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Published: June 21st 2013
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The train to Sighisoara cost $18 and going back only cost $6. The expensive train was 30 minutes faster. It also had AC but the windows are all down on the cheap train and a good breeze is blowing through, so that doesn’t seem to make a difference at this time of year.
But the people in the cheap train are an order of magnitude different. They are not as visually appealing and several are missing a tooth or two. They had to throw a couple of guys off who apparently boarded without tickets. When I opened my computer to work on the cheap train, people sat and stared at me, like I was from outer-space. Nobody looked twice this morning on the expensive train.
A woman I met in Bucharest told me that I had to visit Sighisoara while I was in Brasov, so I did. She said it was one of the oldest medieval castles still inhabited in all of Europe.
When I entered the largest church here in Sighisoara, the buildings had possible theories of when they were built, each theory by a different historian, along with an explanation from each historian, about why they
feel their theory is better than their counterparts.
I wondered if the records were all burned or if they never existed. If they never existed, wouldn’t that make it prehistoric instead of medieval? I also wondered if the interest in the age of these buildings came later in time, possibly if it they were less frequented by visitors from other parts of Europe. I also wondered if the exact dates of some of the other buildings I have seen in Europe, were dated by an “official of the church,” at an earlier point in time, when the church had the authority of law.
In that sense, an alternate theory could not be provided by other historians, because they would be questioning a date set by a church official. Who would want to question the thinking of the church, at a time when they were executing people for heresy? In Sighisoara, maybe the church officials had not set the date by the time the church began to lose the power of law? Wikipedia seems to be more certain about the age of things than they are here in
Sighisoara.
It reminded me of the law. The law started
out as “from god.” You question it, you die. They would burn you at the stake for asking questions. Some countries still use gods word for the law.
In most countries, the law has moved to other forms of authority that could be questioned with reason and logic. The idea of a majority opinion emerged. The majority opinion is that opinion which got the most votes from a panel of judges. It also has a minority opinion, which is the legal theory based on the ideas of less than a majority. In legal circles, the majority often had no disdain for the minority, but often used it as a sounding board to verify thinking before settling in with the majority.
Some minority opinions are so good, that they become law eventually. As more and more judges become convinced with the minority’s legal theory, they switch their vote and the law changes … the minority becomes the majority.
I wonder if theologians will ever honestly debate and vote which religion is most likely true based upon the facts and evidence. I don’t think they will. Personally, I think religions will eventually go the way of Greek and Roman
myths. Nobody will care anymore other than to discuss them in the historical context. It would be nice if people would quit killing each other over whose god is better.
For someone like me, discussing which religion is the correct, is like debating whether Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy is better. Not even worth a laugh, really.
One thing is for sure, Jesus, Mohammed, Krishna, and Buddha would have been on the cheap train. They were all poor. And the guys on the expensive train, would have been convincing those on the cheap train, that if they were good in this life, and didn't steal Dan's computer, god will put them on the expensive train in the after-life.
On a completely unrelated topic … it has been 3 years since I moved out of India. I had lived there 3.5 years, so in another 6 months, I will have been out of India, as long as I was in India. It has felt like a blink of the eye since I left India, whereas, it seemed like my time in India lasted forever. Time in India does not seem to be
at all similar to time outside of India. If you want to live forever, move to India. The clock stops in India.
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