Sometimes we mean ideas or items defined by culture as "sacred" but without significance beyond that.
Sometimes we mean that the sacred is revealed to us by personal, subjective experience.
Sometimes we wonder if there isn't some essential universal quality of sacredness which exists without reference to what we do —or don't— posit or believe.
What causes us to believe something is sacred?
On what basis do we deny that the sacred is anything more than human credulity?
Is there any single idea or object or phenomenon which we might all agree is sacred?
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To begin, I think that the Earth and the Sun must be universally sacred since humanity would cease to exist without them. This is supported by nearly all early human mythology.
There are so many interesting directions this proposition might take us!
You are suggesting that the importance of something to human beings determines its sacredness in their eyes (or is at least a compelling reason for humans to view something as sacred). It's an argument that the notion of sacredness is a subjective, pragmatic human adaptation, and excludes any more metaphysical speculations.
The Earth, the Sun (and perhaps the Moon) were held as sacred by most early humans, even though they did not possess what we would consider a scientific understanding of human dependence upon them. Whereas we who presumably do possess such comprehension do not, for the most part, view celestial bodies as sacred. Their importance has not changed, has if anything become better understood, but our view of them has become ...less reverential. How do we make sense of that?
(Oh, and let's jettison the word "mythology" and its connotations of foolish credulity from which we, as modern humans, are allegedly free.)
I was mulling over those questions alot. For a while there I was exactly where Shem led us to. But reality crept in and I had to observe that for a large part of humanity, apparently the Earth is not sacred. For the majority, it's a big resource container to be plundered, cracked open like a pin~ata, and then used as a waste disposal site.
Like Shem and the early human mythologists, I think the Earth is sacred; but it seems that the answer to Occassia's third question is "No, there is in fact no single idea or object or phenomenon which we might ALL agree is sacred."
sad.
I'm gonna go 'compost' awhile, because my answers to the other two questions seem equally as negative. ;-(
Well, the objective was to come up with something that was “universally” sacred and the simplest answer is usually the best (according to Occam anyway). I also agree that “mythology” has taken on some disturbing connotations but I assure you I meant none of them.
Now let me address the objections. Though early man did not have the “scientific” understanding of the universe that we do now, neither was he so completely removed from his natural habitat. He certainly understood how nice it was to stand in the light and feel the warmth of the Sun. He certainly understood that his environment provided him with the sustenance he needed to survive, and thus he must have felt his dependence upon the Sun and the Earth in a very personal – one may even say spiritual – way. He did not need our science, our myths, to inform him of this.
We, on the other hand, face the opposite situation. We have, many of us, been so far removed from the process of nature that we are unable to see its pure simplicities, the miraculous mundane. Our cultural has spent a great deal of time and money convincing its citizens that it is not the world which is sacred but people themselves. The quantification of the Sun and Earth’s significance has merely served to remove the wonder from those objects that even the first 9000 years of our own cultural revered.
I can only agree, Shem.
The Earth, because she is immediate and tangible, is probably the likeliest candidate for a sacred relationship. In order to return to that relationship, people would need to recover their ancestral sense of dependence, sidestepping cultural conditioning.
Would this be desirable? If so, why? And how might it be accomplished? Would someone like JCD (from our earlier discussion) find any of this persuasive?
I have to agree, Tom, that it's unlikely we'll identify any single agreed-upon sacred something at this moment in time.
You and I and Shem could perhaps agree, at least intellectually, on aspects of the Earth's sacredness.
I view the lives of animals as sacred (but you experience this more keenly and with greater commitment than I do). I honor the lives of plants and insects (with a few significant exceptions such as morning glories and mosquitoes). I've experienced I-thou relationships with inanimate objects, notably a small powerful, bear-shaped pipe from one of the mound-builder cultures.
Compared to the reverence of our long-ago ancestors, that's pretty paltry.
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