Is the West in decline?

[Dr Strangelove]

Actually the Church did compell the Roman Empire to abolish slavery and the gladiatorial circuses in the 5th century, but it was too little too late. The empire succumbed to the germans a generation later and the germans instituted the modified form of slavery known as serfdom. In fact in some parts of the former empire the conquerinf germans and the former inhabitants or the empire were ruled by seperate codes of law, so slavery was legal for the germans but not for the ex-romans.

[Sandman]

Re: Is the West in decline?

Originally posted by Odin
I haven't been able to stop thinking about this today. Modern thought has been thoroughly infected with Post-Mondernist nonsense. Eco-Luddites protest every advance in genetics. Society continues to get more and more decadent, and young people seem to be more into New Age/Oriental mysticism than science and reason (which reminds me of the mysticism that took hold during the late Roman Empire). Is the end near?

There's something vaguely postmodern about this post. Perhaps it's the dubious generalisations and lack of hard facts.

[Atahualpa]

Originally posted by Odin
What I worry about is that if China is still undemocratic when it becomes #1, the elite in the developing countries will see it as meaning that the Chinese-style oligarchy is better than western Democracy, erasing over 200 years of political advancement.

Could this be the new domino theory?

[Wernazuma III]

"Of course the occident is in decay. After all that's his job!" (Free translation from Eco's Foucault's Pendulum)

[Whaleboy]

First of all, it's not true; the church treated liberating slaves as sth good, and St Constantine after becoming emperor assured that making harm to them was the same punished as making harm to a free person.

No-one's disputing that you can get many religious people, dare I say the majority, that are perfectly decent, honourable people, who take nothing out of their religion but love and tolerance upon the understanding that their God created all people as equals. I have no argument with them. Nor is it being disputed that the Church today opposes slavery, suppression of women, and the burning of atheists, Jews and people who had a slightly different idea of transubstantiation . That's because they have the benefit of history. At the time, when the issue was a hot one, mainstream church thought opposed those who would progress morality in order to eliminate these evils. We see that process occuring today.

The reason is very simple... those that would eliminate these evils would, by doing so, threaten the status quo, at the centre of which was the Church. Then of course there are the fundies who are out on their own agenda.

And they weren't saints, either. They did persecute X-nity where they could and did betray Byzantines during their war with Persians, cheerfully helping them in massacres of Christians

A small number of Jews, who have always had to bear the brunt of the Christian thirst for blood. Besides, the "well you did it too" argument is neither an explanation nor an excuse, particularly when it's a half-baked, irrelevant example.

Heretics WERE Christian... But anyway, heresies in the R/BE were treated as dangerous to the unity of the state, along with pre-christian notion of that RE should be united by one cult. Heresies such as paulicians/bogomils/cathars were dangerous anti-orthodox anti-state sects.

You ever heard the phrase that history is always written by the victor? Violent oppresion will often cause violence in people who wish to fight it, but while understandable, it makes them just as bad as their oppressors, so the question for history is one of better consequence. It is a good consequence that the grip of the Church has steadily weakened since the 16th Century .

Lutheran heresy was worse than all the above together

but the church and the state had to defend themselves sometimes

That's pretty much the crux of your argument here and frankly it's ludicrous. A system that supresses women, that burns freethinkers, that does not tolerate challenges to its totalitarian authority, has the right to persecute these people in order to defend the status quo? You sound like the kind of person who think that the Vatican is an island in an ocean of rising acid!

Secondly, do You think that freedom, education, healthcare etc are the result of the actions of the atheist minority?

WTF? Where was that even suggested? Hell it would be tough to reach that strawman on impression let alone suggestion! The church is the enemy of moral progress, the friends of moral progress can be found in all quarters, including the church as explained above... particularly I might add in the liberal churchs... Western Anglicanism traditionally and liberal/reform Judaism to name two examples.

it was the case until the Enlightement - a movement that ended in the terror of the Revolution, in the holocaust of Vandea.

Oh please! The intellectual renaissance of the Enlightenment was precisely that: intellectual. That people would use words and twist them for their own bloody agenda is hardly the fault of people like Paine, Kant, Voltaire and the like. It's like blaming Plato for the Nazi's!

