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You remember Rumpelstiltskin, right? Ugly little dude with some serious spinning wheel skills. He rescues a fair maiden from doom by spinning straw into gold. But in return he extracts a terrible price: when she has a child, she must hand it over to him. She eventually is able to escape this obligation because she guesses his name. Read More
Animals and birds
I just needed to point out how absurd it is to consider animals and birds as separate categories. I'd like to know what your sources are. Birds are animals, as taught in elementary school. It's common knowledge (no need to cite science here), it has nothing to do with the realm of the unknown, so it totally defeats your point.
Stop the presses
On looking again at my post, I see how my paragraph was confusing on this issue, because I don't mention the pre-scientific classification until after I make the animal/bird distinction. The English language is also confusing, because if you look in a dictionary you will see that our word animal means both "any member of the kingdom Animalia" and "mammal."
On reading carefully
My post says not that animals are different from birds--you're right, of course animals are birds--but that they were considered to be so in the pre-scientific classification. My argument is based not upon today's classifications, but on those that were built into English over the centuries. Today we retain traditions that characterize certain sorts of things as scary--bats, midnight-spiders--although we have lost track of the original reasoning behind these judgments.
Thanks for commenting and giving me an opportunity to clarify.
What's In a Name?
When people start telling me about God, I always ask which one? In the silence that follows, I offer a few hints: Vishnu; Gwydion; Zeus; Krishna; Lugh; Xue Zhuan Lun.... By now hopelessly confused they will often say: The God...as though that answers the question. I then persist with: Yes but what's his or her name? Seeing they have no idea, nice guy that I am, I then offer an additional clue. Perhaps you mean the God in the King James Bible. When they agree, I then ask: So what's his name? Again they have no idea and, in fact, when I tell them the name of their God - Jealous - they don't believe it. So I quote from the Bible and supply the necessary reference .
People rarely start telling me about God a second time.
PS I referenced your name in my last column:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/look-it-way/200910/the-miracle-fatima
And that's why it's better to leave the divinity unnamed
Your comment illustrates the fact that any name for the deity imposes limitations. What may seem like a good name in one age may seem suspiciously parochial in another. But as you point out in the column you mention, what are obvious limitations to the outsider usually seem to make no impression whatsoever on the faithful. Indeed, if you have faith, the very absurdities of your beliefs can come to be a reason to hold them (ask St. Paul).
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