The Aztecs might have been noble, but they were also savages *UPDATED*
Bookworm on Sep 24 2009 at 10:01 am | Filed under: Uncategorized
The British Museum has staged a huge exhibit about the Aztecs. The Daily Mail has recognized that opening by publishing a very interesting article about the Aztecs and their clash with, and ultimate destruction because of, the Spaniards.
The article is a useful reminder of something Danny Lemieux has raised at this blog before, which is the fact that many Native American tribes were not the tree-hugging, spirit loving nobles our children are taught to believe we, the Americans, destroyed. It’s so much more complicated than that. Take the Aztecs, for example.
The Aztecs had a civilization of extraordinary sophistication, one that, in many ways, far surpassed the Europeans. Its cities were bigger, they had glorious architecture, and, unlike European cities, they were immaculate and well run. There was enormous wealth there. The social structure was sophisticated.
Why, then, were the Spaniards unimpressed? Two reasons. One was undoubtedly the inherent racism of the time. The other, though, was the large scale human sacrifice and cannibalism the Aztecs practiced. The Spaniards may have been warlike and had their Inquisition, but even the Spanish were disgusted by a religious structure that demanded the sacrifice of up to 80,000 people in connection with a single king’s coronation. This made it easy to conclude that the Aztecs were inferior, incapable of salvation, and worthy of conquest.
Not surprisingly, surrounding Indian tribes, whose citizens, captured in war, made up the bulk of the sacrifices, were also less than thrilled by the visual beauties of the Aztec kingdom. That’s why Cortez didn’t just act with his 167 Spaniards and a few horses. Instead, Cortez was swiftly able to gather many allies anxious to hasten the end of a violent, blood-soaked, totalitarian regime. That small pox jumped into the fray was an unexpected benefit from the Spanish point of view, and simply proved who had the “right” god.
In a way, one can views the Aztecs not as noble savages, but as the Nazis of their time. Like the Nazis, they were efficient and ran a beautiful country, but under that efficiency was a totalitarian regime that fertilized its roots with the blood of its citizens and its enemies.
UPDATE: As I’ve said a couple of times in the comments, this post wasn’t meant to put a heroic gloss on the Spanish, for whom I hold no brief. Instead, I wanted to use it as a counterpoint to this type of Leftist idiocy, which still prevails in our American schools, and which dehumanizes the complex Native American cultures by casting them as plaster saints, brutally smashed by irredeemably evil Western imperialists. It was so much more complicated — and therefore so much more interesting — than the PC garbage that passes for education in today’s schools.
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The Spaniards were no saints.There is much truth to the “Leyenda Negra,” the Black Legend of Spaniard mistreatment of the natives. The Aztecs were as described above. What evolved was a mixture of Spanish and indigenous ( given what “india” means in certain quarters in Mexico, I am abstaining from that word.).While the Spanish language became dominant, many indigenous words were incorporated into the language. The indigenous influence in foods, with chocolate, chilis/chiles, vanilla, corn, and tomatoes, for example, remains very strong to this day. Ethnically, the hybrid mixture predominates.
Thanks for making that point, Gringo. I have no love for the imperialist Spanish. I just saw the article as a good counterpoint for the fact that America’s schoolchildren keep getting taught that the Native Americans were uniformly saintly and noble, in stark contrast to the uniformly evil and genocidal Europeans. Things were a bit more evenly matched than they’ve been made to seem. Indeed, the only thing that really tipped the balance was bacteria.
I think it was Marvin Harris in “Cultural Anthropology” who described how Aztec priests, after cutting the still-beating hearts from sacrificial victims, would kick their remains down the steps of the temple pyramid. There at the base, squads of butchers would render the corpses into cookable parts.
Since the Aztecs, along with their predecessors, had hunted all the big game animals to extinction in the Valley of Mexico, they were hard pressed to find large and reliable sources of protein. Thank the gods their religion gave them a solution to that problem!
By feeding human haunches to the protein-starved citizens of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec overlords guaranteed loyalty and stability. It was the New World’s version of bread and circuses.
(I also remember reading how the Spanish gasped in horror when they entered Tenochtitlan for the first time and saw the pyramid of human skulls at the base of the Templo Mayor. They knew right away that they were in the presence of immense evil.)
The Spanish, and the Church were guilty of an appalling sin, though. Off the point, somewhat (yes, the natives did not live in Neverland), but maybe interesting nonetheless.
When Cortez (really “Cortes” with an accent grave over the “e”) landed in 1519, it’s relevant to remember what was going on in the Old World at the time. Plague had been sweeping through Europe at more or less regular (even, with hindsight, predictable) intervals for several hundred years – with another epidemic erupting in the early 1500s. Parts of Spain – especially Andalusia – had suffered recurring famine. The Age of Enlightenment had yet to begin, and superstition and illiteracy were the norm. Despite Columbus, Europeans had a poor grasp of geography, and the general population still believed the world was flat and that the sun revolved around it. In fact, the Mayan calendar – devised thousands of years earlier – was more accurate than the one the Spanish were using.
Spain was ruled by a monarchy, Spanish aristocrats wielded tremendous wealth and power, and there was little, if any, social mobility. Guys like Cortez were fated to remain low-to-mid level military officers their whole careers. He and the other conquistadors sailed to the New World to seek the wealth they’d never be able to get near back home.
The church was powerful, and extremely intolerant (ask the Cathars, or Arrians) of other religions and “heretical” ideas – and the Inquisition had been busily making certain that none of them flourished. Once Cortez and crew landed, they had to respect the church’s agenda, which focused on converting the natives to Christianity. (Though that came second in Cortez’ mind to the acquisition of gold.)
I would not say that the Spanish were unimpressed by what they found – Cortez was impressed as hell by Tenochtitlan:
“The great city of Temixtitan (sic) is built on the salt lake, and no matter by what road you travel, there are two leagues from the main body of the city to the mainland. There are four artificial causeways leading into it, and each is as wide as two cavalry lances. The city is as big as Seville or Cordoba. The main streets are very straight. Some of these are on the land, but the smaller ones are half on the land [and] half canals where they paddle their canoes. All the streets have openings, and some of them are very wide. There are bridges made of long wide beams joined together very firmly and so well made that on some of them ten horsemen may ride abreast.”
(Hernan Cortes Letters from Mexico, translated and edited by Anthony Pagden, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1986)
Impressed as he was, Cortez was still compelled to ransack and destroy it; aided, yes, by some of the enemies that the Aztecs had made during their reign, and from whom they exacted heavy tribute. When Cortez arrived in Montezuma’s capital he had a formidable army. He was also aided of course by the idea that, in Aztec eyes, he was the returned god Quetzalcoatl, to whom he bore a startling resemblance. (A white-skinned, light-eyed, auburn-haired, bearded god. One is free to wonder where he came from – in a land of copper-skinned, black-eyed, black-haired, beardless people.)
What Cortez didn’t know, of course, was that he was standing in a landscape surrounded by the ruins of far older civilizations that had disappeared, and that the Aztecs were preceded by the Maya, and even further preceded by the Olmec. (The Aztec and Inca were not original, they were inheritors.) Cortez did notice that there were nicely paved roads running through the jungles from nowhere to yonder – but he didn’t give them a lot of thought. (He didn’t have Google-Earth available to him, but if he had he would have been freshly amazed at the extent of the highway network – more than 15,000 miles in regular use well before the Spanish came. 15,000 miles of leveled roads, paved with lime cement; an insanity of labor to build and annually (in that climate) maintain. Built hundreds of years earlier by (we suppose) the Maya, who as far as we know had no dray animals or wheeled vehicles, and, you’d think, would have as much use for an interstate highway system as they would for an extra navel. [The Maya themselves, on the other hand, said that it was built by pale-skinned, auburn-haired, bearded guys. They admit freely they were inheritors and preservers, not builders. They don't say who they inherited from, regrettably. Clearly the Olmecs, in terms of who was around millennia earlier - but there's the problem of skin, eye, and hair color.])
And the Mayan calendar, now that we approach 2012, has begun to reassert its hold on humanity’s attention. The calendar itself is a 13.5 foot basalt relief, weighing in at about 25 tons. It’s currently in the National Archeological Museum in Mexico City, and is both a visual representation of the Mesoamerican creation mythology, and a very large clock of what you might refer to as the Ages of Man. Regrettably, (for us skeptics, who pride ourselves on living in the “real world,”)the cycle of time it presents does indeed correlate with the Greek, Hindu, and Sumerian/Egyptian ages, and agrees with their regard of the present period of time: we are in the final bit of a grand cycle. We are at the end of the fifth Sun, a cycle representing about 26,000 years. It will end December 23, 2012. And 26,000 years just happens to be what we call today an equinoctial precession.
Now – how the hell did they know that?
And that is the real sin of the conquistadors and the church. The highways, the Olmec (the Olmecs were [probably] the mother culture, the originators) heads of Africans where there had never been any Africans, the calendar, accurate maps of what we now know is Antarctica 300+ years before Antarctica was “discovered” – and showing it with flowing rivers, and no snow and ice, etc., etc., etc. Thousands of questions that will never be answered.
It was worse than the library at Alexandria. All over Central and South America vast repositories of knowledge accumulated since ancient times were gathered up and burned by zealous friars. In July 1562 in the main square of Mani (just south of Merida in Yucatan Province) Fr. Diego de Landa proudly burned thousands of codices, story-paintings and hieroglyphs inscribed on rolled-up deer skins. He also destroyed countless “idols” and “altars” because they were “works of the devil, designed by the evil one to delude the Indians and prevent them from accepting Christianity…”
“We found great numbers of books, but as they contained nothing but superstitions and falsehoods of the devil we burned them all, which the natives took most grievously, and which gave them great pain.” (Yucatan Before and After the Conquest p. 104)
Not only the “natives” should have felt this pain, but anyone and everyone – then and now – who would like to know some truths about the past.
Many other men of God participated in the wiping clean of Mesoamerica’s memory banks. Juan de Zumarraga, Bishop of Mexico, boasted of having destroyed 20,000 idols and 500 Indian temples. In the marketplace of Texcoco he built a vast bonfire of astronomical documents, paintings, manuscripts, scrolls, and hierglyphic texts the conquistadors had spent the prevous eleven years collecting.
What remains to us of the written records of the ancient peoples of Central and South America? The answer, thanks to the Spanish and the church, is fewer than twenty original codices and scrolls.
The Aztec, like most Indians, were not invariably nice. Still, I’m not sure they deserved Christianity.
Tiresias, thank you.
Ditto, Tiresias. I’d heard before about the document burnings, but had not remembered that the destruction was so comprehensive.
I’ll reiterate here that I hold no brief for the Spanish. I’m just sick and tired of the way in which our education system, rather than acknowledging both the pros and cons of Native American life, has hagiographied the Native Americans, in effect denying them their ordinary humanity, in order to denigrate Western culture.
Greetings:
An author by the name of T.R. Fehrenbach has written about the Indians of Mexico in a book entitled “Fire & Blood”. I read his “Comanches: The History of a People” and it was excellent.
Well, the products of their culture surely did not deserve that happened to them at the hands of fanatical, hateful friars. The terrible destruction there ranks with that of the Library at Alexandria.
They did, however, deserve Christianity in the sense that it delivered them from cannibalism and the bloodthirstiness of the Meso-American gods. Better to eat one’s god than to be eaten by him.
With reference to the anticipated events of December 23, 2012, I have been inviting my more credulous friends (invariably they are Democrats) to surrender the titles to their properties to me on December 22, 2012, since they will be of no use to them soon thereafter.
Either apocalypse will occur or else the dawn of a radiant, hopey-changey new age. In any case, trivialities like property will no longer matter.
Somehow none of them have seem inclined to take me up on it.
Tiresias
Fascinating.
The Mayan calendar ends 12/21/12 , which gives me pause for thought, since it will be just past a month on the next big election. It will be a wait and see.
On the other hand, in Judaism, it is said that mankind was designed for 6,000 years, which means there’s another 230 years to go.
Easier to plan for the former than the latter.
Savagery is the default condition of humanity. Any humanity, any place on earth, at any time in human history. Civilization is a means of ameliorating, or putting a veneer over that savagery, or making it conform to some arcane rules so we can pretend it’s not savagery but the will of the gods, or nature, or scientific socialism or that bitch deity called necessity.
I don’t know, Charles – our pal the Bish, Juan de Zumarraga, wasn’t at all above burning backsliding Indians at the stake. He did it often enough that one begins to suspect he rather liked it. (He had pretty much the same attitude as Islam: once you convert, you don’t convert back.)
But you run into what we might refer to as a Prime Directive problem here, for those of you old Trekkies. (Or “Trekkers.”)
You think that Christianity was superior for the Indians than what they had. I wonder on what basis you – or anyone else – get to say that. You are talking about their culture, not yours. Their beliefs served them well for millennia. Whether you think it served them well or not can only be an expression of your definition of “well,” which is entirely irrelevant to their culture. A culture which was, incidentally, far older than Christianity. (And built much nicer cities.)
