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Friday, January 07, 2011

Logic via religion; always tricksy.

This seems goofy to us now [if, you know, you're not insane]  but for years the Church condemned left-handedness.
"...the Christian Bible the elect and God's favourite sit on its right hand side, and the damned on its left. In the Gospel of Matthew the author has Jesus place God's followers (the sheep) on its right and the goats (non- followers) on its left hand side (Matthew 25:33). The Catholic Church held for over a thousand years that being left handed made you a servant of the Devil and that anything left-handed was evil. [Gooch, 1984]" Via.
Ecclesiastes 10:2 "A wise man's heart is at his right hand; but a fool's heart at his left."

Even as late as the 1960s there are stories of the nuns at parochial schools forcing left-handed kids to stop using their left and learn how to write with their right.

In the immortal words of Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
"Note to self: religion - freaky."

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