Epos Nix on 7/4/2010 at 21:19
Quote:
The point is clearly not decided through reason, so any of us on the outside are left wondering "Why claim to be rational if you're going to just stop it at some point for no rational reason"?
Sir, humanity is one giant seething cesspool of irrationality. Stop and think some time about all the machinations mankind has forced on himself and now takes for granted. Ideas like patriotism, becoming wealthy, collecting stamps or any number of ideas that matter not one iota in the grand scheme of things. For all it's faults, at least Christianity has the added side effect of inspiring individuals to perform acts of charity once in a while.
Nicker on 7/4/2010 at 22:41
Quote Posted by Epos Nix
For all it's faults, at least Christianity has the added side effect of inspiring individuals to perform acts of charity once in a while.
I guess even tyrants need a break from administering oppression, once in a while.
I love how Christians claim morals, laws, charity, kindness and family values as their invention. As if humanity had no sense of right and wrong, for millions of years, until some shaggy goat herder stumbled down a mountainside after receiving rudimentary instructions on decency from a talking bush.
So I guess that, before the internet, these transformative instructions must have been transmitted to the rest of the world by a similar mechanism to the one used for redistributing the animals on the Arc.
And they want to be taken seriously.
Nicker on 7/4/2010 at 23:25
Yeah, like the freedom to be tortured, dispossessed and burned at the stake for disagreeing with the church.
Runaway on 8/4/2010 at 02:06
I've actually been confused as to the freedoms of the middle ages. In high school I was basically taught that the feudal system was awful with the control of the Lords over the peasant and the awful living/working conditions of peasants as opposed to Lords.
I'm reading a commentary of Karl Marx's arguments and it says "Yet only a few centuries ago, in Europe and England, few people worked for wages. Most were free peasants, growing food on their own land. Artisans and craftsmen who made and sold things were usually independent workers."
I'm not sure if the above quote is discussing the Middle Ages or some later time period (if Middle Ages it seems contradictory), but I think Marx might go along with Toad's statements as the transition to more "capitalistic" practices would lead to more social structuring of the proletariat subservience to the growing bourgeoisie... Just an idea that flows with some facts I am currently looking into :weird:
And Nicker, could you at least see religion as the main institution trying to organize morality, laws, charity, ect. into a more organized conformative structure for people to follow? Not that this method has worked in other areas... Just thought it could be argued.
CCCToad on 8/4/2010 at 02:16
Quote Posted by Nicker
Yeah, like the freedom to be tortured, dispossessed and burned at the stake for disagreeing with the church.
Again, more half-truth stereotypes passed down through grade school classes due to both convenience and incompetence. It is a half truth because, while such things did happen, the guild system and the feudal system provided protections for the working classes that ceased to exist and women last freedoms, being reduced to a status similar (not coincidentally) to how they were treated in ancient Rome and Greece.
Nicker on 8/4/2010 at 02:34
No age has been without its saving graces and it is dangerous to characterise entire stretches of history as some sort of homogeneous occurrence, but to deny the 1500 year role of the Christian church in the systematic and violent repression of reason, science, liberty, art, music and spirituality is patently absurd.
Entire cultures and peoples were wiped out with the permission and the resources of the christian hierarchy.
Were all Christians evil fucks? No.
Were the vast majority of CEOs and Regional VPs of Jesus Inc. corrupt and cruel? Survey says... yes!
It was the relentless pressure of the merchant classes (not the jolly peasants) that eventually cracked the ramparts. It certainly wasn't because of some humanist sentiment within the church.
Nicker on 8/4/2010 at 02:44
Quote Posted by Runaway
And Nicker, could you at least see religion as the main institution trying to organize morality, laws, charity, ect. into a more organized conformative structure for people to follow? Not that this method has worked in other areas... Just thought it could be argued.
Like there was any choice? When you are the Walmart of law and order it's not exactly an even playing field.
Presiding over a necessity is not a virtue. The trains usually run on time under fascism.
The point is, CCTroll, not that good things happened during the Dark Ages, but that most of the bad things that did happen and, more importantly, even more of the good things that could have happened but weren't permitted to happen, were because of the direct, systematic, deliberate and sustained application of force and fear by a certain organised belief system that continues to plague us today.
Illuminatus on 8/4/2010 at 04:51
Come on man, that’s a caricature and a half. Modern Europe was born in the Middle Ages, and Christianity is synonymous with that period. It’s hard to overstate the role monasteries and the clergy had in preserving knowledge and creating a distinctly post-Roman European culture, particularly during the so-called “Dark Ages”. Charlemagne’s Carolingian Renaissance unified most of the continent and spread literacy and art on an unprecedented scale.
And this is without even mentioning Constantinople, the Eastern Christian theocracy that can only be compared to Ancient Rome in its technology and wealth. Or the even more advanced scientific and philosophic Golden Age happening in Muslim cities like Cordoba and Grenada. Point being, so much of Western culture/advancement is due to religious institutions, it’s too easy to just yell “Spanish Inquisition!” when discussing this stuff.
Phatose on 8/4/2010 at 04:58
Quote Posted by Epos Nix
Sir, humanity is one giant seething cesspool of irrationality. Stop and think some time about all the machinations mankind has forced on himself and now takes for granted. Ideas like patriotism, becoming wealthy, collecting stamps or any number of ideas that matter not one iota in the grand scheme of things. For all it's faults, at least Christianity has the added side effect of inspiring individuals to perform acts of charity once in a while.
The main difference I see is that the ones you've listed there, while pervasive, do not claim to actually *be* the grand scheme of things.
Once you accept contradiction as basically acceptable in your grand plan of the universe, anything can and does follow. Occasionally it's charity. Occasionally it's outright evil. Often times, it's in between. More problematically, once a system becomes inconsistent, there is no method to correct it. Logic won't work, as it's already been suspended. Nonlogic won't work, as it can't accomplish anything. The whole system becomes formless and malleable, serving whatever goal the invoker feels like at the time.
Make a system like this into a religion, and it becomes all pervasive and all encompassing, a 'morality' that can and has been used to justify anything and everything, and to condemn everything and anything. The ultimate free pass - divine authority with no need to be consistent in your interpretations.
Even if I were to grant that charitable acts were universally and undeniably positive - something I will not grant - occasionally making someone be nice for a couple of minutes hardly makes up for turning all of morality into a self serving game of interpretations.