Starfleet Command would properly accuse you of meddlesome interference and order you to back off. Cherish your beliefs, you have no business forcing them on anyone else.
Sadie, by that time I should own large chunks of California. Can I rip off a slice of L.A. for you? Say, Silver Lake or Bel Air? Maybe a pied-a-terre in Frisco?
Let me know.
Tiresias, if I didn’t know better, namely that you have your tongue embedded in your cheek, I’d think you’d just trotted out that tired old argument that all cultures are equal and who are we to say that one is superior to another?
If that were really the case, we’d have to pack up all of our grumblings here about Obamaism, and Marxism and leftist hypocrisy because they are values that serve another [political] culture quite well and are based on moral concepts that predate Christianity.
As for the Indians having produced nicer cities than ours, I will have to concede that here we are talking about a matter of taste. Me? I prefer not to step over piles of human skulls or take artistic delight in the broad smear of caked human blood that decorates temple steps.
Plus, the restaurants only serve corn, chili, squash and maybe the occasional baby torso. Sucks, man.
You do you remember the lovely, poetic, and profound passage from Al Gore’s book, “Earth in the Balance”, don’t you? He quotes Chief Seattle, who in 1851 said:
*********************
“How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us.
If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?
Every part of this earth is sacred to my people….We know that the white man does not understand our ways…. The earth is not his brother, but his enemy, and when he has conquered it, he moves on….The whites too shall pass; perhaps sooner than all other tribes. Contaminate your bed and you will one night suffocate in your own waste.”
**********************
Except that no one actually knows what Chief Seattle actually said 150 odd years ago. As the science writer Matt Ridley has noted, “The chief’s prescience, alas, is illusory….The entire speech is a work of modern fiction. It was written for an ABC television drama by a screenwriter and professor of film, Ted Perry, in 1971.”
A TV screenplay, people, a fricking TV script, and now one generation later it’s regarded as wisdom from time immemorial, as environmental holy writ! But it is beautifully written….just one niggling question for Al Gore: what else are carbon offsets but indulgences for buying and selling air?
Ridley goes on to document a few other neglected facts. The Native Americans killed off 73% of the large mammals in North America. Bison were stampeded off cliffs by the thousands — much of that meat was wantonly spoiled. Charles Martel also noted that shortly after man arrived in South America, they exterminated 80% of the large mammals — and added a fascinating anthropological twist.
The story is largely the same where ever people are found on this earth. Achieving ecological equilbrium can be very damaging. “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.” (Kant).
Things are indeed complicated. Grievance mongering is a mug’s game; ransacking the past to prove one’s moral superiority is inane. We do well enough to avoid wrongs in the present without committing the historical sin of anachronism.
All cultures are equal. They all equally die just as well or easily, if not well.
Charles put me down for the following:
1) Beach House
1) Vineyard
1) Condo in the city
1) Something pleasant in the mountains with a splendid view
If your friends have decided to stay in the ‘blue’ column and they get what they voted for – reappropiation of wealth and assets, I won’t even need a real estate agent. I’ll just check into the local ACORN office.
Together we can relocate the ‘blues’ to a nice homestead. I am thinking rural Kentucky. Something with a nice R.D. address, no paved roads and lots of trees to hug. They can send picture post cards with ‘Wish you were here and We Weren’t’. We can reassure them that they are not leaving a carbon footprint and are doing the ‘right’ thing for mankind, humanity, the greater good. I’ll wear lipstick and make sure there are lots of kisses on each and every postcard I send back.
The Aztec, like most Indians, were not invariably nice. Still, I’m not sure they deserved Christianity.
The Spanish inquisition is not Christianity. Anymore than your family are mass murderers because one of your ancestors had legal problems.
Charles, I was recently clued into the works of Rene Girard. It’s esoteric and over my head but very powerful stuff. You might very well be interested.
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/07/apocalypse-now
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Girard
Wikipedia entry:
“René Girard (born December 25, 1923, Avignon, France) is a French historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social science. His work belongs to the tradition of anthropological philosophy. He is the author of several books (see below), in which he developed the following ideas:
* mimetic desire: imitation is an aspect of behaviour that not only affects learning but also desire, and imitated desire is a cause of conflict,
* the scapegoat mechanism is the origin of sacrifice and the foundation of human culture, and religion was necessary in human evolution to control the violence that can come from mimetic rivalry,
* the Bible reveals the two previous ideas and denounces the scapegoat mechanism.”
As I see it, the Aztecs inherited their ancestry and they were charged with protecting it. They frivolously wasted that opportunity, so a better competitor came and wiped them out. As usually happens in nature when somebody becomes stagnant and non-competitive.
It would be bad if the US’s history and Constitutional experiments were lost to posterity, but such things can be made anew. And it is not the responsibility of the conquerors to preserve the knowledge and works of the inferior side. That’s why winning wars becomes critically important.
While it would be nice to be able to access ancient knowledge to see what has gone on in humanity’s past, the primary consideration for all peoples and nations is one thing, and one thing only: power.
No power, no life and no guarantee of survival.
Ymarsakar
>The Spanish inquisition is not Christianity. Anymore than your >family are mass murderers because one of your ancestors >had legal problems.
Bartlett Worthy!
You know, I was thinking about this post…and then noticed that my college has a “Pagan Students Alliance.” Needless to say I was somewhat amused.
It makes you wonder what anthropologists 10,000 years from now will make of the Energizer Bunny. God? Totem? Politician?
An avatar of the killer bunny staffed United States Imperial Armored Corps: Sluggy Freelance
Bun Bun!
VBEG Let’s not forget the Posleen series SheVa gun named Bun-Bun either. Or something like that, it’s been a while for me.
Tiresias: The Chinese calendar is also superior, being able to accurately predict lunar cycles and whatnot thousands of years into the future. As you may know, I’m a Chinese supremacist of the highest order, and yet I use the Christian calendar. It’s just a question of mathematics – even using a geocentric model of the solar system it’s entirely reasonable to predict cosmic events and calculate planetary orbits. A bit more cumbersome, but workable.
Also, it seems to be that you are equivocating to a massive degree. I loathe the Prime Directive. If I were on the Enterprise when Archer gave that hideously cowardly response as to withhold the lifesaving technology simply because of a so-called intelligent second species being kept down by the Man, I would have shot him there and then. Human interaction has always been about interference one way or another. We fight for our way of life because we believe in it. Others fight for their way of life for the same reason. But then I am told you have your tongue strictly in your cheek. Still, I prefer the Kirk method of diplomacy; screw the girls and screw around with the locals. Heck, I like the Sisko method of diplomacy too – lie, cheat, steal and murder if you have to. If it’s a matter of survival, you bet it’s to the pain.
I was traveling so I am entering this thread a bit late (thanks for the reference, Book)…so,
The Spanish who conquered South America were adventurers and (often) criminals who had been banished from South American society. That they were vicious to the Indians and that their form of slavery was especially harsh cannot be denied.
However, although popular history commingles the roles of the conquistadors and slavers with the Church, the Catholic Church worked in opposition to the Spanish and Portuguese slave owners. This Wiki (I know, I know) entry provides a brief summary thereto here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_slavery
A good example of the clash between the Roman Catholic Church and the Spanish and Portuguese slavers is found in history of the the 17th Century Guarani Indian republic that was established in Paraguay by the Jesuits. http://www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-10076.html.
Also…one point about Aztecs and cannibalism – there is one historical narrative that assigns the destruction of the Anasazi cliff-dweller culture in our own Southwest to http://www.archaeology.org/9709/newsbriefs/anasazi.html to a break-away Aztec regime’s reign of terror that used cannibalism to terrorize the Anasazi and other tribes into submission. I haven’t read of any other records of Southwest tribes (Comanche, Apache, Navaho, etc.) practicing cannibalism.
This, of course, is a completely separate occurrence from the cannibalism practiced by the Iroquois and Hurons in the Northeast and the tribes of the Pacific Northwest.
Nah, gkong3, I’m not a believer in the old Prime Directive – though I’m not a believer in the wholesale wipe-out the Old World engaged in when it came to the New, either. And I am in fact not entirely certain what gives one culture a “better” right to survive than another. I guess it always comes down to physical strength.
I don’t know that I’d regard political philosophies as cultures, though, Charles. Obamaism is a culture? Marxism is a culture? I don’t think so, those are “isms” – they exist inside cultures.
The loss of knowledge just pisses me off – and far too much of it was done in the name of Christianity. Pagan Rome had within the city limits at least five great libraries of which we know, two of which are thought to have had 100,000 codices, scrolls, etc. All five were burned once Jesus came to town.
The Christians may or may not (it is unclear) have been involved in the destruction of Alexandria, but they certainly were the prime directors in the destruction of libraries in Lille, Ephesus, and half a dozen other places where knowledge from the ancient world was kept. Knowledge frightened the hell out of them – still did as recently as my own days in catechism classes. (They were the prime directors in the destruction of most of their own history, too, when the bible was “officially” established and the word went out from Origen and the other bishops: “these four gospels are it – burn everything else.”)
And all the knowledge of the Olmec, Maya, Inca – up in smoke. After all, it was the devil’s work, according to noted philosopher and general deep thinker Friar de Landa, and his gang of holier-than-thou robed morons.
As Carl Sagan once remarked, if we’d preserved the knowledge that has been deliberately destroyed, we’d have had 747s flying around by the fourteenth century.
The Inquisition certainly thought it was representative of Christianity. The founder, Dominic de Guzman – as sick a puppy as ever lived – has been revered as St. Dominic these last centuries, and is also the founder of the Dominican order. (Sainthood doesn’t arrive randomly in a crackerjacks box. Somebody at headquarters must believe you did rather better than merely all right.) The Inquisition got established and operated with the absolute imprimatur and support of the papacy throughout its history. Seems pretty Christian to me. Its ranks have produced more than one pope, right up through the present one. (They don’t burn people at the stake any more, but Joe Ratzinger, endearing teddy-bear that he is, has excommunicated several folks during his term as chief inquisitor. Excommunication, to a believer, is not funny. It is an eternity of burning at that stake, no hope of reprieve: you can’t die and make it stop.)
I just regret the loss of knowledge.
[...] The Aztecs might have been noble, but they were also savages *UPDATED* [...]
Tiresias, I have to admit some confusion when you assert that you aren’t sure how to determine if one culture is better than another, then immediately begin condemning Christianity for not properly preserving the remnants of those other cultures that you’re not qualified to judge.
Perhaps you could you discuss with us the basis of your judgements regarding Christianity’s lacks? Can you tell us how you have determined that your take on the Church is “better” than, say, mine or Danny’s? What’s the moral basis from which you condemn it?
As for Sagan’s surmise that had Alexandria and Ephesus not gone up in smoke, we’d have been flying around in 747s by the 14th century: LOL. Now there’s a scientific assertion! He had no idea what knowledge was lost, but he was certain that because of it Bolognese and Istanbulis would have jetting back and forth on business trips in 1350. Don’t you just love it when an atheist takes something on faith?
P.S. There is always a hope of relief for an excommunicant: recant and seek absolution. But then you’ve always known that. I think your problem is with the recanting.
What’s the moral basis from which you condemn it?
My take is always thus: Strength and Honor.
Even had the ‘technology’ and ‘knowledge’ been obtained from “Ancient Sources”, that would be the same as freaking James T Kirk giving nuclear fusion and anti-matter technology to a bunch of cannibalistic, warmongering, fear mongering tribals
Technology is not equivalent to civilization. It doesn’t mean they have the social, civilizational, or government institutions to make use of that technology. Technological advances have always paralleled social advances. When those two are skewed apart, you don’t get either.
Michael Z Williamson’s “Contact with Chaos” did a good job writing about a First Contact situation with a less technologically advanced world of sentients by humanity. The lesson of wisdom is never “do we have this specific goody we call ‘technological progress’”. The lesson of wisdom has always been and will always be, to what extent can the entirety of a people use their power responsibility and with the least harmful ramifications on others and themselves.
Tiresias, I echo Charles’ comments about the Roman Catholic Church (for the record, I am not Roman Catholic) and would like to add some additional questions since you seem to be very well informed on the subject….
1) Where did you get the idea that Christians had anything to do with burning the library of Alexandria? The only burnings of which I am aware are under Julius Caesar (by accident) and by the Muslims when they ransacked Alexandria. Please educate me.
2) Who was the Pope that authorized the Spanish and Portuguese inquisitions and how many people are estimated to have died in those inquisitions?
3) How long ago did those inquisitions occur…and why?
4) How many other cultures are known to have destroyed all remnants and religious symbols of the cultures they conquered? Do you have any examples?
gpc31, it happens that I’m a subscriber to “First Things” and did read the essay you referred to. You’re right, it’s dense stuff that bears more than casual–or one-time–reading.
I very much appreciate the thought. Thank you!
Charles, I have skimmed gpc31′s excellent linked essay and concur…it will require a much more thoughtful reading.
