VINE DELORIA JR, GOODBYE

Vine Deloria JR. passed away on Nov. 13, 2005, that hurts.He was by far one of the great thinkers of our time and had quite an effect on the way I see the world so i will leave you with some ideas,actually quotes of his to make you think.
" In most human cultures religious and scientific leaders have shared two traits: They have pretended to be the sole repository of knowledge, and they have been damn smug about it. The average citizen has traditionally deferred to these two groups and allowed them a sembalance of authority in matters of faith and knowledge. Thus theologians and scientists have become the source of truth and have been responsible for its transmission. But while these two groups have been the source and authority for truth, they have rarely been the initiators of it. The truth they have protected has nearly always been obsolete, framed in outmoded concepts, and defended zealously against heresy. Truth, under these conditions, has become a matter of authority rather than inquiry. The sin of abusing authority falls equally on science and religion; for every Galileo that can be citied, there stands a Velikovsky."

"In the western traditions, revelation has generally been interpreted as the communication to human beings of a divine plan, the release of new information and insights when the deity has perceived that mankind has reached the fullness of time and can now understand additional knowledge about the ultimate nature of our world. Thus, what has been the manifestation of deity in a particular local situation is mistaken for a truth applicable to all times and places, a truth so powerful that it must be impressed upon peoples who have no connection to the event or to the cultural complex in which it originally made sense. The recounting of the event becomes its major value and both metaphysics and ethics are believed to be contained in the description of the event. Ultimately the religion becomes a matter of imposing the ethical perspective derived from reprocessing the religious experience on foreign cultures and not in following whatever moral dictates might have been gleaned from the experience."

Thank You for expanding my horizons

TALES FROM AN OLD GEEZER

" As I was myself going to the Red Sea, there followed us a man, whose name was Mosollam; he was one of the Jewish horseman who conducted us; he was a person of great courage, of a strong body, and by all allowed to be the most skillful archer that was either among the Greeks or the barbarians. Now this man, as people were in great numbers passing along the road, and a certain diviner was observing an omen by a bird, and requiring them all to stand still, inquired what they stayed for. Hereupon the diviner showed him the bird from thus he took his omen, and told him that if the bird stayed where he was, they ought all to stand still; but that if he got up, and flew backward, they must retire again. Mosollam made no reply, but drew his bow, and shot at the bird, and hit him and killed him; and as the diviner and some others were very angry, and wished imprecations upon him, he answered them thus: "Why are you so mad as to take this most unhappy bird unto your hands? For how can this bird give us any true information concerning our march, who could not forsee how to save himself? For had he been able to foreknow what was future, he would not have come to this place, but would have been afraid lest Mosollam the Jew should shoot at him, and kill him."
-Josephus