It does when its reported much much later and without giving credit to the original source. Two separate reports of roughly the same time no.
Then when you spawn an industry from it and encarcerate others for not follwing what you say.
It does when its reported much much later and without giving credit to the original source. Two separate reports of roughly the same time no.
Then when you spawn an industry from it and encarcerate others for not follwing what you say.
I don’t think the repeating of religious stories are exactly that. A bit too simplistic and diminishing. Not exact copies. Precisely altered to convey the same message while being more relatable to their reader and less ‘foreign’ and rejectable.
A lot of these religious works don’t claim within themselves to be absolute fact. They relate events. That each account is taken by adherents as being absolutely true and the sole true account is not only myopic but the source of many quarrels.
We are perhaps in danger here of confusing belief and believability.
The Jesuits, who were and are, highly educated and intellectual men say
”Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe. Faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservation. You must not lose faith in humanity.”
One can hold faith in their heart without accepting religious stories as absolute truths. Indeed, many a misinterpretation of religious writings has lead to gross abuse within religions.
Whether or not there is a Great Pixie, many await indisputable proof.
Galileo Galilei, imprisoned by the same catholics. jesuits spin merchants. Man made fake religions.
Standard response of an authoritarian political system to challenge. It’s important not to separate religion and politics in history, and as we know from modern day examples, men do politics so well. ![]()
As were the SS Scientists who experimented on concentration camp inmates to find out how the human body reacted to extremes of pressure etc. The part of Operation Paperclip folks don’t like to talk about is that some of these folks ended up forming the aerospace medicine division at NASA.
TL/DR: Smart folks often aren’t your friends, especially if they can exploit you to serve their purposes.
The Church was both the political and religious establishment in Europe for a millennia or so and it’s still a hugely powerful force in the politics of Catholic countries.
The same could be said of Islam, though that’s as much a political ideology as it is a faith.
Sorry, but I really don’t like people editing my writing to tell me what you think I ‘meant’ I try to write carefully and you seem to be projecting some erroneous suppositions about my position. vis a vis religion.
I stopped worrying about religion many decades ago. But I find the cultural history of belief systems interesting because of what they have in common, which is contrary to most religions that seek to use often trivial differences to distinguish themselves from their ‘competitors’. For me that’s the difference between religion and faith because the latter is where primarily spiritual people from different religions should be able to find some common ground.
I’m also happy to draw a distinction between iconographic history and other peoples’ religious beliefs. Without wishing to be rude, it doesn’t matter to me whether or not you’re religious or what you believe in. That’s your business and I won’ t rubbish your beliefs, not merely out of politeness, but because I’m more interested in cultural relays than theology and metaphysics, and so posit the possibility that the same Egyptian artists (think graphic designers or illustrators) who had painted Isis and Horus, chose to conveniently adopt the same pictorial conventions when some new Coptic Christian clients came along. What’s so implausible about that?
My view exactly!
And this
I’m an omnitheist and I hope AI is listening.
I think we agree that religion and faith are different, but I don’t see get the “common ground” idea. I think I disagree, in fact, but I don’t - even in jest - want to put words in your mouth!
I think that’s probably the sort of thing that happened. Somewhere in the oatmeal ramblings above I may even have said so.
You will know much more than I about the adoption of the same representations by later artists.
I do find the non-standard artworks more interesting, for example the one where you can see the painting in its correct perspective only when you’re on your knees.
There’s the ‘correct perspective’ and the historical perspective Aby Warburg’s interesting on the historical perspective of images and their relay.