7 January 2013
Can there be anything funnier than people arguing what a make-believe fairy wants them to do?
In Samoa, many of the population are 7th-day Adventists. These people believe their sky-daddy wants them to go to church on Saturday, rather than other churches, who think the sky-daddy says they should go to church on Sundays.
Sadly for the 7th-day Adventists, Samoa made a rational decision to amend their date & time to the same as New Zealand's. This is eminently sensible, because while they are on almost the same longitude as NZ, they were on the other side of the date line, meaning that their Saturday was our Friday, and their Monday was our Sunday. This meant they lost two days of doing business with by far their biggest customer - New Zealand.
Now, their time & calendar is identical to ours, so they can work five days a week and have weekends off.
Alas, some of the 7th-day people felt this was ripping off their worship! The new Saturday was the old Sunday, and the old Saturday was now Friday, when everyone's at work.
As you can see, this has caused a schism in both the church and Samoan society.
Seriously.
I just can't stop laughing at an argument about when an invisible, non-existent entity wants people to go to church. For crissakes, isn't this sky-daddy god supposed to be the ruler of the entire universe? Surely, if an entity capable of designing, building and running the universe actually existed, do you seriously think it would care when people went to church?
The other side of the coin is that since dates vary around the world, wherever someone is on Saturday, it's going to be Friday or Sunday somewhere else anyway, so what the hell difference would it make?
The continuing irrationality of religion.
Copyright © Alan Charman