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06-11-2008, 10:13 AM | #1 | ||
Kraken King
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BTW, you seemed to have helped my point about the Bible not being outdated.
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One of my top ten favorite movies. "You ever try to flick a fly? "No." "It's a waste of time." "Can you see it?" "No." "It's right there!" "Where? "There!" "What is it?" "A crab." "A crab? I dont see any crab." "How?! It's right there!!" "Where?" "There!!!!" "Oh." -Excerpts from A Tale of Two Morons |
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06-11-2008, 04:05 PM | #2 | |
Elf Lord
Join Date: Dec 2000
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." |
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06-11-2008, 09:32 AM | #3 | |
Elf Lady
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But at the same time you can't prove He doesn't exist. Or prove that all the good things in the world do not somehow have a higher hand in it. I don't want to get involved in this discussion because I feel I have nothing sensible to add. I just wanted to show the reason why I think you and Lief will never be able to convince each other. Or the two of us for that matter.
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Love always, deeply and true ★ Friends are those rare people who ask how we are and then wait to hear the answer. ★ Friendship is sharing openly, laughing often, trusting always, caring deeply.
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06-11-2008, 09:49 AM | #4 |
Entmoot Minister of Foreign Affairs
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Copenhagen
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Luckily I have a reflecting mind that cherishes reason.
Of all the progress these lasts hundreds of years that has brought so much of humanity from poverty and into a living where time for reflection and time for enjoyment is a substantial time. None of this progress has been due to any divine messages of truth or revelations of enlightenment in the Bible or in any other religious script. The Bible had its chance, it had the many centuries leading up to the Enlightenment. The Torah, the Koran, they've all been around, had their chance. The progress experienced in the ages since the Dutch Benedict Spinoza in the mid-1600s up to today, with all the thinkers of the Enlightenment, the 19th century father of evolution, Darwin, the strides made in the 20th and 21st century, all this progress has happened despite the authoritarianism of the Church, the rigidity of the Bible. The progress of science happened despite a cultural and traditional ironhold by religious belief and thought and way of life, not because of it. Why, and we come back to the Problem of Evil that Sis mentioned, did God's great book of teachings fail for so long to help so many empoverished peoples? Why was an empowerment of everyday people, my forefathers and your forefathers, only a reality after the rigidity of religious thought was put aside with all its choking of reason and inequality of women? Why was this only a reality when the belief in reason, the healthy sharing of knowledge and the unrelenting drive towards a better future not because of divine teachings, but because it was right? I would embrace the existance of a higher being, because it would mean I could have an afterlife (a very encouraging thought!), but reason was given to me, like any other human being, and I intend to follow it and decide that the reality of the world is the reality that we can see, touch, smell, measure and experience alone and together, not a reality dictated by an outdated book..
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"Well, thief! I smell you and I feel your air. I hear your breath. Come along! Help yourself again, there is plenty and to spare." |
06-11-2008, 10:08 AM | #5 | |||||
Kraken King
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Under the sea
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Good to hear.
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I believe God had a hand in the rest. I do not have any ties with, and little respect for, the Pope and the ungodly power he weilds. It seems like the papacy was more a power-grab than anything. Quote:
g the many people who still use its teachings and parables to illustrate truths today.
