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Originally Posted by Hill-Shatar Sorry, this is my first and only time on today. I'll get to the damn topic when I get the chance. |
Actually, your quote of me is not quite accurate. I didn't write:
Hill-Shatar: You still owe me a response. When you get the time.
but...
Hill-Shatar: You still owe me a response. 
When you get the time.
...changing the mood to a lighter one. Which, judging by your own response, may be something you need to consider.
To speak frankly, had you told us before starting this topic how much you'd emotionally invested in the issue at hand--along the lines of "I"m a big fan of anthropomorphism. What do you think about it?" -I would have not said some of the things I subsequently did, and couched the rest differently. But by stating it in such a neutral, "What do you think of..." fashion, it came across as someone on the outside who was curious, so you got a different perspective in replies. When you seemed to be trying to engage me in further reading of furry fiction, or activities on furry MUDs, I perceived you as misreading my opinions, so I stated them more strongly. In retrospect, you were perhaps unwilling to admit your strong enthusiasm by then, seeing the negativity the subject had raised, and were trying to use this method of securing agreement.
In the field of history, such misundestandings between nations are the course of tragedy. On the artistic stage, the result is farce.
In real life, it is usually an intermingling of the two. And I am not inclined to cause any friends personal grief by interfering with their strongly held enthusiasms.
Seeing how you feel about it now, I am disinclined to discuss any of this further save the claims that anthropomorphism 1) is a religion, and 2) that in its non-religious form it dates back beyond the formation of a modern community with a commonality of interests. I think clarifying these points, especially the first, can be of great interest. I had never heard that anybody believed there was a furry religion, much less claimed to be a worshipper, and I want to see if this proposed religion of furry fans actually meets sufficient criteria to justify such a claim.
As of yet, I have seen no such evidence. Nor have I found any in the modern pagan community, who are notoriously heterogeneous in their willingness to embrace non-accepted belief systems.
On the second matter, I have already made my opinions clear. Broadening a definition to find ancient roots in some apparent justification of anything is an all-too-human failing that itself is ancient. In late Renaissance times, numerous forgeries were published claiming to be the "Gnostic teachings" of Plato, Aristotle, etc, and the true Gnostic reprints of works going back to the 3rd and 4th centuries ACE were considered to date back to 2000 and 3000 BCE. The older, the closer to the truth. But if we broaden definitions such as what comprises furry literature to include anything with talking animals, we lose any definition of what sets apart modern furries, and modern furry literature, from anything else. These vacuous definitions are useless, wherever they are applied.