Urban Legends and stuff
Ian & Pam Dorion dorioni@ipa.net
Fri, 13 Feb 1998 16:38:43 -0600 (00887431123, 199802132240.QAA13190@siren.ipa.net)
> >From RICHARD IN OREGON:
>
> Some time ago I suggested that no one should presume to discuss the
> Gospels until they had studied - even if only briefly - the phenomenon
now
> called "urban legends." There is a website devoted to it; the URL is, I
> think, <http://www.urbanlegends.org>
>
> Or get any of Jan Brunvand's books. They are very enlightening, and at
> the same time extremely entertaining. Brunvand is professor at the
> University of Utah, and is a specialist on urban legends.
>
> Urban legends are being created and spread as "true occurrences - it
> really happened" by the hundreds, right now. You have undoubtedly heard
> (and perhaps believed) a few of them. Once you have read a few dozen,
you
> learn to recognize them. They have certain characteristics:
>
> 1. The teller insists that it "really happened."
> 2. The teller did not see the happening himself, but knows someone who
> knows someone who did, and the teller has the facts indirectly from that
> eye-witness.
> 3. The event is really weird or strange or miraculous or ironic or
> frightening or funny.
> 4. There is a great deal of detail in the story, lending to its
> verisimilitude.
> 5. There is a (frequently unspoken) moral to be learned from the story.
> 6. News media often report the story as fact.
> 7. There are differing versions of the story, with often contradictory
> details in the various versions; these differences between the versions
are
> a give-away that we are dealing with an urban legend.
>
> It has been shown that urban legends can develop and spread very
quickly,
> even when not reported in the news media.
>
> Now, it seems that the Gospels qualify on every count as "urban
legends."
> Would someone like to tell me why not?
>
> One last thing about urban legends: they are NOT true.
>
> See, for example: Jan Harold Brunvand, _The Vanishing Hitchhiker:
> American Urban Legends & Their Meanings, Norton, New York, 1981
>
> - Richard
IAN
I do agree with you but I also feel they should start out with Genesis
WITHOUT refering to future books, chapters or verses in the Bible. I
really feel this would tell a great deal.
Speaking of urban legends and things likr that, I watched a short clip
of 'When Cars Attack' on ABC last night which also showed some boats.
Of course it was made to awe the audience and they did a pretty good
job of it. (Treat your car nice or it may attack you.)
The one clip I watched in total was on a speed boat which was allegedly
going abour 100 mph when the driver or occupant summersaulted out
and over the nose end of the boat into the water. Very impressive! Would
anyone know how this may have been done?
By the way, I once had a 55 Pontiac that seemed to be able to think (more
logically than many Christians). About once a month (since I bought the
car) something would invariably go wrong with it and I would get a new part
for it. This went on for about a year. One day an A-frame (?) broke. I was
close to a service station so I talked to the man and he said he could weld
it. So he welded the part and that was the last thing that went wrong with
it.