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→Occult: eating JDW's food for thought - and wiping my mouth!
:It may be a bit heavy-handed to associate [[ancestor worship]] with the [[occult]], but a bigger question is whether the Chinese "veneration" of ancestors goes this far. --[[User:Ed Poor|Ed Poor]] <sup>[[User talk:Ed Poor|Talk]]</sup> 09:34, 20 January 2010 (EST)
:It may be a bit heavy-handed to associate [[ancestor worship]] with the [[occult]], but a bigger question is whether the Chinese "veneration" of ancestors goes this far. --[[User:Ed Poor|Ed Poor]] <sup>[[User talk:Ed Poor|Talk]]</sup> 09:34, 20 January 2010 (EST)
::At the risk of sounding [[postmodernism|postmodernist]] (God forbid), it would be a mistake to talk about the occult, which is a Western concept, with an unrelated Eastern culture. The occult's entire history, indeed its very definition, involves a westerner operating ''outside of'' western religious practice. Even when borrowing from eastern religions which occultists freely mix with other pre-Christian European practices, it's always westerners we're talking about. Perhaps one might say that a self-professed Wiccan worshipping his ancestors would be occult, but a Japanese buddhist doing the same would not. [[User:JDWpianist|JDWpianist]] 09:47, 20 January 2010 (EST)
::At the risk of sounding [[postmodernism|postmodernist]] (God forbid), it would be a mistake to talk about the occult, which is a Western concept, with an unrelated Eastern culture. The occult's entire history, indeed its very definition, involves a westerner operating ''outside of'' western religious practice. Even when borrowing from eastern religions which occultists freely mix with other pre-Christian European practices, it's always westerners we're talking about. Perhaps one might say that a self-professed Wiccan worshipping his ancestors would be occult, but a Japanese buddhist doing the same would not. [[User:JDWpianist|JDWpianist]] 09:47, 20 January 2010 (EST)
:::You don't sound as much postmodernist as [[Orientalist]], in the sense that you seem to be saying that we outsiders cannot understand (or comment on) anything about non-Western cultures. For us conservatives who are Christians, the whole thing about the [[occult]] is whether any given [[supernatural]] or "[[spiritual practice]]" is good, indifferent, or bad.
:::Materialists, who comprise a significant fraction of Western liberals, categorize everything supernatural as nonsense. For them, the only question is whether such superstitions can have good or bad psychological or social effects. For the rest of us - i.e., religious believers - the supernatural is crucially important. We are concerned with questions such as as the existence and nature of God, what His will is for us, the effectiveness of prayer, issues of [[faith]] and [[works]], etc.
:::For those who believe that moral absolutes exist, all people everywhere are bound by one universal standard. If you don't know it's wrong to do something, and you do it anyway, does this make it less harmful to do the thing? --[[User:Ed Poor|Ed Poor]] <sup>[[User talk:Ed Poor|Talk]]</sup> 10:21, 20 January 2010 (EST)