Click here (BBC) for a handy overview of Zoroastrian beliefs that almost surely influenced the development of Jewish apocalyptic traditions...
Why might dualism appeal to people as a way to make sense of the universe? What are the potential 'costs' involved with such an outlook?
5 comments:
I find this extremely interesting.
One reason people would interested in dualism is because people want to have a choice and be able to cover all their bases/lifestyle.
Lisa
Dualism is based on binary opposition, which is a very basic way of creating meaning, and it can be applied to a great variety of things. 20th century French philosopher Jacques Derrida proposed, “binary oppositions are used in the construction of meaning and values” in his theory of Deconstruction, according to Wikipedia.
The risk of dualism is that it can oversimplify concepts and keep us from investigating further. For example, there are more than just positive and negative numbers; there also exists an entire complex number dimension.
Temperature is also not necessarily a binary opposition. Hot and cold are not opposing forces but a range of continuous degrees of the amount of energy something contains.
Max Hesser-Knoll
I find the idea of dualism intrigueing. The fact that so man Christian ideals come from the Zoroatrian beliefs is very revealing and may help explain why so many Christian churches seem to contradict each other.
Bob
There's something simultaneously comforting and disturbing about a binary 'either/or' decision. On the one hand, all of life's complexities and ambiguities get boiled down to black/white, good/evil, right/wrong, etc., which makes for a clear choice. On the other hand, such choices carry ultra-high stakes, since there's no middle ground to fall back on!
pdk
I found dualism to be very interesting. To me religions seem similar, people believe in a creator or a higher being (positive) and a malevolent being (negative). Its always interesting to see how similar some religions are in their belief systems.
-Taylor E.
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