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One of my top ten favorite movies. "You ever try to flick a fly? "No." "It's a waste of time." "Can you see it?" "No." "It's right there!" "Where? "There!" "What is it?" "A crab." "A crab? I dont see any crab." "How?! It's right there!!" "Where?" "There!!!!" "Oh." -Excerpts from A Tale of Two Morons |
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06-11-2008, 03:27 PM | #6 | ||||||||||||
Elf Lord
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Fountain Valley, CA
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China's big economic downturn in the 19th century occurred after its leaders had been offered Christian teaching for a few hundred years already, and had consistently rejected it. Then the Europeans clobbered the country (Enlightenment imperialism), and they became viciously anti-Christian. During that anti-Christian period, some of their worst atrocities occurred and many of their biggest wars, the nightmares of the 20th century. Now, Christianity is making big strides in the country, though it still has to operate largely underground because of the risk of persecution. The economic expansion of China is occurring simultaneously. All this is pretty interesting from a spiritual perspective, for historically, the rejection of God's Word correlates China's disasters and the acceptance of it correlates with its greater prosperity and success. Prior to the coming of Christianity to China, I think God was very merciful to them in spite of the wickedness of many accepted customs and practices, because of their ignorance. Quote:
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And that God's Word, if it is God's Word, is the highest word is only logical and good. Quote:
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Also, I'll add that the abundance of people's wealth doesn't determine their happiness at all. I've met impoverished Christian families in Mexico whose lives are overflowing with joy, and some of the people that I've met who are most in pain are overflowing with the most love. Happiness comes from the love of God and the experience of his love for us. Economic factors are definitely secondary. In fact, economic hardship can sometimes bring people more strongly toward God, which can increase the joy of many rather than decreasing it. Quote:
1) Slavery. In order to build a successful modern economy, the development of Mercantilism and the TransAtlantic Slave Trade were necessary. Slavery had existed sporadically throughout the Medieval Ages, in the form of the enslavement of prisoners of war (they were trying to destroy our nation, so why shouldn't they be made to build it up as penalty?) or the temporary enslavement of workers who couldn't pay their debts, until they could settle. Most workers had a contract with their lords during the Medieval Ages, which involved each gaining some profit. The common serfs or vassals could expect a steady supply of food and protection, as well as homes and land, from their lord. They, in turn, spent half of their time working on their own property and half working on their lord's fields, they paid his taxes and did odd-jobs for him. There was mutual benefit in the contract. This kind of labor system broke down a lot with the Black Death, because fewer workers existed in the pool, so they were able to demand higher wages. Because normal laborers toward the end of the Medieval Ages demanded more income, people in charge felt the need to move to cheaper sources of income. To develop a modern economy, the nations of the Enlightenment felt the need for slavery as never before. Previously, slavery had only been seen as justified in cases where the person was born into slavery (if they don't pay the debt they owe their master for providing for them throughout their youth, masters have no incentive to look after them and the children would have to be separated from parents, living in dependency on the Church or charities, or dying in the streets), prisoners of war and temporary enslavement of debtors. The Enlightenment changed all that. They needed to justify mass-enslavement and mass-exploitation to fuel their economies, so they advanced and justified racism enormously at that time, a view that contradicted the views of the Church, as it had had ministers and congregations in Africa since the very first centuries of Christianity's existence, and they hadn't had a racist mentality. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, justified by racism as well as some reinterpretation of Christianity (This was post-Protestant Reformation now, remember, so Tradition doesn't matter), played a crucial role in the development of our economies into the form they are now. Millions of African and Native American slaves paid the brutal price for the greed the development of our system was originally based on. 2) Colonialism. This and point 3, as well as point 1, are all closely linked. To develop a modern economy, the industrial giants needed raw resources. The Industrial Revolution had swiftly stripped Europe bare. So they created colonies that often brutalized and enslaved native populations, justifying their conduct on racist principles, in order to produce the modern resources the West needed to fuel its modern economy. 