Design your own hell

[Elok]

Picking up where I left off, what Molly told me of "secular humanism" was not terribly distinctive as an independent philosophy. There were many, many variants on "religion is bad," but most of them unsupported, or if supported, only very poorly.

E.G. religious individuals in the past have done bad things, so religion is bad. Much as chainsaws have been used to kill people, and are therefore bad. The constitution is used now to justify the patriot act, and in the past it fueled McCarthyism. It must be bad. While we're at it, something much like "secular humanism" fueled the Reign of Terror in post-revolutionary France. Is there some part of the Quran, or the Nicene creed, that says it is the purpose of faith to terrorize the populace? Otherwise the argument is just using perversions of the idea of religion as a sort of pre-existing strawman.

Tell me what valuable things secular humanism really stands for, and I'll be glad to discuss it.

[alva]

E.G. religious individuals in the past have done bad things, so religion is bad.

in the past,
in the present and in the future...

[MrFun]

Why are so many people quick to forget the legacy the Christian Church has contributed to the development of Western civilization from the ancient and medieval eras??

[alva]

That's a reason to belief in god???

Besides I'm not sure as to what you are refering too either

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by MrFun
Why are so many people quick to forget the legacy the Christian Church has contributed to the development of Western civilization from the ancient and medieval eras??

Who forgot any such thing? Did someone assert the Church didn't have any bearing on the development of the Western world? I don't recall reading that.

I'm amazed at how little people realize that Christianity was so heavily influenced by Platonicism myself.

[Arrian]

Bill Clinton, General asshats
Circle I Limbo

The Pope, Parents who bring squalling brats to R-rated movies
Circle II Whirling in a Dark & Stormy Wind

Objectivists
Circle III Mud, Rain, Cold, Hail & Snow

PETA Members
Circle IV Rolling Weights

George Bush
Circle V Stuck in Mud, Mangled

River Styx

Creationists, NAMBLA Members
Circle VI Buried for Eternity

River Phlegyas

Qusay Hussein
Circle VII Burning Sands

Uday Hussein
Circle IIX Immersed in Excrement

Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden
Circle IX Frozen in Ice

Design your own hell

[MrFun]

Originally posted by alva
That's a reason to belief in god???

Besides I'm not sure as to what you are refering too either

I was referring to the fact that a number of monasteries in the medieval era were responsible for preserving ancient intellectual text.

I was also referring to the fact that the establishment of bishoperics (****ing spelling) often was the only semblance of order and stability in the chaos and violence of the early medieval era.

In addition to those two points, I was referring to the fact that the church institution/papacy provided one means to live, other than working as a peasant or in other secular occupations.


To appreciate the positive contributions of religion in our history, is not to deny the crimes that have been committed in the name of God.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov


Who forgot any such thing? Did someone assert the Church didn't have any bearing on the development of the Western world? I don't recall reading that.

I'm amazed at how little people realize that Christianity was so heavily influenced by Platonicism myself.

No, it's just that more often than not, a number of Apolytoners are too quick to point out only the negative aspects of the history of religious institutions, and completely ignoring the positive.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov


Who forgot any such thing? Did someone assert the Church didn't have any bearing on the development of the Western world? I don't recall reading that.

I'm amazed at how little people realize that Christianity was so heavily influenced by Platonicism myself.

And by Eastern mystery cults- its similarities with aspects of Mithraism, the influence pagan Hellenized Roman law had on the Benedictine Rule and canon law, the plethora of triple godheads to be found in the Eastern religions, and the lack of scriptural authority for a Christian trinity.

Still at least in Elok I've found a perfect example of what Oscar Wilde was talking about:


'In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.'

At least I've made it to Elok's ignore list, which means one less god-botherer to be bothered with.

And MrFun- noone, least of all me, is forgetting the contribution of the Christian mediaeval church to Western thought and civilization- you know, the Crusades, the Jewish pogroms, the crushing of the Cathars, the acceptance of Galen as orthodoxy, the resistance to scientific experimentation, the ban on autopsies, the holding back of Western medicine and astronomy and science, wilful obscurantism and replacement of rational thought with mysticism, et cetera, et cetera.

Unless of course you're thinking about Gothic art, Roger Bacon, and monastic schools, and universities created by religious foundations, and so on.

There's a plus and a downside to mediaeval Christianity-had it been less occupied with proving whose god was bigger- Allah or the Christian God, who knows what progress might have been made?

[MrFun]

Originally posted by molly bloom

And MrFun- noone, least of all me, is forgetting the contribution of the Christian mediaeval church to Western thought and civilization- you know, the Crusades, the Jewish pogroms, the crushing of the Cathars, the acceptance of Galen as orthodoxy, the resistance to scientific experimentation, the ban on autopsies, the holding back of Western medicine and astronomy and science, wilful obscurantism and replacement of rational thought with mysticism, et cetera, et cetera.

Unless of course you're thinking about Gothic art, Roger Bacon, and monastic schools, and universities created by religious foundations, and so on.