[Heresson]

Originally posted by Whaleboy
I have no argument with them. Nor is it being disputed that the Church today opposes slavery, suppression of women, and the burning of atheists, Jews and people who had a slightly different idea of transubstantiation . That's because they have the benefit of history. At the time, when the issue was a hot one, mainstream church thought opposed those who would progress morality in order to eliminate these evils. We see that process occuring today.

Uh, that was not the case...
Also, who made that history but Christians?

The reason is very simple... those that would eliminate these evils would, by doing so, threaten the status quo, at the centre of which was the Church. Then of course there are the fundies who are out on their own agenda.

Well, I do not disagree,

A small number of Jews, who have always had to bear the brunt of the Christian thirst for blood.

bias

Besides, the "well you did it too" argument is neither an explanation nor an excuse, particularly when it's a half-baked, irrelevant example.

No, it is not. You were trying to depict Christianity as the worst thing that's happened in history. I'm just showing that the bad things the church has done have paralells in
other communities, and often weren't done without a reason.

You ever heard the phrase that history is always written by the victor? Violent oppresion will often cause violence in people who wish to fight it, but while understandable, it makes them just as bad as their oppressors, so the question for history is one of better consequence. It is a good consequence that the grip of the Church has steadily weakened since the 16th Century .

Nah, it wasn't a steady and one-way process.

the rise of protestantism brought bloody wars, persecutions on both sides, conquiscates of rightful church poverty, destruction of innumerable objects of art.

That's pretty much the crux of your argument here and frankly it's ludicrous. A system that supresses women, that burns freethinkers, that does not tolerate challenges to its totalitarian authority, has the right to persecute these people in order to defend the status quo? You sound like the kind of person who think that the Vatican is an island in an ocean of rising acid!

Did church establish the supressed status of women? Did anyone want to change it back then, anyway? Were thinkers always burned - how come they could live and spread their thoughts, then? And who built the seems of their wisdom but the church? Also, every country and organisation has the right to defend itself. If there's a heresy that attacks and destroys churches, kills the priests and allies with enemies of the state to destroy it, a crusade against it can't be regarded as something outrageous.

WTF? Where was that even suggested?

Well, if You claim Christianity is the cause of all the evil and in general is enemy of progress...
It's funny then, that the Christian (and/or ex-Christian) states are the most liberal today and the most developed.

Oh please! The intellectual renaissance of the Enlightenment was precisely that: intellectual. That people would use words and twist them for their own bloody agenda is hardly the fault of people like Paine, Kant, Voltaire and the like. It's like blaming Plato for the Nazi's!

Or blaming Christ and Christianity for the crusades, which is exactly what You're doing

You probably mean that the church is one organisation,
but then, You can not blame all the Christianity for specific sins, but some denominations, and even that would be dumb; do You blame 18 y.o. German for nazis, f.e?
And when it comes to the people You've mentioned,
Voltaire himself was a man that deserves disdain, though I love Candid; He'd write and do anything to gain wealth, he praised treacheries and keeping nations in slavery, if it was done by his patrons.
Plato, on the other hand, in his imagination created a state in comparison to which (not counting dealing with other nations) III Reich can be regarded as asylum of freedom and humanitarism.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Heresson

the rise of protestantism brought bloody wars, persecutions on both sides, conquiscates of rightful church poverty, destruction of innumerable objects of art.

BS

it was the intolerance of the church for such 'heresy' which made such catastrophies totally inevitable. Your logic suggests that every revolution is a horrible crime because all the damage and fallout during the revolution is the fault of those who were persecuted under the status quo.

[Heresson]

Originally posted by Geronimo
BS

it was the intolerance of the church for such 'heresy' which made such catastrophies totally inevitable. Your logic suggests that every revolution is a horrible crime because all the damage and fallout during the revolution is the fault of those who were persecuted under the status quo.

