Using allegory as a moral proxy is fine. And even a really great way of making complex or dry topics more approachable.
What is not ok is when you take allegory as literal, such that you actually believe that there is a sky wizard who will punish you for showing your hair in public. What is incredibly fucked up is when you then project that literal belief to a prescriptive action framework which commands you to murder heretics.
My related anecdote is that I studied Aikido for many years, and there’s a lot of woo-woo in it. Energy, and Ki and whatnot. At one point (I was taking physics at the time) I realized that Aikido of all about directing momentum and force, and force as levers on body parts, and that you could probably calculate all of the various ideal angles for maximum conservation of momentum, and angles for balance points… and I realized that all of the woo-woo was a simplification of all of this that allows people to think about all of these things in real time and intuitively, rather than getting locked up in the theory.
I doubt that was the process and intention of the inventor, and a lot of practitioners believed in Ki or Chi or magic juice… but it’s all just physics boiled down to something people can easily visualize. And, yes, the problems start when people begin believing the magic juice, and start proclaiming that they can influence someone’s chi from a distance, or some shit. That’s a far cry from: if I bend your wrist this way, it’s incredibly painful and you’re going to fall over to stop it, or break your wrist.
Using allegory as a moral proxy is fine. And even a really great way of making complex or dry topics more approachable.
What is not ok is when you take allegory as literal, such that you actually believe that there is a sky wizard who will punish you for showing your hair in public. What is incredibly fucked up is when you then project that literal belief to a prescriptive action framework which commands you to murder heretics.
I love this comment.
My related anecdote is that I studied Aikido for many years, and there’s a lot of woo-woo in it. Energy, and Ki and whatnot. At one point (I was taking physics at the time) I realized that Aikido of all about directing momentum and force, and force as levers on body parts, and that you could probably calculate all of the various ideal angles for maximum conservation of momentum, and angles for balance points… and I realized that all of the woo-woo was a simplification of all of this that allows people to think about all of these things in real time and intuitively, rather than getting locked up in the theory.
I doubt that was the process and intention of the inventor, and a lot of practitioners believed in Ki or Chi or magic juice… but it’s all just physics boiled down to something people can easily visualize. And, yes, the problems start when people begin believing the magic juice, and start proclaiming that they can influence someone’s chi from a distance, or some shit. That’s a far cry from: if I bend your wrist this way, it’s incredibly painful and you’re going to fall over to stop it, or break your wrist.
Which includes pregnant women.
It wasn’t a command. The Crusades were an offer to make murder a prayer for salvation.
Was quite popular. Didn’t matter if they were Saracens, Jewish folks, or even other Xians by the end.