The essay does evoke G.K. Chesterton’s following insight into Christianity: it was totally counter-intuitive to all religious ideas of the time, which worshiped and demanded submission to all-powerful deities in exchange for power granted. Yet, in Christianity, the object of worship was submission to the weakest members of society, a woman and a baby, the de-emphasis of material wealth, and the knowledge that one’s earthly reward was persecution: hardly a compelling message at face value, don’t you think?
Some religious commentators claim that this is why the Jewish leadership was so resistant to the image of Jesus as Messiah: they were expecting a warlord that would help them triumph over their enemies. That fallible human beings fail to live up to the ideals of the Christian religion is the whole point of the exercise, isn’t it? It isn’t that Christianity makes people “good”, it is that it shows people how to make themselves “better” than they would otherwise be.
Charles, having determined that we cannot in fact determine which culture is “better” than another, is it much of a leap to therefore conclude that wantonly destroying any of them – before you know anything about them – might be a bad thing? Particularly when the justification for the destruction is something along the lines of: “oh, well.. they were inspired by the devil – burn all their books!”
I don’t believe you believe that this forms much of a defensible justification for much of anything.
Danny – wow, #1 – how much of an answer do you want? As I said, Christianity may or may not have been involved in the destruction of Alexandria, no one quite knows, but – okay: here goes!
The conflict of contradictory opinion about what became of the library has its origins in the fact that no one knows (A) what the library looked like, or (B) the topography of the Museum. (The library was part of a complex of buildings – which also most people don’t seem to know.) The discussion has always focused on two questions: (A) was the library a separate building, or should we identify it with (meaning, inside) the Museum?, and (B) was it or was it not within the royal palace?
Strabo lists the buildings that make up the Museum – and does not mention a separate library building. (Stromata XVII, I, 8 ) Both Strabo and Tzertzes in his De comoedia (Koster edition, p.43) clearly locate the library ‘inside the palace’ (entos ton anaktoron) as opposed to, for example, the Serapeum, which was ‘outside.’
Disagreement arises because certain of our sources – Gellius, Plutarch, Ammianus Marcellinus – contain references to a ‘fire’ in the ‘great library.’ These references are tough to buy into, and are of very doubtful validity.
Because – Strabo’s account of the plan of the Museum lacks nothing. Here (as in Ramses’ ‘sacred library’) the shelves were evidently arranged along a covered walkway, in the recesses that gave off from it. The same conclusion follows if we consider the plan of the library at Pergamum, unquestionably (so Canfora says, and I agree with him) modeled on the Alexandrian Museum. Here the ‘library’ did not consist of a separate room. And in the ‘daughter’ library in the Serapium in Alexandria the books were arranged on shelves beneath the porticoes, where (Aphthonius explains) ‘those who loved reading’ were able to consult them freely.
The covered walkway was not a mere alley or hallway – but a broad roofed passage. Every niche or recess must have been packed with scrolls, probably devoted to a particular class of author. In the course of time collections of scrolls were probably stored elsewhere, too, the necessary space being made available in the precincts of the Museum’s chief buildings (two large, some small) as well.
Any fire which destroyed the scrolls would therefore have been likely to reduce the buildings to ashes. There is no record whatever of any such catastrophe. Strabo visited the buildings, worked in them, described them – and he was there twenty years after Caesar’s campaign.
Now – this is not to say that there was no fire. But:
A) since the spread of the fire is clearly traced in surviving sources, and since we know such fire as there was started in the port, and developed around the port, attempts have been made (completely contradicting what Strabo and Tzetzes explicitly tell us about its location) to locate the library near the port. (The question of why those in the palace and the Museum – those most likely to use such a thing as a library – would have left themselves a cross-town hike to get there is just not addressed.) And,
B) since the Museum itself continued in its calmly prosperous existence, and since an unbroken series of literary sources and documents (beginning with Strabo) assure us of its thriving and uninterrupted career, some scholars have come to think perhaps there was a library – which burned – separate and distinct from the Museum buildings.
The problem with this is that Strabo’s pretty damned good. His topographical descriptions have proved extremely accurate wherever it’s been possible to verify them against on-the-ground evidence. And, interestingly, none of the sources on which the more modern idea of a library fire have been based – Seneca, Dion, Gellius, Orosius or Ammianus – speak of a fire in the library – they speak of scrolls having been burned. Caesar does not mention a fire at all, nor does Cicero even after Caesar’s death.
Here is where it would be great to know what the damn thing looked like! Fraser, auther of the monumental Ptolemaic Alexandria (Oxford, 1972 – and an outrageous good book) went back to first principles, and studied Alexandria’s topography. He took the question back to the beginning: the fact that Strabo nowhere mentions a separate library building distinct from the rest of the museum. He also noted that no such building was to be found at Pergamum, either – where there’s enough left to reconstruct the ground plan. And therefore, as Pergamum was based upon Alexandria, he concluded – with splendid scholarly caution – that he tended to favor the idea that the ‘library’ should be understood in accordance with the first meaning of bibliotheka as consisting of all the bookshelves located in the Museum precincts.
Bertrand Hemmerdinger (Bollettino dei classico, III, 6, 1985 pp. 76-77) has brought together and commented upon all the documentary and literary evidence (Papyrus Merton, 19, and papyrun Oxyrhyncus, 2192; Suetonius; etc., etc. you-don’t-care-who, blah-blah-blah – the Museum flourished with no interruption. Therefore, no disastrous loss of books during Caesar’s campaign, therefore no fire – and he rejects without discussion those who say there was.
There was, in short, no fire started either on purpose or by accident by Julius Caesar that had anything to do with the library. It’s a great scene in Caesar and Cleopatra and I’ll watch Vivien Leigh any day – but it ain’t history.
Okay. Christians. Gibbon – (1938 edition, vol. III, pp. 520-521.) Archbishop Theophilus attacking the Serapium – and this one scene can stand for many others. (Please don’t argue that the Christians never burned books, Danny.) Gibbon relates with gentlemanly disgust, that Theophilus:
“… proceeded to demolish the temple of Serapis, without any other difficulties than those which he found in the weight and solidity of the materials (a reference to the fact that Theophilus’ conscience apparently gave him no difficulties whatsoever) but these obstacles proved so insuperable that he was obliged to leave the foundations; and to content himself with reducing the edifice itself to a heap of rubbish, a part of which was soon afterwards cleared away to make room for a church, erected in honour of the Christian martyrs. The valuable library of Alexandria was pillaged or destroyed; and near twenty years afterwards, the appearance of the empty shelves excited the regret and indignation of every spectator, whose mind was not wholly darkened by religious prejudice (the reference is to Orosius)… While the images and vases of gold and silver were carefully melted, and those of a less valuable metal were contemptuously broken, and cast into the streets…”
“The burning of books was part of the advent and imposition of Christianity.” (Luciano Canfora, University of California edition, p. 192)
Malalas, chronicler of Antioch describes a scene under Justinian and his bishops: “In the month of June of the same indiction, several Greeks (by which he meant ‘pagans’) were arrested and taken forcibly from place to place, and their books were burned in the Kynegion, and so were the images and structures of their miserable gods.” (Bonn edition, p. 491) (The ‘kynegion’ was the place where the corpses of those executed were flung.)
So I’ll stick with my statement that Christian involvement in the destruction of the library at Alexandria is unknown – but entirely likely, in view of their behavior elsewhere.
My answers to your other questions better be shorter than this!
Particularly when the justification for the destruction is something along the lines of: “oh, well.. they were inspired by the devil – burn all their books!”
If you don’t like it, do something about it. There’s no point relying upon God or a power corrupt aristocracy to do these things for you. You have to do them yourself. Or have a nation that has a leadership willingly to get it done utilizing national resources, national and cultural resources even.
but entirely likely, in view of their behavior elsewhere.
In view of the behavior of Islam, it is entirely likely that having created enough instability in Egypt, they had either caused directly, by looting and appropriation, the Library of Alexander’s destruction or indirectly created enough havoc in Constantine’s Christian Empire that somebody else’s faction went and started a city power play that resulted in the Library’s contents disappearing.
Of course, this guilt by Association relies upon the Spanish political and religious partnership, aka the Inquisition, to constitute “Christianity”. As if the Spanish had been calling the shots during those Ancient Times.
You act as if this is true, Tiresias, because you want it to be true, because your ‘claims’ relies upon this association.
Of course, this associate is more smoke than substance.
And if you can’t do them yourself and lack a nation to do such, then complaining about the past here does, conveniently, nothing to advance either your agenda or even your point.
Sorry, I wasn’t aware that we had “in fact” determined that we cannot determine which culture is better than another.
As to why it would be a “bad” thing to “wantonly destroy” them, I’m at sea here. Isn’t “bad” one of those things that we, in fact, cannot determine, since bad implies the existence of something better, and you’ve already unilaterally declared we cannot know when something is better?
By the way, “Oh, well, they were inspired by the devil—burn all their books!” is simply the practice of that culture. It is, as you said above, “their culture, not yours. Their beliefs served them well for millennia.”
So, you’ve put yourself in an odd position: When you deny that I can plausibly say one culture is better than another, you also deny yourself a leg to stand on when it comes to criticizing ANY culture. You don’t like book burning? A shame. I do. And there is simply no way your dislike of it is any “better” than my affection for it.
Danny – #2 & #3 run together, so here:
The Holy Inquisition formally began in 1184 under Pope Lucius III (born Ubaldo Allucingoli in Lucca, Italy), and it was started to crush the popular movement of Catharism. Urban III, Gregory VIII, Clement III, and Celestine III all signed on, but all were pretty short-termers, and didn’t really last long enough for much impact. Innocent III (a fairly ironic title for Lotario dei Conti de Segni) ascended to the throne of Peter in 1198, and things took off.
The Inquisition took rather genteel steps at first – the use of torture to extract confessions was not officially sanctioned until 1215, at the fourth Lateran Council – but two developments served to get it moving.
development #1: in 1199 Innocent decreed that all property belonging to a convicted heretic would henceforth be (ahem) forfeited to the church. The church then shared it with both local officials, and whoever turned the heretic in. (Like your neighbor’s farm? Here’s how to get it…)
development #2: Dominic de Guzman. The rise of the Dominican order. Saint Dominic himself will live forever for announcing to the Cathars: “For many years I have exhorted you in vain, with gentleness, preaching, praying, weeping. But according to the proverb of my country (Spain), ‘where blessings can accomplish nothing, blows may avail.’” (Otto Friedrich, The End Of The Word: A History. NY, Coward, McCann & Geohegn, 1982, p. 74)
It would appear that sainthood comes in a variety of flavors. With the founding of Dominic’s holy order of friars the Inquisition was ready to get going, and Innocent’s annoyance with the Cathars provided the vehicle. It’s important to remember, so we don’t grow inured to the horror of the historical accounts, that the perpetrators of the Inquisition – the torturers, informers, and those who commanded them – were ecclesiastics of one rank or another. Men of God: popes, bishops, friars, priests.
So – in 1209 Innocent III, pissed beyond enduring, called a crusade, and the knighthood of northern Europe flocked to his banner. This was a somewhat odd crusade: it was against fellow Christians. They were Cathars, and heretics, true – but they were Christian. Innocent dispensed the usual blah-blah-blah – take part and your sins were remitted, your indulgences were indulged, a place awaits in heaven, your excrement doesn’t stink – the usual.
And, led by Simon de Montfort, away they went, into the Languedoc region, which is now part of France and spills a little into what is now Spain, but at the time belonged to no one. The Inquisition went with the army, and the crusade lasted for forty years. Forty years of patient slaughter, during which they tortured and burned – for the good of their souls, of course – men, women, and children.
A small sample, courtesy of Dr. Friedrich again, translating from one Brother Guillaume, who was there. (p. 85) “In 1234, the canonization of Saint Dominic was finally proclaimed in Toulouse (by Pope Gregory IX), and Bishop Raymond de Fauga was washing his hands in preparation for dinner when he heard the rumour that a fever-ridden old woman in a nearby house was about to undergo the Cathar ritual. The bishop hurried to her bedside and managed to convince her that he was a friend, then interrogated her on her beliefs, then denounced her as a heretic. He called on her to recant. She refused. The bishop thereupon had her bed carried out into a nearby field, and there she was burned.After the bishop and the friars and their companions had seen the business completed, they returned to the refectory and, giving thanks to God and the Blessed Dominic, ate with rejoicing what had been prepared for them.” Not much room for the squeamish.