There's a plus and a downside to mediaeval Christianity-had it been less occupied with proving whose god was bigger- Allah or the Christian God, who knows what progress might have been made?

Exactly my point -- there were positive AND negative aspects to the history of Christianity, and other religions.

thanks for agreeing

[Arrian]

It just so happens that the negative FAR outweighs the positive.

[MrFun]

Actually, I am in the middle of a research project on how religious-military organizations such as the Knights of Templar were formed as a way to defend the Latin states of the Near East.

I learned that Pope Urban II and other high-level papacy leaders were disgusted with the pogroms against the Jews that resulted from crusaders going on a rampage enroute through Europe, to the Antioch and Jerusalem.

So apparently, the pogroms were not the intention of the papacy, but were carried out by local priests and others who disregarded the papacy's position against the pogroms.

[Ben Kenobi]

bishoperics

bishoprics, but please continue, Mr. Fun.

the Crusades, the Jewish pogroms, the crushing of the Cathars, the acceptance of Galen as orthodoxy, the resistance to scientific experimentation, the ban on autopsies, the holding back of Western medicine and astronomy and science, wilful obscurantism and replacement of rational thought with mysticism,

So I can cite the Reign of Terror for atheists, and we can call *** for tat.

Now, if we want to make some real progress, why don't we shift to what Christianity teaches.

Christianity is not opposed to science, in fact, most of the scientist you adore and espouse, were once in fact Christians. Remove these from the equation, and you end up much poorer.

Secondly, if you portray Christianity as so opposed to the development of thought, why is it in Europe that the Renaissance picks up steam as opposed to Muslim middle east, or in China? I would argue that it is precisely that Christianity encourages innovation that these technologies flourished in Europe and not elsewhere.

Yes, the Catholic church condemned Galileo. Yes, they also burned heretics. Were either actions Christian? I would argue no.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi


So I can cite the Reign of Terror for atheists, and we can call *** for tat.



Christianity is not opposed to science, in fact, most of the scientist you adore and espouse, were once in fact Christians. Remove these from the equation, and you end up much poorer.

why is it in Europe that the Renaissance picks up steam as opposed to Muslim middle east, or in China? I would argue that it is precisely that Christianity encourages innovation that these technologies flourished in Europe and not elsewhere.

Yes, the Catholic church condemned Galileo. Yes, they also burned heretics. Were either actions Christian? I would argue no.

So you can cite the Reign of Terror in Revolutionary France.

I can cite the Reconquista.

I can mention the subjugation of the Aztecs and the Incas.

The extermination of the Caribs.

The hypocrisy of the Puritans in the American colonies, creating their own New Jerusalem in someone else's territory- and killing to keep it.

The Wars of Religion in France.

The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

The crusades of the Teutonic Knights.

The seven Western crusades which did so much to reduce the power of Constantinople, kill Jews in mediaeval Europe and the Middle East and of course kill Muslims.

The Thirty Years' War in Western Europe which so devastated whole areas of Germany that the populace resorted to cannibalism.

The witch burnings, the Spanish and Italian Inquisitions, the judicial murder of Michael Servetus by Calvin, the murder of Giordano Bruno, the Marian Martyrs in England, the Catholic martyrs of Elizabethan and Jacobean England, the Cromwellian campaigns in Ireland, the massacre of Protestant settlers by Catholic Irish before the Cromwellian campaigns, the Jewish pogroms in Russia, the Catholic Church's willingness to shield Croatian fascists and fleeing German war criminals, the persecution of the Monophysites by Byzantium, the persecution of the Arians, the persecution of Jews by Roman Christians, the Nazi Holocaust, end product of institutionalized Christian anti-semitism, the absence of any effective resistance from the established German churches to said Holocaust (Denmark saved its Jews- the Danish Church was not exterminated by the Nazis), and so on and so on.

Looks like the killers for God win.

As for steampower- first used by Hero of Alexandria- not notably a Christian, or a European. Unless of course you're referring to the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain, which had exactly what to do with organised Christianity? As opposed, to say, colonialism, mercantilism, scientific experimentation, et al.?

That the Christian Church in mediaeval Europe held back progress is unfortunately a fact- all your apologetics will not undo it. A heliocentric universe had been understood in pagan times, the spherical earth too, even pagan medicine was more advanced in many respects than mediaeval Christian medicine.

The problem was that authors such as Galen and Aristotle were made into orthodoxies, such that they could not be denied, even if in the case of say, Roger Bacon, or Ramon Lull the experimenters had shown that they were wrong in fact. Rather like the victims of Stalin's show trials, because the Church, and therefore Galen and Aristotle, could not be wrong, the scientists disbelieved the evidence of their own experiments, in some bizarre mental disjuncture.

Hardly surprising then that the rediscovery of pagan science needed the intermediaries of the Jews and Muslims (and at a remove, the Indians and Chinese).

[MrFun]

molly bloom -- I don't think Bennie is arguing that we should deny those horrendous crimes.

I know I'm not.