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The sun has played an important role in many creation myths. So many that I can’t cover them all today, but we can look at two of them. In Genesis the poetic and contradictory Ch. 1:2 , “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the waters.” No form and thus there would be a void, but this suggests there wasn’t even a void, and on or in the non-void was the “face of the waters” and there was no light. God then creates light and that light by deduction had to be the sun. Henry Voth made a written record of a Hopi Indian’s story of emergence myth in 1905,

A very long time ago there was nothing but water. In the east Hurúing Wuhti, the deity of all hard substances, lived in the ocean. Her house was a kiva like the kivas of the Hopi of to-day. To the ladder leading into the kiva were usually tied a skin of gray fox and one of a yellow fox. Another Hurúing Wuhti lived in the ocean in the west in a similar kiva, but to her ladder was attached a turtle-shell rattle.
The Sun also existed at that time. Shortly before rising in the east the Sun would dress up in the skin of the gray fox, whereupon it would begin to dawn—the so-called white dawn of the Hopi. After a little while the Sun would lay off the gray skin and put on the yellow fox skin, whereupon the bright dawn of the morning—the so-called yellow dawn of the Hopi—would appear. The Sun would then rise, that is, emerge from an opening in the north end of the kiva in which Hurúing Wuhti lived. When arriving in the west again, the sun would first announce his arrival by fastening the rattle on the point of the ladder beam, whereupon he would enter the kiva, pass through an opening in the north end of the kiva, and continue his course eastward under the water and so on.

Obviously some issues here with what we know about the earth’s shape and the movement of celestial bodies, but suceeds well as far as far as being imaginative having a certain narrative consistancy. Some interesting related background on the Hopi concept of a soul, The Concept of Hikwsi in Traditional Hopi Philosophy

shortest distance between two points ? or maybe twisting roads are just more fun.

Reinventing The Huns

The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign—over 95 percent of all the incidents—has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.

And if you’re wondering what that means for the philosophy at the heart of both the war in Iraq and the warmongering with Iran, Pope has a very simple answer.

TAC: That would seem to run contrary to a view that one heard during the American election campaign, put forth by people who favor Bush’s policy. That is, we need to fight the terrorists over there, so we don’t have to fight them here.

RP: Since suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism, the use of heavy military force to transform Muslim societies over there, if you would, is only likely to increase the number of suicide terrorists coming at us.

Like the causes of crime terrorism can’t be packaged into one nice neat little package and proclaim this is THE cause, but a few informed level headed people who seem to be able to set aside the overheated rhetoric and get at a major root cause. For the current Decider Guy that would mean that he and quite a few other people would have to have enough humility to admit their approach is wrong and will continue to fail because their fundamental assumptions are wrong.