3) Imperialism. To secure strategic economic points, the European nations began swiftly competing with one another to get as much as they could of the rest of the world. These three, Imperialism, Colonialism and Slavery built the new economy of Europe on an ocean of blood of millions of innocent people. Imperialism and colonialism did not exist in Medieval Europe. There were battles between different nations over territory, especially in the Late Medieval Ages, but there was nothing like the imperialism of the new era. Post-imperialism nations today are still fighting wars with one another in many parts of the globe, and even genocides have resulted from European powers clamping together tribes or nations that had no historical commonalities between them. Colonialism did not exist in the Medieval Ages. Slavery was a much rarer practice and was more rational and more just. Christian masters also felt more responsibility for their slaves in that time, because of protective laws established by the Emperor in the East and promoted by the Church in the West. The Enlightenment built a new economy through savagery. It was indeed an escape from Christian morality in many senses. But there were other devastating methods used to develop this economy that I haven't mentioned yet. 4) The expansion of inequalities and ruthless exploitation of the common worker. In the Medieval Ages, there was a social contract between lords and their workers that provided their workers with a generally pretty good life. In fact, throughout most of the Medieval Ages, the average worker was about as tall as Westerners of the 21st century are. That is an indication of good economic conditions, a healthy diet, etc. They began to get shorter in the Late Medieval Ages because the Little Ice Age devastated a lot of harvests, but economic conditions for the average worker became the worst they'd ever been during the Enlightenment. The skeletons of average workers from that time period are shorter than they'd ever been before in post-Christian Western history, because workers were so brutally treated in factories, were starved and given squalor to live in. Owners had no compassion for them in the capitalist free market. This is a useful article showing the transition from economic conditions in the Medieval Ages to economic conditions of the Enlightenment: http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/medimen.htm According to the author, skeletal height also is sensitive to inequalities in populations, and inequalities between the rich and poor actually became far greater in the modern era than they'd been in the Medieval Ages, because of the inhumanity and lack of social, moral responsibility felt by big businesses. To achieve our great economies of today, the common worker for centuries was ground into the filth under an iron foot. It was a very, very savage time in the Enlightenment to be a worker, more so than at any other time in Western history. And inequalities between the rich and poor are actually still much greater in our modern societies than they were in the Medieval Ages- it's just that now in the West, because the brutal practices of the past produced so much more money to go around, both the rich and the poor are monetarily better off than they were in the past. 5) The destruction of the environment. This could have the longest lasting and most cataclysmic impact of all, on humanity. The Bible calls us to be good stewards of creation. However, to develop our modern economy, humans in the Enlightenment destroyed many of the world's ecosystems and most of its natural environment. http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/jo...cal_Crisis.htm According to this source, “the fact that the present ecological crisis began developing since the Industrial Revolution is indisputable now.” There was always cutting down of trees to build buildings or crafts before the modern era, but the Industrial Revolution stepped up the process in a vast way through its factory system. They essentially perpetrated an environmental holocaust in their production of our modern benefits, destroying hundreds of species, ruining the air, forests and seas. We have continued in their footsteps in our age, and this kind of environmental rape is necessary to produce a modern economy of the kind we've got. The environmental catastrophe our economic development required could literally end up wiping out the human race, in a few hundred years. So don't be proud of this economic development. The shrugging off of Christian moral safeguards on society was nightmarish in its consequences for hundreds of millions of people in the past, for many people fighting wars in formerly colonized nations of the present, and it could easily be for all humanity in the future. Quote:
Some of these thinkers advanced Social Darwinism, which spawned Imperialism. Others supported Racism or Eugenics. The new political philosophies were perverted as well. Atheistic Communism has become responsible for repeated genocides, as have democracies (the destruction of Native Americans, and now abortion). There were no Christian genocides in the Medieval Ages, and there were no major rebellions in the Early and Middle Medieval Ages- only a few local rebellions against lords. The modern era is born on rebellion and replete with genocides. Quote:
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." Last edited by Lief Erikson : 06-11-2008 at 04:09 PM. |
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06-11-2008, 07:15 PM | #7 | |||||||
Entmoot Minister of Foreign Affairs
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Copenhagen
Posts: 2,145
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Lief, you discuss many things.
