Conceptual Blending

When I first started reading this, I was so lost, especially thinking about how it applies to religion. But then after reading, I started thinking specifically about how they relate. I was surprised at how much conceptual blending I could think about in religion. People come together in religions and have stories, oral or written, about life and things in life and how to behave and so on. And these stories have morals for how people should live. Having a moral automatically makes people relate the story to themselves. They may think about how they would behave in that situation, or when in a certain situation they will remember that story and remember how to act. The stories don't have to be true and they probably don't even have to be believable, but because of this blending mechanism we have, we can span the time period or place to blend our story and that one.

The skier and waiter example made me think about rituals. Every religion has certain rituals they perform, or things they can't eat, or they aren't supposed to do. And some of those things you can obviously see why they are rules. Most people think that 'don't kill people' is a good rule to live by. But other things have less obvious reasoning behind them. I don't know specifics of religions but I have heard that certain rituals or rules in some religions were brought about because of health reasons during the time. What better way to get people to do something (or not to do something) than telling them they'll go to hell if they don't? So the ritual or rule is given in a divine way, and people don't really think about the actual reason for it. The skier example reminded me of this because the beginning skier didn't know the position for skiing, but did for something else. So without thinking about how they were similar, he blended them. It's not a perfect similarity, but I think it works.