From: lydick@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU (Speaker-to-Minerals)
Subject: Re: religion for which others are waiting
Reply-To: lydick@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU
Organization: HST Wide Field/Planetary Camera
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 09:22:16 GMT

In article <1992Jul27.024209.20042@midway.uchicago.edu>, mbr2@quads.uchicago.edu (Curious Of All Natures) writes:
>An excellent thought across which I just ran:
>
>Others are waiting for a religious answer which does not destroy
>reason but points to the depth of reason; which does not teach the
>supernatural, but points to the mystery in the ground of the natural,
>which denies that God is a being and speaks of Him as the ground and
>depth of being and meaning, which knows about the significance of
>symbols in myth and cult, but resists the distortion of symbols into
>statements of fact which necessarily conflict with scientific
>knowledge.                                              -Paul Tillich

I tend to agree with this.  Science (please note:  the capital S was used only
because the word science began a sentence), if properly taught, DOES point to
mystery in the ground of the natural.  Despite what we know, someone who really
understands science will also realize that there's a lot we DON'T know, and
maybe even a lot we can't know).  As to the symbols in myth and cult, I'd agree
that, yes, they are important, but a much more important thing to human beings
(if I'm at all typical;  however, as the thread about what constitutes a
reasonable temperature indicates, maybe I'm not) is ritual.  We all participate
in many rituals every day;  they ARE important to us.  A few examples:
	I usually eat breakfast at one particular restaurant.  The waitresses
	there know what I usually order (no, I don't order the same thing every
	day, but they have breakfast specials, and for the most part I order
	the breakfast specials (with some modifications:  cottage cheese
	instead of hash browns, for example).  So the usual exchange between
	myself and the waitress is something like:

		Carl:	Good morning, how are you today?
		Waitress:	Fine, thanks.
		Carl:	I'd like the special please, no hash browns.
		Waitress:	OK.  How are you?
		Carl:	Fine.
	After that, if the waitress isn't too busy (since I tend to show up at
opening time, 6am, she usually isn't), there's often a bit of small talk.  For
example, one of the waitresses has family somewhere between Landers and Big
Bear (sites of the 7.5 and 6.6 earthquakes a month or so ago), and we got to
talking a little bit about seismology early this month.

	Now, given the predictability of the routine, all of that could be
eliminated.  The waitress could just give me my cup of coffee, and serve me the
special (remembering that I don't want the hash browns, and if the special's
French toast or pancakes, I don't want any syrup, but I DO want extra butter).
But we carry on this bit of conversation that really has virtually no
informational content nearly every day.  Why?  Well, it's part of a ritual. 
Now, science DOES have rituals.  They aren't invoked all that often, but they
DO exist (if anybody's interested, I'll paraphrase [or maybe, since
alt.callahans has relatively few patrons, type in in its entirety, despite
copyright violations] James Randi's comments on one of these rituals). 
Personally, I've very seldom participated in any of the rituals of science.  A
part of me DOES, however, crave ritual.  One of my own rituals is executed
almost every night at bedtime:  Read news.  Check my blood sugar level.  Go to
bed.

Then there are the even more mundane rituals.  How many of you wouldn't be
quite disturbed if the ritual of logging in to a computer were changed without
notice?  For me, the ritual is:
	I type a "c" followed by a carriage return;
	The computer responds with a few messages ending with a "Username:"
		prompt.
	I type in my username.
	The computer responds with a "Password:" prompt.
	I tyep in my password.
	The computer responds with an announcement of which computer I've
		logged in on, any message of the day I might've set up, and an
		announcement of the number of new mail messages waiting for me.
I know *I'd* be quite disomfitted were this ritual suddenly to change. Of
course, since I'm the person responsible for setting up and maintaining the
form of this ritual on the machines I manage, I've got special reasons for
being upset if the computer doesn't do its part in them :-).  But even when I'm
logging in on a machine I don't manage, small deviations from the expected
dialogue bother me.  Ritual *IS* an important part of human existance.

Anyway, I'm rambling.  The point I was trying to make was simply that I think
ritual is more important to most people than the symbolism of myth and cult,
and any artificial religion needs to understand this.

And remember:  Thou art god.

-StM