The senses. Near Death Experiences. Morality. China. Slavery, Colonialism and Imperialism. The downturns of economic development. While it shows an okay display of knowledge of the general timeline of world history, the analysis is contradictory and incomplete. And sometimes, it seems completely made up as you go along. We'll just have to agree that we disagree completely in our worldview. Quote:
Eyes - Evidence - Evaluation - Experience - Enlightenment. Quote:
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From the passage above to the passage below there was nothing but talk of God and the ways of God. Things I can't respond to without simply calling it made-up. Which would be rude of me But I don't find it at all convincing. Quote:
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The reason that China experienced a colossal turn of events for the worse in the 19th century was because the nations of Europe violently imposed trade agreements and, from the mid-19th century and into the 20th century, along with Japan, broke down the intricate relationship China had with all its neighbours. The era of the Sinocentric Tributary System was replaced by an era of Treaties and Western economics an statehood. China is the oldest country in the world. It is the most successful civilization over the last 4,000 years, and it is not Christian. It is also the least imperialist nation in the entire world history of great powers. It was through trade relations and non-interference, not violence, that China became the economic powerhouse of Asia. And it is happening again, today, only interrupted by a 150 year period where the nations of Europe, the USA, and Japan, colonialized, fought, took, and exploited, including Great Britains colonial rule of Hong Kong until 1997. The era of exploitation in the 19th century is seared into the conscience of the Chinese, as is the invasion by the Japanese. This started with Christian Europeans coming not only as trademen, but as missionaries, without respect for the Chinese culture, for the Chinese way of living. Yes, there are Christians in China today, several million in fact out of a population of 1.3 billion. There is an equal amount of Muslims. They are experiencing an upsurge, but freedom of religion exists in China, and I have visited a church in the Sichuan province in China, run by a few Norwegians. But this Lief: "Prior to the coming of Christianity to China, I think God was very merciful to them in spite of the wickedness of many accepted customs and practices, because of their ignorance." This is very rude. I hope you don't mean this. Everything you've told me about God is guesswork. So when I respon to this elaborate exercise of guessing, I have no choice but to guess back. Wouldn't life be easier if the issue of God was just put aside? If until we really saw the guy sitting up there, we really shouldn't concern ourselves about it? Isn't that more healthy? Isn't it more healthy to concentrate on our worldly problems and employ worldy solutions, for the betterment of mankind (we keep doing it with our human rights charters, with our internationalization)? I don't believe in God because to me it is pure guesswork. Thus, it is not up to me to prove that there is a God or no God, because I find it completely irrelevant. Until I am presented with evidence that there is a God, there is as much possibility in my view that there is a holy Coca Cola bottle in our neighbouring galaxy, as there is the possibility of a God. It's irrelevant, because no one has ever shown me anything remotely holy. And I used to believe in God. Why? Because I did not know better (no pun intended). You present a very, very long explanation of the Enlightenment. I find it an impossible to answer that adequately as we speak, with an even longer answer. The analysis you present of the Enlightenment I believe to be very faulty and incomplete, and since I argue this I will have to back it up, very thoroughly, because there is so much to say about this! I could answer you now, but since I think your're so dead wrong on so many things I'd rather have the evidence ready. So forgive me for that. Maybe (I'm completely serious) I'll work on an answer over the summer, if not I may not answer your history part before in August But that's the beauty of Entmoot. But I have a very short answer for you until that time. Since you show a great disliking for the Enlightenment (which isn't even entirely consistent with the Vatican Church's position today), I would gladly ship you back to early 1300, when life was easier and the authority of the Church was near total. Au revoir!
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"Well, thief! I smell you and I feel your air. I hear your breath. Come along! Help yourself again, there is plenty and to spare." Last edited by Coffeehouse : 06-11-2008 at 07:18 PM. |
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06-11-2008, 09:08 PM | #8 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Elf Lord
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Fountain Valley, CA
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Of course the analysis is incomplete, though. It was just a post, not intended to be a book. I'm glad you're going to be preparing a longer answer for the summer, though. Quote:
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In any case, without having his work presented and argued, that reference in no way disproves anything I said. I've actually looked into some of the scientific attempts to explain NDE's, and these efforts so far look to me very hypothetical. Quote:
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Even your belief about Christianity could be taken as proof of this (from your perspective) all by itself. 2 billion people in the world who disagree with you about Christianity being wrong have their worldviews framed by an erroneous set of beliefs, from your point of view. So we have to be very limited and susceptible to error. Quote:
As for my claim about the how effective seeking God can be, I can point to the millions and millions of converts to Christianity who claim to have sought God and found him in powerful personal experiences when they looked persistently. I'm one. I sought God and found him, because he promises, "He who seeks finds." I endured six months of aching, painful searching before God revealed himself to me, but when he did, it was very clear to me that it was God. Quote:
