good point.
well, i had another pre-op visit today, this time at ORMC, bla bla bla. anyway, on to the important stuff. i was sitting in the waiting room with my mom… we both had books, but we ended up just talking about religion for about 10 minutes. (this stemmed from the subject of her book, the ancient aztec civilizations. basically, they were smart in some ways and dumb in other ways.)
This then segued to judaism, which is one of the only modern religions without a ‘savior’ figure (the aztecs were polytheistic nature-types, not that they are modern). This then segued somehow into how much we think W. is an idiot — and then, back to religion — how christians, no matter how religioiusly active, tend to align themselves with the politial right.
In the end, on a semi-related tangent, I think we decided that any religion that worships the execution of its god is pretty messed up indeed. Basically, we analogized it to the martyrism of some of these whackos in palestine/isreal right now, who seem to think that suicide bombing is a fun afternoon pastime. timothy mcveigh, too. Those guys are dying for their causes — good for them. will they also become popular religious figures shorty after their deaths, and last more than two millenia? Of course not.
I’m having a hard time materializing my thoughts in a coherent manner right now, but my point is that the terrorist bombers of today seem no different than the ‘martyrs’ of yesterday, to me. What has changed is the public perception of loners in society — I guess we have more common sense now. Go figure. #
May 10th, 2004 at 1:47 pm
I think that a martyr is a person that dies for their truth that is religious, moral, and may be emotional. A martyr cannot be compared or said to be similiar to suicidal people who are willing to kill others and them selves at the same time. For example during the Roman times the christians as well as others we killed the the pagan religious men. They never fought vastically for their lives or intented to kill others because of the point they wanted to make. But those in palestine intend to kill others.