Actually, it is. Just like every war is responsible for the destruction it brings, every revolution is.
It counts into the costs of progress, sometimes, but You can't deny the responsibility.
(But I should not use that wod, How can we say if a thing called progress exists? Progress is modern-day God. But what is it? It is just a getting closer to an ideal ACCORDING TO SOME word. In another way, saying that something is backward is just saying "I don't like it" and saying something is progressive is saying "I like it", and nothing more).
What makes You feel that some revolution is justified? To make laws for people more equal? People will never be equal. They born with money or without it, with beauty or without it, with talents or without them, as citizens of a superpower or citizens of some island on forgotten sea.
Revolution is just a mass-scale robbery, even if it seems justified.
Also, when I mentioned destruction of works of art, I was referring to the iconoclastic zeal of protestantism.
Also, is catholicism responsible for the banning, killing, persecution of catholics in protestant states? For forcible protestantisation of catholic lands? For greed of protestant rulers who took the property of the church?

And most important of all,
For the millions of protestant souls going straight to hell?


Also: behave. BS is an ugly word.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Heresson


Actually, it is. Just like every war is responsible for the destruction it brings, every revolution is.
It counts into the costs of progress, sometimes, but You can't deny the responsibility.
(But I should not use that wod, How can we say if a thing called progress exists? Progress is modern-day God. But what is it? It is just a getting closer to an ideal ACCORDING TO SOME word. In another way, saying that something is backward is just saying "I don't like it" and saying something is progressive is saying "I like it", and nothing more).
What makes You feel that some revolution is justified? To make laws for people more equal? People will never be equal. They born with money or without it, with beauty or without it, with talents or without them, as citizens of a superpower or citizens of some island on forgotten sea.
Revolution is just a mass-scale robbery, even if it seems justified.

Revolution is only at fault for it's consequences if the reformers don't first attempt peaceful means. When the establishment responds to peaceful reform with violence the blood and destruction in the resulting conflict is entirely the fault of the reactionaries. If reactionaries don't want to be held responsible for such consequences then they ought to use only civilized means to attempt to maintain the status quo.

Originally posted by Heresson
Also, when I mentioned destruction of works of art, I was referring to the iconoclastic zeal of protestantism.
Also, is catholicism responsible for the banning, killing, persecution of catholics in protestant states? For forcible protestantisation of catholic lands? For greed of protestant rulers who took the property of the church?

And most important of all,
For the millions of protestant souls going straight to hell?


Also: behave. BS is an ugly word.

Yes, because all of these things were pioneered by the Church before the reformation. Their centuries of barbaric inquisitional persecution of 'heretics' including generous amounts of banning, killing, persecution of 'heretics' in all areas the Church could reach, and forcible conversion of 'heretical' lands (and guess what generally became of the heretics property?).

kick a dog long enough and you get a mean dog.

The reformation was absolutely essential to end this ghastly legacy. The tragedy was in the efforts of the church to stamp it out. That's when the reformers began to take cues from their persecuters.

[Velociryx]

Q: Is the West in decline?

A: No.

-=Vel=-

[:) Smiley]

Originally posted by Odin
Anyway, my ideal state is a mix of democracy and meritocracy, a kind of democratic Technocracy.

That would require every citizen to be a technical expert - the question is, what's the fastest and most painless way to get there?

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Smiley


That would require every citizen to be a technical expert - the question is, what's the fastest and most painless way to get there?

there are things you can do that work towards that ideal even if they cannot ever get you there.

For instance establishment of death taxes ("estate taxes") on wealthy estates insures that people are less likely to gain substantial financial power and influence due solely to being born into it. In the absence of such a mechanism that prevents the hereditary amassing of large fortunes a society tends to become the reverse of a meritocracy.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Geronimo
For instance establishment of death taxes ("estate taxes") on wealthy estates insures that people are less likely to gain substantial financial power and influence due solely to being born into it. In the absence of such a mechanism that prevents the hereditary amassing of large fortunes a society tends to become the reverse of a meritocracy.

People have been getting around this by establishing funds and foundations. There's no need to have a separate tax on this - just count things such as inheritance as income. All you need then is to revamp the income tax scheme.

While you are at it abolish the fictional entities called "corporations"

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
While you are at it abolish the fictional entities called "corporations"

What would you replace capital markets and shares with?

[Az]

That would require every citizen to be a technical expert - the question is, what's the fastest and most painless way to get there?

A revolution in the field of education. However, the current method has very large strengths of it's own.

Btw, it's too bad that the thread was threadjacked by a meaningless Xianity debate.