On the other hand, 2 billion Christians believe in Christ, and hundreds of millions of these claim to have encountered him themselves. None of them will say they actually believe he's fake, because they know he isn't, and in many countries, they die for him, which proves their sincerity about their personal experiences with him. Nowhere is this evidence more dramatic than in the case of Jesus' disciples. All of them except John died for their faith in Christ, which proves their sincerity about their beliefs. Now, religious people all over the world have died for their beliefs, and this too proves their sincerity, but it doesn't prove the truth of their beliefs. It does in the case of Christianity, though, because these ten knew for a fact, from their own experiences as eyewitnesses, whether what they were saying about their eyewitness stories was true or false. All ten claimed to have encountered the resurrected Jesus and declared to be true all the stories of the Gospels that they are written as witnesses of. Lots of people die for false beliefs, but no one dies for what they know to be lies. All ten of the disciples died, in torture or grisly executions, for the truth of their own eyewitness accounts. Therefore we know beyond all credible doubt that they sincerely believed that they had seen and spoke with their resurrected Lord, that they sincerely believed they had seen him eat meals in their company after the resurrection, that they sincerely believed they were in his company when he rose into heaven. In short, we have eleven eyewitnesses of these events who all were willing to accept torture and death rather than admit that they were making some of this stuff up. This proves their sincerity. And it makes it very, VERY hard to rationally escape the truth of Christian doctrine. Quote:
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But this thing, we're both agreed, is a matter of perspective. You see prayer as disconnected from the economic surge, though you can't possibly know that you're right. I see prayer as very possibly connected with it, and I can't possibly know that I'm right. So there we are. Quote:
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3993857.stm I think your account of Chinese history has a good deal that's accurate, but you leave out all of the sordid elements of China's history. But in any case, I don't care to debate any of it, as none of it refutes anything I said. God works through the natural, as occurs repeatedly in the stories of Israel's history in the Bible, where God raises up nations to punish them for their sins (natural forces used by a spiritual being). Quote:
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The eyewitness story of a million people, plus photography and film footage, accompanied by all kinds of healings, is strong evidence. So is the blood of the disciples, because they knew whether what they were dying for was true or false as they claimed to be eyewitnesses of it, and if they were lying about any part of their story, at least SOME of them would have cracked under torture and said so, and consequently been spared and his confession used to humiliate the Christian communities. People die for beliefs they don't know are lies, but they don't die for beliefs they know are lies, and the disciples claimed to be eyewitnesses of the Gospel accounts of the resurrected Jesus. Quote:
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It's worth noting that even if there was only the tiniest fragment of evidence supporting Christianity, that would be more than a non-believer could ever possibly have, because there can never be any evidence supporting the hypothesis that God doesn't exist. So if any Christian who knows any of the evidence supporting Christian truth argues with an atheist (even if he only knows the tiniest bit- like that St. Margaret had a vision, and nothing more than that), they'll have more evidence and therefore a more rational position than an atheist can ever have. Quote:
Before you start (if you start), I'll admit right now that my analysis is certainly incomplete. There are too many true facts to make a thorough presentation- you have to pick and choose. I was trying to write a post, not a history book. Quote:
Anyway, I'll look forward to your short-term response to this post and your much later possible post in response to my historical argument about the roots of economic development in the Enlightenment.
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." Last edited by Lief Erikson : 06-11-2008 at 09:22 PM. |
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06-13-2008, 11:13 AM | #9 | ||||||
Elf Lord
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Ilha Formosa
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"The Enlightenment" with a capital "E" refers to a specific thing: an intellectual movement in the 18th Century, with roots going back to Descartes, Leibniz, and Newton and the Royal Society in the 17th Century. In Britain major influences were Bishop Berkeley, Locke, Hume, and Adam Smith; in France the Encyclopediasts, Diderot, d'Halbach, Condorcet, and above all, Voltaire; in America , Ben Franklin, Sam Adams, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. Its members were Deists or (a few) atheists who believed in reason, equality, science, and liberty- even slave-owners like Jefferson acknowledged slavery to be morally wrong. Slavery (and anti-semitic laws) were abolished by the French Revolutio,; they were re-introduced by that nice Italian Catholic boy Napoleon Bonoparte, who didn't have any truck with that crazy French radicalism. Quote:
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Since this was 28 years before Martin Luther was even born, I think it's stretching things to blame this on the Protestants Quote:
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Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep. Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them? "I like pigs. Dogs look up to us, cats look down on us, but pigs treat us as equals."- Winston Churchill |
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06-13-2008, 01:07 PM | #10 | ||||||||
Elf Lord
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Fountain Valley, CA
Posts: 6,343
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I'll respond to your post pretty soon, Sis. Just want to respond to GrayMouser first because his historical points tickled my curiosity a lot.
