[KB] "Deacon"-structing Burke Part Whatever

[Carrol Cox]

Gregory Desilet: "Clarke-I take your point about the difficulties with
drawing a distinction between interpretation of a rule and application of
the rule. But I think in practice many religions do draw a fairly sharp
distinction. The example you give illustrates the point.

In Church practice, the distinction between interpretation of a rule and
application of the rule resides in the fact that interpretation of a rule
itself is non-negotiable and its application is negotiable only on what are
regarded as trivial points. For example, women must cover their heads when
in Church but how they do so has a wide latitude of observance-everything
from a hood covering nearly the entire head to a small pillbox hat, leaving
nearly the entire head exposed. 

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This seems to me to be false on empirical grounds. There is simply no
evidence that the huge majority of Christians (or any other religion) live
entirely in their heads as this suggests.

People form ideas explaining their experience of the world and of their
action in the world. _Then_ they look in various texts or go to various
people to find justification and/or clarification of what they already
believe (both consciously and spontaneously). You are assuming the whole
population resembles some isolated evangelical minister who has never looked
out the window to see what is happening around him.

There is just no necessary or even probable relationship between what people
believe in practice and the books they read.

Carrol