The justification for this behavior came from St. Augustine, who reasoned that if torture was appropriate for those who broke the laws of men, then of course it was even more fitting for those who broke the laws of God. (P. Johnson, A History of Christianity, NY, Simon & Schuster, 1976, pp. 116-17)
After nearly 400 years some ecclesiastics began to appreciate how insane all this was. Consider the epiphany of one Frederick Spee: “Torture fills our Germany with witches and unheard-of wickedness, and not only Germany… If all of us have not confessed ourselves witches that is only because we have not all been tortured.” (Friedrich Spee, Cautio Criminalis, 1631)
How long did it go on? The church did not officially condemn the use of torture until the bull of Pope Pius VII in 1816. The Spanish Inquisition did not cease its persecution of heretics until 1834. The last auto-da-fe took place in Mexico in 1850. (The auto-de-fe was the public spectacle at which heretics were sentenced and burned, for the edification and instruction of any backsliders in the crowd.) Or maybe just for their jollies, I don’t know. So that’s 666 years, appropriately enough, if you go in for that sort of thing.
It’s gone under different names, but it was the Inquisition until 1898, after which for a while it became “The Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition,” which was a bit of a mouthful, so it was very quickly changed to “The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,” which it remains.
How many did it kill – who knows? Where do you draw the line between who was killed by a soldier, and who was killed for the good of his soul by a friar among, for example, the Aztec, the Inca, or the Indians in Florida or the islands? It wasn’t all public. Over 600 years – inlcuding the New World, north, central, and south, plus Africa and the Pacific islands – who knows?
Well put, Danny. Your first line pretty much sums up Islam.
I loved watching smart, intelligent, informed people argue. It’s like watching a tennis match of the mind. Thank you, guys!
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2) Who was the Pope that authorized the Spanish and Portuguese inquisitions and how many people are estimated to have died in those inquisitions?
Generally, Tiresias’ answer is that some Pope, Innocent or not, that died long before the Spaniards started parting from Church doctrine politically and spiritually, gave those authorizations.
Of course, Catholic Papal authorization is not based upon dead people’s canons, but upon the acceptance of the live one. Especially when it came for the Spanish Inquisition, which had to be continually authorized. Thus for Tiresias to render a verdict on the Catholic Church’s perspective and the Jesuits’ perspectives (who manned the Papal Inquisition) on the Spanish Inquisition, he would have to find either active collusion or political and doctrinal authorization of the Spanish Inquisition. However, by that time around 1600, the Spanish Inquisition had broken politically and spiritually with the Papal authority. Spain had the armies and the Pope did not have the requisite military or spiritual influence to tell them otherwise. This is a degree of separation. One party no longer has direct influence on the other party’s actions, and wouldn’t have even without this Spanish policy of combining religion and state.
So, T had to go into the past for authorizations. I wouldn’t call that very optimal, however.
Even though Spain never went so far as to create a separate church, Spanish hidalgos and priests were under Spanish political control, not Papal authority. Whatever previous Popes authorized for the Crusade, against Muslims, was rejected as necessary by a great contingent of the Papal Inquisition for domestic affairs: they weren’t the ones chasing Muslims or Jews out of Spain. Of course, that’s not what you want to find if you want to find a verdict against the Church on this score. So you have to dig deeper, somewhere else.
Some religious commentators claim that this is why the Jewish leadership was so resistant to the image of Jesus as Messiah: they were expecting a warlord that would help them triumph over their enemies.
The normal Jewish relationship with the heathen Romans were more or less rebellion of the Jews due to religious causes met by Roman slaughter of the Jewish villages in the thousands upon thousands. I suppose the Jews were much like Ayers and the Black Panthers, until they started listening to saner individual in question, even if he was of divine origin.
before you know anything about them – might be a bad thing?
Calling something a bad thing and attributing that bad thing to Christianity itself, are two degrees of connections removed (at least), as opposed to a zero degree of separation: a direct connection. Getting sloppy about finding preferred narratives and fudging the degree of indirect connection involved, does not produce good research or conclusions. Anybody can be found guilty of anything once you can skip around the time stream and bring all their ancestors and future descendents into the court: white privilege, institutional racism, white genocide of everybody else, etc. That’s called a witch hunt, and while the Christians had some knowledge of this, doesn’t mean you should preserve it through active renewal, Tiresias.
Of course, that’s already known here about the problems with circumstantial evidence. But what is one to do when one has a conclusion set out in advance and evidence is required to prop it up? Some shortcuts must be made. I understand that.
How long did it go on? The church did not officially condemn the use of torture until the bull of Pope Pius VII in 1816.
So, let’s see here. The Church, from T’s perspective, was supposed to have ultimate control over secular and religious doctrines and policies for all European colonial powers: which included the authorization of torture or no torture. Wrong, but that’s beside the point. Also from T’s perspective we are supposed to believe that the Spanish Inquisition is equivalent to Christianity because the Papal Inquisition lasted longer, started earlier, and did not touch the Aztecs. Then we are supposed to believe that because the Spanish are under the control of the Church, which T blamed the Church for not actively controlling much of anything in Spain, we are additionally to believe that Christianity led to the burning of heathen cultural symbols and records in South America. Then we are to believe that because Christianity’s record in South America is thus, it is also thus likely that Christianity led to the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, conveniently not in Papal or Spanish control, but at the time period primarily in Islam’s control or sphere of influence.
I suppose these suppositions and x degrees of connection/association can lead to an evidence chain, somehow, but it’s rather flimsy all in all.
It’s one thing to argue about the facts, what did or did not happen and how we can know it, but it is quite another thing to argue about how events are indications of x degrees of connection, which forms a conclusion based solely on those degrees of connection and their soundness. It doesn’t matter whether the events as chronicled, by authors concerning Christianity, happened or not. What matters is whether these suppositions concerning the degree of connection between disparate events can be legitimately utilized to form the conclusion that Christianity deserves sole mention as the sole author and responsibility for certain events Tiresias has brought up.
Tiresias claims Christianity is not the sole or alone of all causes. But who else are we to attribute moral responsibility to? The Spanish? Tiresias says the Spanish are the same as Christianity and/or their actions are informed and authorized by the Pope (Popes). Who else to blame, the Aztecs and the people they enslaved? Multicultural sensitvity here. So T can say whatever T wants, I judge only on the behavior as it exists, not the subjective preference for preffered narratives of what ‘should be true’ but really isn’t true.
The loss of knowledge just pisses me off – and far too much of it was done in the name of Christianity.
Obviously that’s why Spain and Portugal obtained so many territories in South America. They were cleansing the place of pagans in the name of the Church, and that’s why they put their national flag on all these peoples and indigenous cultures, with the Pope only authorizing the conversion of the Heathens to Christianity, and not the specific secular policies that went with it.
Also, one correction. Knowledge is defined stringently according to even the basic epistemology of various philosophies. Since you have none of the purported knowledge in question, and only have indirect clues as to whether it even existed in the first place, the entire epistemology behind your claim that what was lost was ‘knowledge’ is based upon supposition, assumptions, and circumstantial evidence. Amongst many, most even, of philosophy’s epistemology, that would only rank as high as a theory, a claim, and not as actual knowledge, things people can claim to know.
We can argue about what went on in the past, but I’ll say something about the future. It is only under Tireasias’ multicultural doctrines, whether Leftist influenced or just originally inspired, that cultural knowledge is lost and national peoples are conquered. It is not under his set of values and priorities that things like Ancient Knowledge is protected.
I do not have enough to deduce a premise concerning what had been true about Ancient Cultures or historical events, not with the degree of evidence and justification as required for true knowledge, nor do I have enough scientific perspectives to form an inductive conclusion but I do have enough material to justify the deduced premise that if Tiresias’ cultural values are what a culture places importance in, that culture will not be able to preserve their heritage or current independent status for long.
So I’m sure T is pissed about lost material and will be pissed in the future once his values cause even more lost material, this time material that had already required a high civilization’s social and economic matrix to sustain.
Where that’ll lead, I haven’t made a supposition about.
Seems pretty Christian to me.
The combination of secular and religious authority is not Christian. It is your supposition of what Christianity is. Don’t confuse the two here.
They did, however, deserve Christianity in the sense that it delivered them from cannibalism and the bloodthirstiness of the Meso-American gods.
They deserved Christianity and redemption, but not the politics of Spain, Portugal, or the rest of the European exploiters with it. Unfortunately, the Papal Church was continually losing their influence on actual secular policies, as disparate nations and kings set up their own ‘Divine Absolute Monarchies’ as substitutes. The Roman Empire on the Italian peninsula fell to barbarians and the Roman Catholic Church, also based in Rome, started becoming more and more a pawn between the Great Powers. It didn’t take decades, but several centuries, but it eventually happened. It was inevitable, because a central authority like Rome could never rule far flung colonies except with direct transportation (highways or navies) and military power. The Pope didn’t have much of the latter or the former.
though I’m not a believer in the wholesale wipe-out the Old World engaged in when it came to the New, either.
If you don’t believe it happened, why do you advocate that it did? It’s just a weird way of saying you have here.
but they certainly were the prime directors in the destruction of libraries in Lille, Ephesus, and half a dozen other places where knowledge from the ancient world was kept.
Most Young Black Americans believe Lincoln was a Democrat. Don’t talk trash about how Christianity is or was destroying history or even that people did it in Christianity’s name and not the name of greed and selfish interests, when you intentionally cut out the Benedictine Order in your prejudiced narrative of Christian history. Do you think you can rewrite or just ‘nudge’ the history that actually happened, based upon your own personal preferences for what ‘narrative’ should be accepted when conquerors and colonial exploiters should be disallowed from doing the same thing, just on a grander scale? I don’t really see what makes the Spanish worse, when it comes to the principle of the thing. You’re shifting around history with the same general purpose as they did, to further your own designs. Are they ‘worse’ because they actually went to farther extremes about it, like actually killing people and destroying their physical works? Only if the principle of actively destroying and rendering unusable knowledge is an evil thing. But if that’s an evil thing, what do you call your ‘accidental’ loss of the Benedictine Order? Is that now ‘good’ because you are using it to defeat something that is bad…
You also forgot to include Rev. Wright in your catalog of Christian ideological sins. He’s preaching the rewriting of American history and the destruction of American cultural knowledge in God’s name. Obviously that’s Christianity there. If you’re using Tiresias logic, at least, concerning multiple degrees of separation as evidence.
I just regret the loss of knowledge.
That doesn’t justify you ‘losing’ ‘accidentally’ some part of Christianity’s past while highlighting the past you think supports your claims.
Human history has always been rewritten and erased depending on the whims of the winner, the victor. The curse of Christianity seems to be that their particular ideology tends to win out more often than not in military battles. One has to wonder how that works. Whose side is God on anyways.
Sorry, I wasn’t aware that we had “in fact” determined that we cannot determine which culture is better than another.
There is one standard in which you can determine, as a comparison, which culture is better. Determine which culture is alive and dead, then assign the alive cultures more value and better status than the dead ones, simply by the objective fact that you can’t argue that a live culture is better than a dead one solely on the basis that being alive is better than being dead.
As to why it would be a “bad” thing to “wantonly destroy” them, I’m at sea here. Isn’t “bad” one of those things that we, in fact, cannot determine, since bad implies the existence of something better
Multilculturalism is not the same thing as moral relativism. Multiculturalism, being its own ideology and religion, does have a Trinity, of sorts, as well as basic dogma or doctrinal ‘truth’. As for what those things specifically are, it really depends, although not on much.
Moral relativism as often applied to Western perspectives in order to say that Westerners can’t judge because Westerners have exploited indigenous people and so indignenous people will always be better, would be an arm of multiculturalism.
As for moral relativism itself, that is often sourced from multiculturalism in that if indigenous people are superior, then the Westerner perspective must be incapable of making truthful judgments about indigenous people. Because if they did make a judgment, they would make one based upon Westerner exploitation, greed, and ‘nationalism’.
It doesn’t normally stop people from making judgments. For one thing, that’s impossible for conscious individuals. For another thing, moral relativism is by itself a judgment. So it’s logically circular to begin with. Even though multiculturalism actually has a more consistent logical pattern to its foundations of thought and scripture.
Given that Antarctica was fully covered with ice long before Cro-Magnon man evolved, or his immediate precursors, long before any land bridges from Siberia, the “accurate maps of what we now know is Antarctica 300+ years before Antarctica was “discovered” – and showing it with flowing rivers, and no snow and ice, etc., etc., etc.” is pure Pre-Columbian bullshit, including the word “accurate” (sorry, Book, but this spade needs calling). What you are doing is called inflation, inflating one culture while deflating another, in order to show how the less developed was equal to or greater than the other, usually combined with some great knowledge they supposedly had. This usually goes with the “all cultures are equal, but Western which wasn’t” that you seem to be pushing, knowingly or not. I’ve seen this so often and it sickens me.
The Mayans were 2000 BCE to about 1100 CE. Their “height” was about 250 to 950 or so CE. Egyptians, Romans, and Greeks anyone? Akkadians, Assyrians, and Sumerians, anyone? The Mayans were late bloomers comparatively. They did develop a written language, the only one, and they were great calendar makers. However, “And 26,000 years just happens to be what we call today an equinoctial precession. Now – how the hell did they know that?” They didn’t because the equinoctial precession is approximately 25,800 years, and approximate because it is variable. Thus any conclusions you derive are BS. But please make the numbers fit…like the Egyptians “knew pi to the x decimal” when what they knew was 22/7ths.