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However, Pope Nicholas' statements were far from the Vatican's "normal" position on the issue. We can go earlier than Pope Nicholas to see the papacy's position on the use of racial slavery. A few years before Pope Nicholas said this, in 1435, Pope Eugene IV condemned the enslavement of the peoples of the newly colonized Canary Islands in his bull Sicut Dudum. There, he said, "all and each of the faithful of each sex, within the space of fifteen days of the publication of these letters in the place where they live, that they restore to their earlier liberty all and each person of either sex who were once residents of [the] Canary Islands . . . who have been made subject to slavery. These people are to be totally and perpetually free and are to be let go without the exaction or reception of any money." In 1537, in the bull Sublimis Deus, Pope Paul III declared applied the same principle as Pope Eugene IV, saying that the newly discovered inhabitants of the West and South Indies were to be freed. He said enslavers were allies of the devil and said any attempts to justify slavery were "null and void." He also excommunicated latae sententiae anyone who sought to enslave Indians or steal their property. Pope Paul also explicitly condemned the form of slavery "unheard of till now," a reference to racist slavery that was just developing. He also condemned the enslavement not only of the Indians but of "all other peoples." When many Europeans began to enslave Africans, in its document "Response of the Congregation of the Holy Office," 230, March 20, 1686, the Inquisition was asked about the morality of enslaving blacks, and they replied that this behavior was to be rejected and slavemasters were required to emancipate and compensate blacks who were enslaved. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the papacy continued to condemn slavery. Popes Gregory XIV (Cum Sicuti, 1591), Urban VIII (Commissum Nobis, 1639) and Benedict XIV (Immensa Pastorum, 1741) all did this. Pope Gregory's 1839 bull "In Supremo" condemned the enslavement of, "Indians, blacks or other such people," and in 1888 and 1890, Pope Leo XIII sought the elimination of slavery throughout South America and Africa, vigorously condemning it. Most popes strongly condemned slavery. That was the normal Vatican position. A very small number of popes differed in support of the imperialist tendencies nations were developing in the modern era. Some of these popes endured more pressure from industrializing nations than others. I do think that the papal record on this issue indicates that blame falls far more on industrializing nations than it does on the Catholic Church. Usually, enslavement and imperialism occurred in spite of the position of the popes and traditional Christianity. It was a result of feeling an intense desire to create a modern economy. Quote:
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." |
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06-15-2008, 02:34 AM | #11 | ||||||
Elf Lord
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Fountain Valley, CA
Posts: 6,343
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Ancient Church tradition records the deaths of the other disciples also. I'm not sure how much corroborative evidence from outside the Church records exists about these martyrdoms. I don't have information about this right now. Quote:
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Even if we didn't know who wrote the Gospels, though, we'd know from the fact that the immediate successors of the apostles taught that these were the apostles' accounts (and often died for their faith in the resurrection of Christ) that these were their stories. Quote:
There are many, many scriptures that relate various kinds of evidences God uses to bring people to faith. Blind faith is never advocated. In fact, the faith of God's disciples in Acts is anything but blind- it is chock full of supernatural intervention. Paul once commented in the Epistles that the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power.
