{"id":46,"date":"2008-02-02T20:01:41","date_gmt":"2008-02-02T20:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/media\/book\/chapter-08b-from-now-to-eternity\/"},"modified":"2009-02-23T08:15:46","modified_gmt":"2009-02-23T08:15:46","slug":"chapter-08b-from-now-to-eternity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/media\/book\/chapter-08b-from-now-to-eternity\/","title":{"rendered":"Chapter 08b – From Now to Eternity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do you belong to the PC-DOS generation? Have you ever played Lemmings<\/em>? Many people have speculated about the suicidal behavior of these small rodents, which are known to deliberately run in large numbers over high cliffs to their deaths. The Lemming Suicide Plunge<\/em> was granted interesting evolutionary explanations. Some said it was a natural impulse associated with a built-in defense mechanism against lemming population explosion.<\/p>\n

So why do they do it? Why do herds of lemmings have this drive of committing suicide together? Better yet, do<\/em> they do it? Yes they do \u2013 in a Walt Disney movie called Wild Wilderness<\/em> that was released in 1958. Few lemmings were actually pushed over a small cliff and filming tricks produced the effect of lemming mass suicide. This lemming exodus into the abyss later turned out to be a true story in the minds of many. There was no question of \u201cif\u201d, but only of \u201cwhy\u201d.<\/p>\n

As for now, the Roman Empire was around much longer than Walt Disney Studios. Not too many Christians even know how during the Roman times, many of the rituals concerned with the Egyptian goddess Isis<\/em> evolved into Virgin Mary rituals and related art.<\/p>\n

Cults don\u2019t need many centuries to form and evolve. Our present day Santa Claus stories are less than 200 years old and the famous red image is even younger, originated in a Coca-Cola commercial. Richard Feynman (1965 Nobel Prize winner in physics) talked about the \u2018Cargo Cult\u2019<\/em> of the South Seas islanders in post-World War II, where people developed a cult of imitating airport rituals and air controller behaviors (using mock wooden earphones and antennas), waiting for the airplanes to arrive and drop goodies. Just imagine how a few thousand years of politics and interests can promote memes and cults.<\/p>\n

The Jewish religion talks about the chain of tradition<\/em>: Allegedly, the Bible was dictated by God and written by Moses. Then it was passed from one generation to another, together with the necessary oral interpretations, which were also put into writing at a later time. To complete the picture, the original event was said to be witnessed by the whole nation and the knowledge of this has also passed between generations, to this day.<\/p>\n

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In a previous chapter, we mentioned Rabbi Yehuda HaLevy and his old book \u2018The Kuzari\u2019<\/em>. Among other things, Mr. HaLevy actually compiled a kind of mathematical proof<\/em> for the truth behind this tradition: \u201cSuppose someone would suddenly invent such a new story,\u201d he claims, \u201cand suppose this person would start saying that all the people witnessed the revelation on Mt. Sinai. Then the neighbors of this individual would stand up and say they\u2019ve never heard such a thing from their fathers, so it cannot be true.\u201d Therefore, he concludes that the story has not been invented, and the event must have actually occurred as described from fathers to sons nowadays.<\/p>\n

This so-called proof ignores the simple fact that traditions develop gradually<\/em>. The story is not all-or-nothing<\/em>. It has many components, and for a long time every father has told his sons slightly different things (mothers and daughters, apparently, don\u2019t count). Many other traditions, some of which you probably know very well, have gone through similar processes. My own Jewish father, who has long history of speaking the truth, told me very different things. Furthermore, no neighbor stood up or said anything. Hence, chains of traditions do<\/em> change with time.<\/p>\n

In many other cases, a story had begun its journey as a folktale. It had been innocently told by fathers to sons and known to all. Much later it acquired the stamp of (allegedly) an historic fact.<\/p>\n

When we try to analyze some more important ingredients<\/em> of developing traditions, we may find a few more characteristics in common:<\/p>\n