Way off topic

[mpriestley -at- VNET -dot- IBM -dot- COM]

Matt hicks wrote:
>Just curious. Why are the Indian and Egyptian (ancient Egyptian, I assume)
>beliefs "mythologies" and Islam, Buddhism, and Christianity religions?

Because they weren't taught as religions; they were taught as a bunch
of stories.  This is going waaay back for me (like, grade 3?), but I seem
to recall Norse and Babylonian mythology being in there too. Also Old
Testament stories...

>Personally, I think they are all religions based on mythologies. Perhaps you
>only studied the practices of worship in Islam, Buddhism and Christianity and

The "religions" course was actually concentrating on comparing moral
precepts, as far as I remember.  So it wasn't dealing with mythos so much
as prescribed moral practise.  In that course, we pretty much stuck with
existing religions (this was a high school thing).

>worship? I don't think the fact that everyone who worshipped Ra is dead
>does anything to invalidate the religion built up around him.

Oh, we probably did - at some point.  The "mythology" stuff was a recurring
course through grades 1-8, working its way in roughly chronological
order from Babylonian to Roman mythologies, and the beginnings of recorded
history.  These courses were pretty much straight story-telling, without
much emphasis on the actual rituals used in the worship of any particular
deity.

>I just thought the bias was interesting--subtle, but interesting. (It's

The lack of context created the appearance of bias.  Mythology was not
taught as the context of religion: it was taught as "pre-history":
part of the chronicles of the human race.

>also interesting that a course in world religions would include Buddhism
>but not Judaism. Or was that just an oversight or forgetfulness on the
>writer's part?)

Forgetfulness.  I think we compared Old and New Testaments too.

Look, I never taught at the school - I just went there.  I'm pretty darn
impressed with how much I remember, but my recall isn't perfect.  I was
mostly busy dealing with peer pressure, puberty, and pimples.  I wasn't
paying much attention to the curriculum.  So, unless there's a Waldorf
teacher following this list, this discussion has pretty much plumbed the
depths of available knowledge.

Thanks,

Michael Priestley
mpriestley -at- vnet -dot- ibm -dot- com
Disclaimer: speaking on my own behalf; not on behalf of IBM, and not on
behalf of Waldorf either, for that matter.