The Mayans were stargazers and developed a calendar, other cultures did the same, and emphasized what was important to them. And of course it correlates with others, what you think they had different skies and different maths (neglecting the base)? Sheesh. It is nothing more than independent discovery, like Leibniz and Newton, but not contemporaneous.
The glorious architecture of the Aztecs was nothing compared to the Cathedrals of 12th and 13th century Europe, or the architecture of the Romans or Greeks or the Chinese, the latter three prior to the height of the Mayans. Please, let’s get real here. Oh, by the way, the Romans had 50,000 miles of road, or 3.33 times that of the Aztecs, and they did it earlier. Level too.
Now as for older then Christianity, that’s a great arbitrary line, which suits you well, but me not so much. Christianity as a culture derives its lineage and history to eras as old as the Olmecs, no different than claiming a line from the Olmecs to the Aztecs. OK, they burned pagan libraries, then later tried to recreate and recover as much of that lost knowledge as possible. Did you miss this somewhere in your exacting study of the Inquisition? Great erudition by the way.
I love the Inquisition, better known as the Spanish Inquisition (no one expects…) as that is where most of the action took place given the Reconquista, but especially because it was relatively minor compared to what others did. Estimates of the death toll vary from 3000 to 60,000 (not conflating it with every Christian war or conquest, as you do), which translates to about 5 to 100 per year, granting that the real fervor was over a period of about 150 years or 20 to 400 per year. Now let’s compare that to the Islamic rule and conquest of India where the number is at its upper limit of around 60,000,000 over about 300 years. Given that I can’t separate war out of “kill those polytheists” (not to mention Buddhists, notice it isn’t in India anymore where it once flourished), let’s just say 1/10th were killed because of religion, and not by smallpox as were most Amerinids (there is proof now that that is what actually killed the Aztecs civilization, this from a Mexican study), that puts 6,000,000 versus 60,000. Or how about the 80,000 killed just for one Aztec king? I love the Inquisition because anyone that brings it up as such an unparalleled horrible event are so negative Eurocentric myopic that they amuse me to no end.
Now to European Christian culture, I am going to be very un-PC (and I’m an atheist so take that into account) beginning around Boccaccio’s Decameron (I’m biased, I love the Decameron) European culture begins to surpass every other culture. In every science, every technology, every philosophy, every art, all literature, the Europeans begin to pass up every other culture on the planet. Not in any one specific area, but in the aggregate. There is no comparison (Shakespeare rocks), and I’ve read the attempts to compare, they are ludicrous. Maybe it was the Plague that spurred it (but Asia suffered as much), or the European propensity for war, but likely it was Christianity, something about Caesar and God mixed with the European thirst for being greater than they were. After all, Europe was a backwater in wealth, a 2nd or 3rd world region compared to the rest of the Old World. I do know that the New World gave it the finances it needed to really explode.
I have to agree with Bookworm on this, man is man, subsistence-animist culture or proto-urban culture. Some just have better tools to do the job.
“The Spanish Inquisition is not Christianity. Anymore than your family are mass murderers because one of your ancestors had legal problems.”
Ymar, best quote I’ve come across in awhile. And I search constantly for good quotes.
Oh, forgot this: “As Carl Sagan once remarked, if we’d preserved the knowledge that has been deliberately destroyed, we’d have had 747s flying around by the fourteenth century.”
That is just inane, even if Carl Sagan. It is just as likely, had that knowledge been saved, that much of it was erroneous and we wouldn’t have had 747s until 2050.
Historians have a word for this kind of fallacious thinking, wish I could remember it, but I just call it “dumb ass thinking”. Works for me.
Thank you for your detailed response, Tiresias…and for everyone else’s responses to Tiresias. I learned a lot. I also recognize that there are many histories, depending upon the teller and their particular historical and value templates.
Tiresias, I had forgotten about the campaigns against the heretics in Southern Europe (Cathars and others) that reflected a power struggle in the church and ultimately led to the Protestant reformation. However, I also recognize that much of this history was promoted by Protestants and other Catholic Church opponents (such as the Freemasons) who had, let’s say, an ax to grind.
Ariel – your assessment of the ultimate body count from the inquisition squares with what I had learned, by the way. Historical views were widely conflated.
YM, decisive and incisive analysis, as always.
Ultimately, though, it comes down to people aren’t angels and societies (and religions) evolve. The question that I would like to pose is this: did Christianity make people better than they would have been without its influence?
I note, for example, that there is not one passage that I have found in Christian (New Testament) that advocates doing violence against others (unlike the Koran and Haddith, for example). I would love to know how you can address this, as I believe that Bookworm’s salon entertains the thoughtful perspectives of Christians, non-Christians, agnostics and atheists. Unfortunately, however, I have to travel for a day-and-a-half, so I will be less interactive than I want to be.
You all have beautifully made and expanded my point for me: the Native Americans weren’t plaster saints, and the Europeans weren’t red horned devils. Even now, there is healthy debate about their contributions, their knowledge, their virtues and their vices. Which gets me to my main point of all: our school children are being robbed of this excitement. They get cardboard cutouts, devoid of humanity. I’ve yet to meet a child in my children’s generation who likes history. All — and I mean all — claim it’s boring.
When I read history, I see this vast sprawling, exciting soap opera. When my kids read history, they get bland morality plays — and they’re always cast as the bad guys. It’s killing. It kills curiousity, it it kills joy, it kills self-esteem.
The excitement of this post, with people piling on historical details and opinions from a variety of viewpoints is what should be taught in schools. You don’t even need to add values, although I’m still fairly wedded to the beauties of true liberty, something neither the Aztecs nor the Spanish would recognize if you hit them on the head with it.
Well said, Book. As someone who loves history I hate to see it reduced to a form of PC pantomime.
This will contrast with Books’s describing the current morality play manner of teaching history. My uncle told me about his student teaching experience shortly after the end of WW2. In an American History course, he had set up a debate on the Civil War: North versus South, and split up the class accordingly.
The students researched their positions well, and brought committed stands to the debate. They got very involved in the debate, though perhaps too involved: they started throwing erasers at each other. My uncle said that one thing he noticed was that “the melody lingers on”: friends who had been on opposite sides of the debate looked at each other differently after the debate.
Nearly a half century after the debate, one of students in the debate sent my uncle a copy of a book he had written. In the note to my uncle inside the book cover, his former student recalled the debate- nearly a half century later. The melody DID linger on.
Which gets me to my main point of all: our school children are being robbed of this excitement.
Well, of course, Book. You wouldn’t want those little proletariat devils to get really interested in history and start studying on their own, would you? How could you maintain the fabrication of Leftist ideology if people started acquiring independent resources that have not been vetted by the One and his czars and commissars? That’s not feasible, Book. Not if you are going to further the Revolution and the Transformation of America.
Think of the Revolution. It’s for the Revolution. And the Kidz.
All — and I mean all — claim it’s boring.
Of course, it is boring. It’s designed to be that way. It is a psychiatric and psychoanalytical training device that once you get somebody’s brain to behave regularly in response to a stimuli, the brain will behave the same way in the future: aka a habit. Thus when the brain hears things like dates and histories, it’ll turn itself off and stop thinking, and because that is what it has become used to doing for years and years of a kid’s formulative (the english language needs more words) years, that kid will do the exact same thing when he starts hearing ‘history’ from beyond the walls of academia. It’s a good way of extension brainwashing effects beyond the direct control of academics through psychiatry.
The brain is like any muscle. You can learn muscle memory and so can the brain. If you don’t use a muscle at all, it starts to atrophy and such is the same for sections of the brain.
Kids like mysteries. They get curious when something is a secret or a mystery or they are told they can’t be allowed to know it.
Tell them why academics make history into a boring subject, whether due to their teachers or just the textbooks. Tell them why, and if they don’t understand, tell them that they will stay ignorant precisely because that is the intended goal. They won’t understand, because they’ll need to know a lot more about various subjects to understand the context, the reasoning. It’s the perfect secret, or at least the best way to keep a secret. A secret that requires keys from all different sorts of fields of expertise will never be exposed because the individual holding that particular piece, must require all the other pieces to understand the importance of the mystery, the secret of the secret.
It’s an Onion security effect, really. And it is just as effective.
Tiresias, I had forgotten about the campaigns against the heretics in Southern Europe (Cathars and others) that reflected a power struggle in the church and ultimately led to the Protestant reformation. However, I also recognize that much of this history was promoted by Protestants and other Catholic Church opponents (such as the Freemasons) who had, let’s say, an ax to grind.
The early Roman Catholic Church, during say the Byzantine Empire but after the Western Empire’s fall, did suppress and destroy heretical off branches of Christianity, particularly Monophysitism (sic) in Egypt and elsewhere.
I suppose some purported ‘knowledge’ was lost therein, but every time a human being dies, his knowledge and experiences are lost. It is unavoidable. It is a nice instinct to respect the past and even pine for its greatness, but that shouldn’t prevent us from becoming greater than our ancestors. Yes they had stuff. We have stuff too. So what. We’re not immortal, they’re not immortal. Somebody isn’t going to make it out of here alive. Actually, nobody will. It’s pointless trying to preserve knowledge to the exclusion of everything. YOu need live bodies to make use of it. And those live bodies will eventually die, and so will that preserved knowledge.
Maybe we have gotten to the point where the internet and its databases can provide clearer records for future historians, but in the end, these things are temporal and with a strict shelf life. Databases may exist longer than a human life, but it will eventually decay and be obliterated. That is unavoidable due to entropy. Okay, so the moral of the story is that life is short, and that’s sad. So get it over it and live it, and make sure the rest of the 6.2 whatever billion humans on this planet get a chance to live under something better than the thumb of brutal totalitarian megalomaniacs. If that means lives are lost, so be it. If that means entire cultural databases are lost, so be it. If that means entire civilizations must fall to the sword and fire, so be it. We will rebuild upon the ashes of the past regardless.
I don’t attempt to dispute much of the historical context to which Tiresias has documented for us, but I don’t need to. Again, I can target and focus on the logic and the premise/assumptions themselves, at the beginning, and thus determine what flaws, if any, exist in the conclusion without having to knock off the intervening body of evidence and justifications.
Ariel, I’m glad you liked the quote.
Cortez is pretty much what Saddam would have been back in a world where he didn’t have WMDs or armies at his back.
When the foolish rulers of the Aztecs came and offered him free gold, that’s like offering Saddam free slave girls and territories to conquer. You can’t do that and then expect ‘restraint’ on the part of megalomaniacs and mass murderers.
The Aztecs should have crushed these foreigners the first chance they did. But they didn’t. And on the second try, they failed. They also failed on the third try, coincidentally, and the ones after that.
Why? Because the Aztecs had grown decadent. Their vitality had been lost. They couldn’t defend what they got. So why did they deserve, under God, to Have It at all?
Danny
I note, for example, that there is not one passage that I have found in Christian (New Testament) that advocates doing violence against others (unlike the Koran and Haddith, for example). I would love to know how you can address this, as I believe that Bookworm’s salon entertains the thoughtful perspectives of Christians, non-Christians, agnostics and atheists.
I have not read the New Testament and cannot comment on content or interpretation. I know that there are four Gospels that are in use, but there are several others that are not or used only by smaller Christian sects. This would seem to me, a non-Christian, confusing. Which one to choose, which one carries more weight. How was it determined which church chose which one and why, setting aside the Reformation.
I digressed enough..
It seems to me that violence and victims were driven by (fill in a name/country/kingdom/village) to serve themselves at the expense of anyone who did not capitulate to the rule of day. They used the confluence of god and country/land as a stick. The absence of separating the tangible from the intangible is what and does fuel the good, bad and ugly of humanity.
On a broader scale, a few thoughts.
If I believe that we are created in God’s image, then we are all little gods with the power to create (procreate) and at the other end of the spectrum – destroy.
It’s either the misuse, corruption or total lack of enlightenment that made subjective decisions. We only have to imagine ourselves in a time and place when there was zero understanding of geography, volcanoes, earthquakes, weather systems to understand why virgins were thrown to their death to calm the volcanoes. I shudder to think how the birth of conjoined twins or any other anomaly was perceived either before or after an earthquake or flood – and how women were looked upon (feared or revered).
Trying to thread the eye of the needle and summarize. Let me say, that we came from ignorance which produced fear and that violence and behaviors were born from that fear (healthy or not or needed or not). It’s not a stretch to see the ‘fear factor’ morphed itself into the ‘word’. I do not fear a vengeful God, I fear a vengeful man.
Sorry, Ariel (#46) Wrong-o. And fairly snotty, too. Ever heard of Piri Reis? Turkish admiral, drew a map in 1513, freely admitted he drew on much earlier sources. Amazingly enough a surviving scroll from Mesoamerica seems to have been – perhaps – a source document, or a copy of a source document. I say “perhaps” because we don’t know what Reis’ sources were, he just tells us he drew on earlier maps – but 1513 would have been kind of early for it to have gotten into his hands. But this could be one, it’s very close to a match.