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." |
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06-13-2008, 12:31 PM | #12 | |||||
Elf Lord
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Ilha Formosa
Posts: 2,068
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[QUOTE=Lief Erikson;620678]
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-The study was limited to the far northern fringes of Europe- essentially Scandinavia and Britain- I'd be interested to see figures for the more populated urbanised areas of France, Germany and Italy. -The author acknowledges the effects of climate and population growth. For most of the Middle Ages, northern Europe was under-populated. The expansion into that areas was roughly equivalent to the much later settlement of North America and the Antipodes. Forests were cleared, the heavy bottom lands were first opened by the mouldboard plow, marshes were drained (often by monasteries) horses replaced oxen (horse-collars) , crop rotation and legumes were introduced, as well as wind- and water-mills: all labour-saving devices. (How can you tell I wrote a term paper about this in college? ) Then, inevitably, the weatherman and Dr. Malthus began to catch up. And, note, the author actually acknowledges that these gains were recovered in the eighteenth century. Certainly, the conditions of Victorian Britain were horrendous- but they were much less so when other countries began to industrialise, including Germany and America. Quote:
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Maybe if Catholic Bishops stopped lying to their parishioners about the size of the AIDS virus and the effectiveness of condoms , some of those millions wouls survive? But hey, what's a few millions of people dying in misery if it stops them from committing the sin of using contraception? Quote:
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Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep. Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them? "I like pigs. Dogs look up to us, cats look down on us, but pigs treat us as equals."- Winston Churchill |
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06-13-2008, 01:47 PM | #13 | |
Quasi Evil
Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: Maryland, US
Posts: 4,634
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The ends justify the means? Oh wait thats another belief system...
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"People's political beliefs don't stem from the factual information they've acquired. Far more the facts people choose to believe are the product of their political beliefs." "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." |
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06-13-2008, 02:24 PM | #14 | ||||||||||
Elf Lord
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Fountain Valley, CA
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People's lives were certainly different in that time period- that doesn't mean they were worse. They didn't have as much economic power or technology as we do, but I've already pointed out the utterly blood drenched pillars the existence of our economy stands on, so its existence is unjustified. We are profiting from the slaughters of millions. And there's little that can be done about it now that it's over. We have medical technologies that people back then didn't have and we can live longer. These are also the results of technological and economic improvements that cost the blood of hundreds of millions, though, and it could be billions who pay down the line when our environmental catastrophes have more fully developed. We have advantages now that we enjoy, but they should not have come to exist, because they came through hideously depraved means. Quote:
AIDS is a 20th century disease. Most STDs emerged in the 20th century. Conservative Muslim countries like Oman, on the other hand, which have laws against sexual immorality, experience almost zero AIDS. STDs there are a very minor problem. That is likely what most of the Medieval Ages was like. Sexual license has always been around, but when it's condemned and illegal, as well as culturally unacceptable, its negative ramifications are much more limited. Quote:
Care to elaborate on the "and others"? I'd really like to know. I don't know of any genocides in this time period. Here's a source that explains how technological inequalities between combatants of the modern era helped to create an environment where genocide was more feasible: http://www.opendemocracy.net/article...story_genocide That's one possible explanation. The far greater presence of imperialism and colonialism in the modern era are doubtless also part of it. I've heard the Cathar destruction called Europe's first genocide. I'm not sure how much it qualifies. The Cathars frequently had opportunities to repent and thus escape further attack. They were also all criminals, deliberately violating the laws of the land, both religious and secular, on multiple counts. So I'm not sure how much this qualifies. Maybe it does, maybe not, I'm not sure. Quote:
Serfs, the vast majority of the time, didn't want to leave their lands. Their land was their livelihood, their means of survival, and most of those that abandoned their land and fled to cities or other places ended up becoming thieves and murderers. Serfs weren't being oppressed by being "bound to the land." It's a common practice to throw common negative stereotypes at the "Dark Ages," to try to glorify how far we've come, but most of our "advances" are actually moral retreats. The economic and technological developments in our civilization came at the cost of enormously immoral acts, and many of the "rights" we've gained are illegitimate and immoral themselves. Quote:
Medieval principles wouldn't have burned me at the stake for saying what I'm saying either. They would have stopped the slave trade, the imperialist oppression of native civilizations, the abortion epidemic, proliferation of sexual immorality (which itself has killed millions in our era), and other such vast butcheries and depredations of our era if the Vatican's bulls had the same political power they had in the past. Yes, a handful of popes have slipped from some of these traditional positions, often under the pressure of secular governments. But we have a thousand years of history in which they worked very well as barriers for these kinds of depredations . Combined with technological and economic barriers, if you will .
