quote:
Originally posted by KWLee:
Pardon me if I sound a little slow, Kaiden - I'm not sure I got this right. Did I just understand you to say that you used a question on a public PhotoReading forum to tangent off into your writing practice?
You make it sound so sinister!
The question asked was, "Is PhotoReading a religion?" In order to answer that question, the terms "PhotoReading" and "Religion" must both be understood. My purpose was to clarify the criteria of what constitutes a religion. I then proceeded to attempt to show if and where PhotoReading meets those criteria.
You see, any system is built from basic operating ideas. Call them axioms, notions, tenets or whatever. PhotoReading, for example, could not exist without the basic operating idea of parts of the mind able which are able to "think" and "know" but which are inaccessable to the conscious mind. This basic operating idea falls into the realm of "epistomology," the study of knowledge. Some religion may have as a core tenet the basic operating idea that there is "soul," which has consciousness and sensation, and "brain" which controls autonomic functions of the body, but which does not have any ability to "know" anything. PhotoReading would contradict this hypothetical religion, because the religion does not hold the basic operating assumption of an other-than-conscious mind to be true. Religion plays a central part in many people's lives, and they hold the basic operating assumption that anything that challenges the basic operating assumptions of their own religion is somehow harmful. However, any basic operating assumption that deals at all with any of the nine catagories is going to "intrude" on the grounds of a properly defined religion. For example, parapsychology (the study of ghosts) deals much with thanatology (the nature of death and what parts of the person continue after death). The existance of ghosts is directly contrary to the beliefs of almost every Christian religion, which have the basic operating assumption of immediate transportation of the severed soul to either Heaven, Hell or Purgatory... but never sticking around for years or even centuries on earth.
Does this make sense?
[This message has been edited by Kaiden (edited January 25, 2003).]