A letter from Lt. Colonel Harold Z. Ohlmeyer of the 8th Reconnaissance Terchnical Squadron (SAC), USAF, Wendover AFB. Massachusetts – to Professor Charles H. Hapgood, Keene, New Hampshire; dated 6 July 1960. (1960. This may be new to you. It isn’t new.)
“Subject: Admiral Piri Reis World Map
“Dear Professor Hapgood,
“Your request for Air Force evaluation of certain unusual features of the Piri Reis World Map of 1513 by this organization (8 Recon) has been reviewed.
“The claim that the lower part of the map portrays the Princess Martha Coast of Queen Maud Land Antarctica, and the Palmer Peninsula, is justified. We find this is the most logical and in all probability the correct interpretation of the map.
“The geographical detail shown in the lower part of the map agrees very remarkably with the results of the seismic profiles made across the top of the ice-cap by the Swedish-British Antarctic Expedition.
“This indicates the coastline had been mapped before it was covered by the ice-cap.
“The ice-cap in this region is now about a mile thick.
“We have no idea how the data on this map can be reconciled with the supposed state of geographical knowledge in 1513.
“Harold Z. Ohlmeyer
Lt. Colonel, USAF
Commander”
Several points – none of them, despite the weight of your authority, BS:
1. The Reis Map, which is a genuine document and not a hoax of any kind, was made at Constantinople in AD 1513.
2. It focuses on the western coast of Africa, the eastern coast of South America, and the northern coast of Antarctica.
3. Piri Reis could not have acquired his information on this latter region from contemporary explorers because Antarctica remained undiscovered until AD 1818 – which would be more than 300 years after he drew his map.
4. The ice-free coast of Queen Maud Land shown in the map is a colossal puzzle because the geological evidence confirms that the latest date it could have been surveyed and charted in an ice-free condition would have been about 4,000 BC.*
5. There is no civilization known to history that had the capacity or need to survey that coastline in the relevant period: between about 13,000 BC and 4,000 BC.
6. Piri Reis obligingly gives us a partial answer to the question of where this all came from in his (voluminous) notes written on the map itself. He tells us that he was not responsible for the original surveying and cartography. On the contrary, he admits that his role was merely that of compiler and copyist, and that the map was derived from a large number (emphasis added) of source maps.
7. One of those maps would seem to be one found in Mesoamerica.
*note – conventional wisdom held (when we were young and in third-grade geography class) that the Antarctic ice-cap is millions of years old. Research in recent years has decided that this notion is seriously flawed. The best recent evidence indicates that Queen Maud Land and the neighboring regions shown on the Reis map passed through a long ice-free period which may not have come completely to an end until about 6,000 years ago. (The period lasted from about 13,000 to 4,000 BC – according to the party headed by Dr. Jack Hough, Illinois U., et al. John G. Weiphaupt, U of Colorado et al heads a party that plumps for a shorter period, from about 7,000 BC to 4,000 BC.) This stuff can be argued about. But – the map exists.
That the Reis map is accurate was found by the Swedish-British expedition that seismically sounded the ice in Queen Maud Land and the Palmer Peninsula, and discovered that beneath the ice there were mountains and valleys – right where Reis drew (or copied) them. As Ohlmeyer admitted in his letter, the map depicts the subglacial toppography – the true profile of the land beneath the ice.
8th Recon, USAF cartographers, has archives, and you can get the letter – and it appears in many a book on the subject of cartography, not least Hapgood’s own book, Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings – Chilton Books, Philadelphia and NY, 1966.
There is an even more detailed map of which you apparently never heard, called the Oronteus Finnaeus Map. It dates from 1531, and also shows un-iced over Antarctica, with the position of the South Pole worked out (accurately, too), and mountain ranges (delineated individually, some coastal, some not), and rivers, shown flowing into the sea in an entirely natural and conventional – for Planet Earth – drainage pattern. Interestingly enough, the center of the map is largely blank, indicating (perhaps) that the central plateau may have been iced over, thought the coasts were not.
There was, for example, on the map a large river shown that flowed into the Ross Sea – where there is today an ice-shelf hundreds of feet thick. One of the Byrd Expeditions took samples of sediment (they made cores) from the bottom of the Ross Sea. The cores show the usual demarcated layers of stratification but, rather unexpectedly they found: “a number of the layers were formed of fine-grained, well-assorted sediments, such as are brought down to the sea by rivers flowing from temperate (“temperate.” That would be: “ice-free.”) lands.” (Hapgood & W.D. Urry. [Urry is the guy who invented the ionium dating method which {simple explanation} makes use of three different radioactive elements found in sea water. First cousin of carbon dating.])
In the 16th century Gerard Kremer included the Oronteus Finnaeus map in his Atlas (1569) and also depicted the Antarctic on several maps he himself drew in the same year, again drawing on unknown but older sources. Identifiable parts he depicts include Cape Dart, Cape Herlacher, the Amundsen Sea, Thurston Island in Ellsworth Land, the Fletcher Islands in the Bellinghausen Sea, Alexander I Island, the Palmer Peninsula, the Weddell Sea – oh, lots of stuff. (Ever heard of Gerard Kremer?)
Philippe Buache, 18th century French geographer was also able to publish a map of Antarctica long before the southern continent was officially “discovered.” The interesting thing about his map is that it seems to be based on source maps that are even earlier than Finnaeus or Reis. He reveals the subglacial topography of the entire continent, ice-free even in the center. He shows us a large waterway most of the way across the continent, running beside the Trans-Antarctic Mountains (there’s an imaginative name) and connecting the Ross, Weddell, and Bellinghausen Seas. This a large river, and it is why most modern atlases depict Antarctica as “East Antarctica” and “West Antarctica.”
Pure BS, right? Well, for a long time, yeah. We didn’t know his map was accurate until 1958, the IGY, when a comprehensive seismic survey was carried out. He published his map, by the way, in 1737. Did he use Mesoamerican maps as sources ? Who knows? Piri Reis probably wouldn’t have had access to Mesoamerican maps, he likely got an old Sumerian or Egyptian one from out of the Imperial Library in Constantinople – and it (just coincidentally) matches with one brought back from Central America.
So, the big problem (BS or not) for orthodox geologists when we were young was: the Buache/IGY evidence is that those landmasses do seem to have been mapped when they were ice-free. And they were apparently mapped more than once, continuously surveyed over a period of thousands of years.
I never comment. Except now.
Ymarsmacker – does a genuine historical fact ever cross your horizon? You got more opinions than Michele Obama, but I never see a reference, never see a citation, never see a quote. I often see them from Tiresias and occasionally from other people. Never from you. You are the World’s Foremost Authority, I guess, and need no references.
He never said that the church had full authority over religious and secular doctrines for colonial powers, though he’s wrong. You’re more wrong. In fact they had final authority everywhere from New England to La Paz. Don’t tell me about it now. Your unsubstantiated word and any conclusion drawn from your unsubstantiated word doesn’t do it for me. Sorry to be a cynic, I don’t think you’re the World’s Foremost Authority. Find me an account of an expedition that included regular suppression of natives, burning of temples, destruction of idols and writings that _didn’t_ include a priest or friar as active player if not prime mover.
Your comment 44 is wrong from beginning to end, you don’t know a damn thing about the history of the Inquisition. You seem to think there was a big difference between the Inquisition in Spain and elsewhere. The Inquisition in Spain had one and only one difference between it and elsewhere: in 1478 the pope, the Catholic one, not the Spanish one, issued a bull that gave Spanish sovereigns the ability on their own authority to set up tribunals in their own realms. They didn’t have to go through the church. That was the difference. And popes, Catholic ones, not Spanish ones, authorized and re-authorized it right along. In 1484 Innocent VIII issued a bull against witchcraft and sorcery throughout Europe, reauthorizing it. Torqumada became Inquisitor General of Spain to oversee all the inquisitors appointed by the sovereigns. Who do you think appointed him to that position of supremacy over all the Spanish inquisitors? Gandhi? Sixtus made him his legate, and invested him with full inquisitorial authority. Torquemada was a Dominican. In 1498 Torquemada died, and pope Alexander VI appointed Francisco Jiminez de Cisneros to be Inquisitor General. In 1501 Alex VI ordered books opposed to the authority of the church burned, assigned the Inquisiton, _the_ Inquisition, not the Spanish one as opposed to any other one, to collect them and supervise. In 1509 they went after Jews in Germany, and Julius II, non-Spanish pope, authorized Emperor Maximillian to go ahead and appoint his own people. Then in 1526 it was the turn of the Jews in Hungary to get it. In 1531 Inquisition in Portugal was recognized and affirmed, not by the Spanish pope. In 1534 your Jesuits were founded, a little late to get the good seats. In 1540 pope Paul III established the order, in 1541 he made Loyola boss, and in 1542 he established the Inquisition in Rome itself. Now we got some Jesuits at work! In 1543 we quit concentrating on Jews and non-Christians and went after heretical Christians and burned the first protestants, now that there were protestants, at the stake in Spain. We did this with the absolute authority of Paul III. 1551, Jews persecuted in Bavaria, pope Julius II authorized the persecutors. 1574, first auto-da-fe in Mexico. In 1772 the Inquisition was abolished in France. In 1808 Napoleon abolished it in Spain and Italy. Napoleon did, the church didn’t. On July 15, 1834 Queen Mother Cristina finally stated once and for all, invoking the authority Sixtus gave Spanish sovereigns in 1484, “It is declared that the tribunal of the Inquisition is definitely suppressed.” Which didn’t save the the Mexican a few years later.
But the political body that spawned the Inquisiiton survived, changed its name and function a bit as Tiresias said, though he missed a name change or two, and Ratzinger was indeed the head inquisitor before he became pope. The Congregation continues to this day, and as Wojtyla and Ratzinger were and are both staunch conservatives it has plenty to do. They burn you in the afterlife these days, not here, and once you’re in hell Mr. Martel, you don’t get to recant. If you did, hell would be empty, wouldn’t it. Wojtyla excommunicated freely, and so has Ratzinger, and they mean for you to be tortured for all time when they do it, and they believe you will be.
Gibbon said the Christians destroyed the library at Alexandria, Ymarsmacker, not Tiresias. Nobody but you suggested it was the Spanish, and you did it only to be obnoxious. And forgive my rudeness, it’s obvious he knows about a hundred times as much about it as you do. Quote! Cite! Reference! Nobody outside your immediate family, who are obligated to listen to you, cares what you think.
I would say everybody on this entire blog understood the sentence “though I’m not a believer in the wholesale wipe-out… etc.” except you. Is there anyone else out there who didn’t fully understand the sense of that? I suspect that was a deliberate misinterpretation in the interests of being clever. And obnoxious.
I don’t think he shifts history around at all. What I think is, you just don’t actually know nearly as much about it as you think you do. Everybody in this room knows you lost the argument about the Civil War a few months ago, kid, and you’re not doing well on the facts here, either.
Sorry to get somewhat personal Bookworm. I enjoy reading it, and it only rarely goads me into wishing to say something. And it’s usually the same person who provides the goad. I gave in to it this time. Shall not again.
laspy, as a practicing Roman Catholic, I’m always interested in just how much bitterness and invective people who have hard-ons against the Church will bring if you just wait patiently enough for their ranting to begin. Sooner or later the scholarly, objective mask slips and the fangs begin to glint.
First Tiresias, with his obvious issues with the Church, borne it seems over many years, sliding—inevitably—into contempt. His ludicrous contention that we cannot judge the goodness of another culture is followed almost instantly by an insistent, angry, self-contradicting judgment upon Christianity’s lack of…. goodness.
Now, you, with your self-revealing sneer. So, Wojtyla and Ratzinger were/are “conservatives?” What a silly misuse of the word. If you want to make ready to squat, at least become familiar with the terms that accurately describe what you’re squatting over: orthodox and heterodox.
Your anger—does yours have Tiresias’s longevity?—made you completely gloss over what I really said so that you could score a point. I’m quite aware that excommunicants can “burn…in the afterlife.” (So you DO believe that the Church has the power to bind? Obviously you don’t. You’re simply tut-tutting over her ability to persuade credulous followers like me that I’m condemned to Hell if I don’t recant.)
If I or somebody like Nancy Pelosi or Joe Biden really believe in Catholicism and are excommunicated, we can always do what the excommunication is designed to do: let ourselves be bitch-slapped back to Catholic reality. But please don’t shed crocodle tears over the fate of the poor dears who willfully court excommunication. They know as much as I what to do to make it go away well before Hell hoves into the picture.
(By the way, please remind us here of the names of some of the people Wojtyla and Ratzinger excommunicated, and why.)
Your slurs against Wojtyla and Ratzinger remind me of Hitchens’s dripping contempt for Mother Theresa. I don’t think that there are very many people on this planet outside of you who really believe that either man would have ever relished the prospect of somebody suffering eternally in Hell. It interests me that in your need to paint the Church in the most extreme terms, you find it necessary, as all of her self-appointed prosecutors do, to engage in some massive projections.
