate description of the ways in which religious cultural inputs create imaginary worlds for believers of most [...]
Tags:cultural inputs·cultural patterning·Elizabeth Loftus·imagination·implantation·indoctrination·memories·memory·sin·suggestion·taboo·Ur-God·William Saletan
