what is meaning?

I am surprised to hear that about the Elsdon Methodist church MYF.  I wouldn't have suspected it.  Of course that would have been before Martin Luther King decided that Gage and Marquette parks should be integrated and led those marches.  We were both gone from Chicago by then, but I wonder what the hood was like at that time. 

I meant gods in general rather than the Christian god, but speaking of Him, the only reason He had to send His only begotten son to die for us was because He decided to punish all of us, innocent babes not even yet in the womb, for that little garden of Eden incident, so I don't know, what the hell kind of love is that?

I hope those novels you read about stone age societies were not those awful Jean Auel Clan of the Cave Bear books, some of the worst writing I have ever come across, but they were bestsellers, so what do I know?  I think the idea that they were based on archaeological evidence is as valid as a movie being based on a true event. 

I'm pretty sure we don't know anything about the religion of our stone age ancestors.  We have those cave paintings, but we have no idea what their purpose was.  But we do have some hunter gatherers, and I think we can assume that their beliefs are close to those of our distant ancestors. 

I think the way this whole shaman thing starts is almost scientific.  He notices maybe that the last two times fishing was good during a full moon, and decides the tribe should always fish during the full moon.  Well this is what I am thinking, he just notices coincidences, maybe that sick guy ate some of those red berries and then he got better, so maybe they cure whatever the guy had, and if you just go by coincidences you will still be right more than you are wrong, and so he develops some cred.

But I guess gods are a different thing.  Well there are all these mysterious things going on, the river floods and shrinks, the sun rises at different points as the year progresses, so what is going on?  I think it's just natural for the human to believe that the object is somehow alive, so there you go with a river god and a sun god.  But these gods are kind of neutral, all they ask is the proper sacrifice (and of course only the shaman knows the proper sacrifice) and they don't care who gives it or why. 

But spirits are mysterious things, nobody knows where they begin or end, maybe some guy is thinking even then what does it all mean, and eventually they get to having some kind of god who is like the god of the tribe, their local god, their bud.  And since he is their local god, he is going to be partial to them, rather than those other guys who live downstream. 

But I don't think morality comes into it yet.  I think this is just a matter of playing your cards right and getting ahead. 

I'm trying to get my head around the idea of meaning, what is meaning?  Don't you have to know that before you can realize that there ought to be meaning?

Maybe that shaman just stumbles into it, that here is our god and we ought to obey Him, and maybe love Him, because He is our god, period.  And then the rest of the tribe goes gaga over it, because there is meaning, and it doesn't take much effort to think it out.  But it's not like the shaman just makes this up, he probably believes it too because he is just like the rest of the tribe.

Well I don't know, this is all speculation, I am trying to think something out as I am writing it and seeing where it goes.  Speaking of which it is time for me to go, see you tomorrow.