>>“This indicates the coastline had been mapped before it was covered by the ice-cap.>>
If this is true, I’d think it would certainly put a crimp in the global warming theory…
This has been an endlessly fascinating commentary, with such a variety of threads. I wish I had something of value to contribute!
Perhaps only this: Passionate discussions of a religious nature can often breed bitterness and hostility that lasts a long time. Take a deep breath and remember that that doesn’t have to be one of the results.
gpc31 #15:
Except that no one actually knows what Chief Seattle actually said 150 odd years ago. As the science writer Matt Ridley has noted, “The chief’s prescience, alas, is illusory….The entire speech is a work of modern fiction. It was written for an ABC television drama by a screenwriter and professor of film, Ted Perry, in 1971.”
Thank you for that. I had allowed that Chief Seattle speech to enter my cerebrum as actual fact. I am glad to know the real truth, as always.
And the discussion on the Piri Reis map was wonderful as well. I was first exposed to its existence as a teenager by Von Daniken’s “Chariots Of the Gods”. I’d forgotten about it. That map truly is one of the exciting mysteries. It doesn’t take ancient astronauts to explain it either… just an advanced seafaring civilization, probably from a southern coast of Africa or South America, now lost to history. An exciting thing to ponder.
Also, the discussions on the works of Rene Girard, and the confounding nature of Christianity’s core were illuminating.
Tieresias #27 ended with:
I just regret the loss of knowledge.
and Ymar said in #54
I suppose some purported ‘knowledge’ was lost therein, but every time a human being dies, his knowledge and experiences are lost. It is unavoidable. It is a nice instinct to respect the past and even pine for its greatness, but that shouldn’t prevent us from becoming greater than our ancestors. Yes they had stuff. We have stuff too. So what.
I find points of agreement with both. What bothers me is the deliberate destruction of knowledge, by those who “come to conquer”, meaning, destroy the culture and core of the civilization they are invading. Ymar in general is referring to the accidental loss of knowledge that occurs by death and by happenstance. I’d focus on the deliberate burnings instead, and I’d suggest that we should never accept such deliberate destruction. The manner in which Wahhabi and Taliban-like Islam seek such destruction is one main reason I am so fiercely and utterly opposed to those variants of today’s Islam.
Mike #62: “Passionate discussions of a religious nature can often breed bitterness and hostility that lasts a long time. Take a deep breath and remember that that doesn’t have to be one of the results.”
Thank you, Mike, for saying that. This has indeed been a wonderful and informative discussion, but it has also been one that is more heated than is usual at this blog. I hope that the participants, even if there’s been a little slinging and slanging here and there, recognize that this is a blog to which they are always welcome and that these discussions are meant to be stimulating, not hostile and off-putting.
In other words, I would be very saddened if any of the participants in this discussion felt it was too rough to make them want to come back.
I’d like a brief add-on to this:
Perhaps only this: Passionate discussions of a religious nature can often breed bitterness and hostility that lasts a long time. Take a deep breath and remember that that doesn’t have to be one of the results.
We lost Ellie as a result of one such passionate religious discussion. So the bitterness can be a result that drives one out. I’d hate to see it happen again with others.
If this is true, I’d think it would certainly put a crimp in the global warming theory…
I was thinking the same thing. We would have to rewrite everything we have understood about civilization as well.
Who knows, maybe nature or man is supposed to wipe the slate clean every 10 or 15,000 years to make us keep starting all over again with what we have and not what lost.
>>Who knows, maybe nature or man is supposed to wipe the slate clean every 10 or 15,000 years to make us keep starting all over again with what we have and not what lost.>>
Very good thought. Being as old as I am, I learned my religion initially from the Baltimore Catechism. Question 1. Who made me? Answer: God made me. Question 2: Why did God make me? Answer: God made me to know love and serve him in this world, in order to be happy with Him in the next.
There are so many times that I remember this – not exactly from a strictly religious point of view, but from the view that we really have no other purpose on earth. We are born, we live, we procreate and we die. So many today live by the principle that “He who dies with the most toys wins”…but really, I’ve concluded that it isn’t whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game. The final arbiter evaluates our performance after the game is ended. Cheaters never win…not in the end.
It’s the struggle that counts…what possible achievements could we attain that would truly make a difference? Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations. So many young people are spoiled because they have too much and lose their sense of drive and purpose. Maybe the almost complete destruction of the human race with whatever they’ve accomplished is just part of the picture. The Phoenix arises out of the fire…
Just think – if some disaster occurred that prevented even one generation from learning to read, we’d also have to start all over again. Reading is a skill that is not genetically passed on – it has to be taught. We assume the ability to read…once you learn to read, you can’t stop. You read the letters and the words that pass into your vision – you haven’t help yourself…but what if you couldn’t? What if all the letters looked like so much Chinese? Or Greek? or hieroglyphics? Whatever knowledge we have would be of no value whatsoever.
And think of people in the 14th-15th century – if they were suddenly transported to the present – surely they’d think we were all witches and warlords!
As a race we’re survivors. As a civilization, we’re pretty perishable, I think.
How timely for me to read the discussion and debate during the days of repentance. In my little corner of the world, we ask for forgiveness for those we have offended throughout the year (the sins of man against man) and finally, the sins we have committed against G-d. I guess in someways it covers both the believers and non believers in a deity.
Since none of us participated in the history as detailed in this thread, we should be sensitive to the residual affects.
I’m not sure non-believers can sin. If they can, how do they decide what is a sin? How can they be forgiven? If they can’t be forgiven…
No…I don’t even want to go there. What a terrible thing that would be. The sin of Judas wasn’t so much the betrayal of Jesus, as it was his despair afterwards. To sin is human – but his despair was the result of his denial or lack of faith.
I think the Catholic sacrament of Confession is a good thing. The only bad thing about it might be that it makes it too easy – too ordinary. The Jewish practice of asking forgiveness once a year might be better in some ways – it allows time for the sin to weigh a bit heavy, and then as a result, makes the soul lighter when the requirements for forgiveness are completed.
Non believers had their own style of deliverance from perceived sin. Sacrifice of animals and/or people to appease the idols.
The act of confession only has merit if your intention is to try do better. It doesn’t really serve any purpose if you are knowingly going to be a lousy person the next day. As I understand from Catholicism, forgiveness is between the individual and the priest, who is an intermediary to G-d. If correct, I think the direct approach works just as well.
And think of people in the 14th-15th century – if they were suddenly transported to the present – surely they’d think we were all witches and warlords!
With that thought in mind, imagine putting a headset blasting some awful rap music on a caveman.
btw…a small correction I forgot to add the word ‘was’
It was meant to be snotty and flippant, given all that you wrote especially the “now how did they know that?”. Unfortunately, there are areas of discourse that set off that less civil part of me, as Sadie has chastised me for before. Glad you’re a geologist and an historian. And again great erudition. However, didn’t Von Daniken make a living at inflating and conflating disparate and anomalous history through great erudition?
So we have gone from ““accurate maps of what we now know is Antarctica 300+ years before Antarctica was “discovered” – and showing it with flowing rivers, and no snow and ice, etc., etc., etc.” to small sections of coastal regions, which I will give that those regions, like Greenland during the Medieval Warm Period, have had periods of being ice free (how ice free is “ice free”? Queen Maude Land is still “ice free” in some areas, by the way). Being snotty, I of course wrote “fully” but then you wrote “Antarctica” rather than small regions of Antarctica. You also move from “accurate” to “identifiable” by the end of your comment. Vast difference in meaning, something I keyed in on at the very start of all this. And from a lot of conjecture you move to the conclusion “And they were apparently mapped more than once, continuously surveyed over a period of thousands of years” which is simply more conjecture. By the way, the word would be “continually” not “continuously”.
Here is the problem with all this, while you waxed on about Pris Re’is you forced me to waste my time to go digging to find what I sensed already, that much of this falls under the “pseudo-scholarly” rule. After going through your “forbidden history” (google it with Pris Re’is , guys, and you’ll see what I mean), and having to read another site’s execrable “this map was so accurate it could only have been done by flying machines of an ancient civilization” (anyone on Von Daniken and the plains of Nazca?) Here’s a nice quote from the Wiki :” The undisputed historical importance of the map lies in its demonstration of the extent of Portuguese exploration of the New World by approximately 1510, and in its claim to have used Columbus’s maps, otherwise lost, as a source.” Pris Re’is also claimed to have used maps going back to Alexander the Great, recent Portuguese maps (and the Portuguese had been keeping it very secret up until 1510, given Spain’s dominance in seafaring), and an Arabic source, but of course he didn’t name his sources (that was sarcasm).
This all goes back to Hapgood in the 50s and 60s, as well as Von Daniken (that guy gets around) and in 2000 a scholar by the name of George McIntosh (cartographic historian) pretty much tore Hapgood apart. Here’s another great quote: “Gregory McIntosh and other cartographers and historians who have examined the map in detail believe the resemblance of the coastline to the actual coast of Antarctica to be tenuous.” And that was 40 years after it was proven to be so highly accurate, how did they miss that? By the way, Pris Re’is annotated the map with Antarctica being hot and full of snakes. I think he also missed the water between SA and Antartica (which is a hint about the snakes), but I may be mistaken as my eyes were glazing over. But I did find out that the map wasn’t that accurate at all anywhere anymore than you would expect for the times before my eyes fully glazed.
Here is a good summary rebuttal of the Pris Re’is map .
It seems (great word to tie things together isn’t it?) Hapgood, Von Daniken, and Hancock shared the same beliefs. Good company, eh?
Now, I will give you as I bite my tongue hard and as my fingers spasm that Mesoamerican Amerinids may have found Antarctica at some point. Their diaspora was over 20,000 years to 30,000 years and it’s quite possible that some of them manned boats (seafaring goes back about 60,000 years) and took a vacation to Antarctica, maybe even when Queen Maud Land was ice free (what ever the hell that really means). And maybe just maybe they drew some maps that made it all the way to the Mayans and Aztecs 4000 to 6000 years later. And all I’ve done is conjecture, conjecture, and conjecture, because I have no idea that your claim to the existence of “accurate” Mesoamerican Antarctica maps is worth this electricity. Especially after having to research your claims to Pris Re’is. I’ll never get that time back…
My #70 was directed to Tiresias #58. Something popped on the html tags that turned my world blue, which is how I feel wasting my time on Pris Re’is (sorry, Mike, but it really isn’t much of a mystery, just pseudo-scholarly claims).
This web site that gives a good rebuttal to the mystery of Pris Re’is
Book, sorry but the html keeps popping so the reference was lost again. At least no more blue. I should have previewed first. One more try: http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/mapas_pirireis/mapaspirireis/PiriReis01.htm
I am amazed how much went on while I had to waste my time. Guess I’ll have to start at #59 and catch up. I’ll stay out of the religious discussion, even as an atheist. I’m not a religion-hating atheist, so nothing much to add to make it interesting.
>>As I understand from Catholicism, forgiveness is between the individual and the priest, who is an intermediary to G-d. If correct, I think the direct approach works just as well.>>
Sort of…but sort of not as well. That is to say, the forgiveness of sins is based on the statement of Jesus that “what you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven as well” – a contractual arrangement, so to speak. However, the Church sets the rules that forgiveness depends on “sincere contrition and a firm purpose of amendment”. In other words, your part of the bargain is that you have to really mean it when you say you intend not to sin again – even knowing that you have a weakness and probably _will_.(so if your problem is getting drunk, and you know you intend to meet the guys at the bar as soon as you walk out of the Church, your sincerity is definitely suspect – but the priest can’t know that, so while _he_ may say your sins are forgiven, I have my doubts!) The priest is just sort of a physical intermediary – makes it easier for us to focus and interpret. I suspect that saying the words out loud has a function. If the penitent has questions, they get verbal answers – which is easier and less “fudgey” than communication with a Being who doesn’t usually sound out loud and clear. The priest has to assume you fulfill the requirements, but in fact he can’t determine your sincerity unless you somehow clue him in – and most people aren’t likely to. In the end, I think it really is between you and God, but the availability of a “stand-in” makes it easier.
Still, the whole thing depends on a person knowing that there is in fact right and wrong, and a willingness to state “I’ve done wrong” – as well as “I’m not going to do it again”. It was a counselor long before counseling. (By the way, I’m of the opinion that in large part, in a secular society the psychologists have replaced priests, and serve the function of confessors for those who may rightfully feel guilty about something and can’t unload their guilt feelings)
Ariel bursts my balloon on the detailed correct mapping of Antarctica in the map drawn by Piri Reis. Oh well.
Then again, the website we were directed to claims that the Antarctica mapping is nothing more than a badly sketched section of extreme South America. I don’t really see any reason, based on reading that site, that it sketches out that either.