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." Last edited by Lief Erikson : 06-13-2008 at 02:46 PM. |
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06-11-2008, 10:36 AM | #15 |
Elf Lady
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: In the lands where mountains are but a fairytale
Posts: 8,588
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So Coffeehouse, if I understand it correctly your problem is with the institution we call the Church and the Bible?
I can see why. It is easy to point out all the things the church did wrong. Not just the catholic one, but also the protestant church, the synagogue, the mosque, etc. Right after the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Christianity, a lot of knowledge and good buildings were destroyed in the name of the Lord. A lot of things were done in the name of the Lord. And are still being done. I once read a remark that said as much as: Christianity should have stayed an Idea. Institutionalizing anything makes a mess of it. And of course it is true that with institutionalization a certain rigidity comes. Suddenly people start to think of a concept that is "correct religion" and what isn't. People who don't conform are feared, loathed, mistreated, etc. However, the church however many its faults may be, also has its good sides. My church for example has an extensive fundraising network to help the people who don't have enough money to buy clothes for the kids etc. They are involved with the homeless. The church I went to in Japan helped people in prison (there was a prison choir under our father), they collected money for charity etc. There are still many charity organizations with roots in a church. The point I'm trying to make (and now I'm getting to that awful "freedom of choice" argument) is that institutions are run by people. Often they really do want to help, but in a lot of cases that is a) not enough b) not practical c) too focused on one thing d) whatmore. People who have faith aren't necessarily good people. People without it not necessarily good. You know, I think I forgot the point I was trying to make... >_< You see, there's a good reason I don't enter this sort of thing
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06-11-2008, 11:32 AM | #16 |
Elf Lord
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Fountain Valley, CA
Posts: 6,343
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Looks like it's been quite an interesting discussion while I was asleep! Just woke up and started reading.
I've got some school to do today- last two days of finals are today and tomorrow, but I'll try to get in a string of replies soon.
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." |
06-11-2008, 11:37 AM | #17 | |
Entmoot Minister of Foreign Affairs
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Copenhagen
Posts: 2,145
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You do not need cathedrals, and cardinals. Take the path up to a cliff nearby, a place with a view, and watch the forests or the fields or the skies or the cities or the seas or the oceans. The place where you stand is your temple, your church, your place of worship. Care to witness a miracle? Visit your favorite place(!) and stand there in silence and view the beauty. Without the holy processions of the church, the goldcoloured cloths or the sound of the organ. Worship the message, not the creeds.
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"Well, thief! I smell you and I feel your air. I hear your breath. Come along! Help yourself again, there is plenty and to spare." Last edited by Coffeehouse : 06-11-2008 at 11:38 AM. |
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06-11-2008, 04:11 PM | #18 |
the Shrike
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: San Francisco, CA <3
Posts: 10,647
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On near death experience & spirituality, you may want to read Persinger (Your brain on God), or anything of that ilk.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.11/persinger.html
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"Binary solo! 0000001! 00000011! 0000001! 00000011!" ~ The Humans are Dead, Flight of the Conchords |
06-11-2008, 04:33 PM | #19 | |
Elf Lord
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Fountain Valley, CA
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On the other hand: http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/vmary.htm
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." |
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06-11-2008, 04:49 PM | #20 |
the Shrike
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: San Francisco, CA <3
Posts: 10,647
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"or anything of that ilk". Sheesh.
From my link: Persinger goes one step further. His work practically constitutes a Grand Unified Theory of the Otherworldly: He believes cerebral fritzing is responsible for almost anything one might describe as paranormal - aliens, heavenly apparitions, past-life sensations, near-death experiences, awareness of the soul, you name it.
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"Binary solo! 0000001! 00000011! 0000001! 00000011!" ~ The Humans are Dead, Flight of the Conchords Last edited by BeardofPants : 06-11-2008 at 04:50 PM. |
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