But if it’s not a detailed mapping of harbors, inlets and rivers of the Antarctic coast, then it’s not. Sigh. I liked the idea that a disappeared seafaring civilization gave the coastal mappings a good shot.
And, no, my reference to Von Daniken’s Chariots book does NOT mean I give his ancient astronauts mumblings any credence at all. That’s merely the book where I first stumbled across mention of the map. I may have been a naive thirteen year old, but I was never THAT naive.
First person being addressed is, I believe, clear by the remarks I quoted. The other people I addressed are below, with bold title names.
I would say everybody on this entire blog understood the sentence “though I’m not a believer in the wholesale wipe-out… etc.” except you.
I have already said what I believed. My questions were and are genuine. If you choose not to believe me, that is your choice to make. I would make a note, however, that if you feel hate, anger, and bitterness about an issue, trying to fantasize what others are thinking about the issue may not be such a wise thing to do.
Nobody but you suggested it was the Spanish
Wrong, obviously. I did not suggest it was the Spanish. I made a historical statement that Spain did not control the area in question, so it made no sense to believe that what Spain did in South America is proof that the Christians did something in Egypt some odd centuries before. Are you attempting to debate genuine historical facts now? To what purpose.
does a genuine historical fact ever cross your horizon?
Does your personal angst and gratuitous child recess taunts indicate your own personal flaws or mine?
To answer your question, no, genuine historical facts don’t override my civic awareness and treatment of human beings. Regardless of what I believe history says, I treat people as they warrant, and not according to how my emotions tell me to. What say you on this matter?
In 1501 Alex VI ordered books opposed to the authority of the church burned, assigned the Inquisiton[sic], _the_ Inquisition, not the Spanish one as opposed to any other one, to collect them and supervise.
I’m not going to believe somebody named Alex VI traveled back into the past and caused the Spanish and Portuguese to wage cultural, religious, and political war against the Americas. Nor will I believe that they traveled even farther back in the past and caused the destruction of the contents of the Library of Alexandria.
I am simply stating my position, not anyone else’s. This is the line I refuse to cross. I hold people responsible for their actions, not the actions of their descendants nor the actions of another generation. You would do well to do the same, lest a powerful aristocracy holding secular power start making you pay for the sins of your ancestors.
You are the World’s Foremost Authority, I guess, and need no references.
Have you ever asked yourself why you place such importance and dogma on references? Have you ever thought that references were for academic intellectual reasons, and not for any, say personal or emotional ones? I don’t think anyone should use references just because they think they can pile up enough facts and figures that will then automatically make their conclusion, their pet theory and interpretation about the universe and its workings, true. It doesn’t work like that all in all.
I don’t subscribe to the erroneous theory that emotions are facts and a vice a versa. Until you find an authority that claims truth on the exact conclusion you are claiming to be true, that authority is not very useful and even meaningless at times. Don’t bring it up and talk about references unless those references are relevant.
In fact they had final authority everywhere from New England to La Paz. Don’t tell me about it now.
It’s very beclowning and not becoming. Why shouldn’t I tell you you are incorrect? It is simply erroneous: to believe religious authorities have final authority over secular princes, when the religious authority doesn’t even have the military power to back it up, let alone the influence to reach across the oceans except in cases of direct missionaries or representatives. The Pope has final authority over excommunication and Catholic doctrine, and obviously Christians nations must pay attention to this, but so long as a nation has the support of its leaders and commoners (like Henry 8) not even excommunication is the FINAL AUTHORITY on secular matters.
Whatever the paper says about what is true, what is actually true depends upon the facts on the ground, not the dreams of the people sitting at the back in their thrones or pulpits. Why you refuse to believe this, I can’t hazard a guess at. You might, though.
And popes, Catholic ones, not Spanish ones, authorized and re-authorized it right along.
Let me clue you in on something, as a courtesy call. The United States has authorized and re-authorized the legitimacy of the United Nations for several decades now, President after President, Democrat or Republican. Assuming you are in the US, or at least one of the nations that is a member of the US, your logic (remember what that was?) condemns you, and you alone, to be guilty of the mass war crimes, child rape, child prostitution, human trafficking, and Rwanda esque genocides conducted by the United Nations peacekeeping, aka mercenary, forces. Because of your authorizations. I can accept the Church’s guilt in this matter, only if you accept your own. What say you.
Of course, such flimsy connections wouldn’t even stand up in a court of law or a military tribunal, but I will believe you mean what you say, if you say you authorize your own condemnation because I will take your word on it and I will believe what you say.
I’m not one to believe in the dogma, so to speak. For a lot of people, if their reference books tell them it is so, why it must be so. It’s not so, though, in many cases.
They didn’t have to go through the church. That was the difference.
Don’t contradict yourself. It’s bad form.
You seem to think there was a big difference between the Inquisition in Spain and elsewhere.
You seem to think so as well, even though you try to deny it in public. I can’t really decide which of your words to believe.
In 1484 Innocent VIII issued a bull against witchcraft and sorcery throughout Europe, reauthorizing it.
Don’t you remember what you just said. Spain didn’t have to go through the church? Make up your mind one way or another. It’s bothersome debating issues with multiple personality views.
In 1534 your Jesuits were founded
You seem to think your supposed knowledge of such things, absent any context, adequately substitutes your lack of knowledge concerning me. Here’s a clue bat: they are not my Jesuits, not my order, nor even my religion. Your prejudices told you they were. Utilizing ‘facts’ and ‘references’ doesn’t make your reaction any less knee jerk or parochial.
Which didn’t save the the Mexican a few years later.
If you want to save the Mexicans, be my guest. I give you righteous authorization to do it. I’m sure the Pope may as well, if you ask nicely.
Gibbon said the Christians destroyed the library at Alexandria, Ymarsmacker, not Tiresias.
Are you incapable of spelling my name, my little rude boy? Or is it your temper tantrum here indicative of your inner feelings and inadequate self-discipline? I can’t help you on the latter, that’s your ball and your cross. But if you require advice on the former, it is far easier to write my name if you shorten it to Y or simply Ymar.
Gibbon’s dead, btw. Tiresias isn’t. Tiresias is here speaking and claiming, not Gibbon. I don’t know what your game is, but I don’t take a dead man’s word at face value simply because the man is dead and also because another man, living, is claiming the same thing. I give priority to the living, not the dead, Ancient or not as they may be. It would be nice to have an argument with the dead, for they know much that isn’t printed in current sources. It might be nice to have an intellectual debate with Gibbon, but I’m having an argument with some people here at the moment. You’ll have to call back later if you want to cook up a deal between me and Gibbon. For one thing, I’d ask him why, if he says the Christians did so, that they wanted to destroy the library, but that’ll have to wait. Priorities, priorities.
I don’t think he shifts history around at all. What I think is, you just don’t actually know nearly as much about it as you think you do.
How much worth should I give to your biased, prejudiced, and atrociously abnoxious, puerille, and incompetent account of the issues? Am I supposed to give one iota, one scintilla of worth? What say you.
I’ll turn back your initial little cannon ball right at you, which you were so kind to lob in my direction, though it had missed and allowed me an ammunition restock. Since you believe so strongly in references and cites: where is your cite on the claim that you don’t think ‘he shifts history around at all’. And what exactly backs up this peculiar ‘thought’ of yours? And where are the footnotes or quotes or page/comment numbers for your claim that I don’t know nearly as much as you would consider to be met by your ‘academic’ standards?
Come on, I can see the conclusion. I don’t see the thesis or the body paragraphs, however. Where are they.
I gave in to it this time. Shall not again.
I suppose conducting drive bys on other people here on the internet soothes your savage beast given your inability to have a civil discussion on civil grounds, and not personal ones. The flaw is yours, most definitely, even though you try to take it out on people who aren’t responsible for that flaw. It will never be erased, not through a million years of you blaming me or the church or the Popes.
You can’t do anything to me. Maybe that’s why you didn’t say anything before. You couldn’t even make an argument that’d be convincing even to yourself. But you aren’t out for arguments. If you had wanted civility, you could have reformed your prejudices of what I thought or did not think through simple etiquette, common conversation, instead of jumping to conclusions about me using my previous work that conveniently weren’t directed at you. If you had wanted intellectual argument, you would stay the course. You don’t want either. What am I supposed to do with you given such considerations? Since I admit I don’t know the answer, you might, however.
Nobody outside your immediate family, who are obligated to listen to you, cares what you think.
I care what you think. And so do Christians of good heart, though I am not a Christian. Am I supposed to care that you don’t care what I think? Why should I. I am not the keeper of your soul. I use courtesy because I choose to do so, as a reflection of the honor I hold others in. If others choose not to do me the same favor, that is their decision, not mine. So long as they do not personally attempt to interfere in my life, I’ll leave it as that.
One of the reasons the South focused so much on politeness and decorum is due to the Code Duello. On the internet, there can be no such code, not even fighting words. You can’t make somebody act right through intimidation utilizing words alone: that’d be laughable. You’d have to physically get to them, or communicate their physical location to others that can, Islamic Jihad or simple Leftist SEIU. Still, courtesy becomes a habit once you utilize it long enough. Here’s something that is good advice, regardless of political persuasion or personal class.
Here is Grim Beorn on the subject:
Here is also Miss Manners. If anyone wishes for authority and references, she is the one to look towards
Btw, it’s very snotty and snooty even to try to compare references and authorities, as if the person with the biggest money pile holds a position of higher rank on the social ladder and thus has privileges that others do not. When people demand of me for references, I won’t give them what they want. I’ll give them Grim Beorn and Miss Manners, instead. You see, when you are being rude to me, you’re not just attacking a defenseless person. You’re attacking everyone of us that believe in the commonality of courtesy and the virtues of etiquette. You’re attacking the public body, of public discourse, and rational discussion. It is the height of gross negligence and injustice to use the tools of academic intellectual discussion, references and authorities used to clarify sources so they can be checked by all participants, in order to shutdown debate into a nagging, puerile, school yard taunting, cliquish Berkley like environment.
I could write more, but I suppose this is enough for my purposes.
To Mike D, Ariel
Passionate discussions of a religious nature can often breed bitterness and hostility that lasts a long time. Take a deep breath and remember that that doesn’t have to be one of the results.
It does, must, and always will be the result. Those that cannot separate their personal angsts, zealotry, and ideological beliefs from attacking the people that carry a different side of the issue, must be stamped down on. Regardless of their position, regardless of whether they are right or wrong, they must be sent away, for their lack of self-discipline is the greatest harbinger of the destruction of knowledge: the process of learning.
Knowledge does not exist in a vacuum. It requires people, and when we speak of people, we also automatically speak of human behavior. Knowledge requires a specific kind of human behavior in order for knowledge to be discovered, to be revealed, and to be acquired.
Those that can’t shed the hatred in their hearts for reasons of expediency, courtesy, civility, or simple human socialization needs, can go away for as long as they desire. I don’t want them here and they won’t want to be here, given their inability to control themselves in the manner which counts. Am I supposed to trust in the judgment of those who need an external controlling threat/fear/reward to keep them in check? That’s so bothersome, not to mention security risky. They can say this will be the last time, but if they can’t control themselves, what worth are their words?
In point of fact, bitterness and hostility already happened. That’s why they have the views they do. That’s why they have to attack the messenger. They can’t stay calm. It matters too much to them, enough to override common or uncommon rules of etiquette, in their impotent rage at the universe. Something has to give. And I would prefer it not to be taken out on me or my persona on the internet. I am not their stress reliever and I refuse to be treated as such. All human beings that take pride in human dignity and human rights should react in the same manner. Not all do, however, but that’s what etiquette is for. To help the people who aren’t doing so, into a more comfortable slot without sacrificing something central and vital.
What bothers me is the deliberate destruction of knowledge, by those who “come to conquer”, meaning, destroy the culture and core of the civilization they are invading.
I’ll say the same thing to you as I did for Tiresias. If it bothers you, do something to stop it. The past can’t be changed, but we’re not in the past.
It is the duty of citizens to defend themselves and their culture. Why should I or an omnipotent being like God, step in and save either side of a foreign and alien cultural war? I will give my help and aid, but there has to be something in it for me, there has to be something in my interests or the interests of my allies. Alliances are built upon mutual interests, not ideological charity. I don’t know GOd’s reasons. He may not even need one, if he isn’t sentient as Revealed Truth makes him out to be.
Not even the United States of America, in the hey day of post-WW2, with uncontested control of the skies, the land, the sea, and nuclear fusion itself, rebuilt Germany and Japan just because they could. There was a reason behind it. An interest, a payback, a reward, as well as a risk that needed to be avoided (Soviets).
Ymar in general is referring to the accidental loss of knowledge that occurs by death and by happenstance.
No, that’s not what I am referring to in general. I am referring to all loss of such things, whether by intentional or unintentional causes. The fall of Rome also disbursed Roman engineering and certain knowledge, and that was purposeful, not accidental. All end up in the same thing, and live by the same thing: the rules and limitations set on life.
We lost Ellie as a result of one such passionate religious discussion.
Wasn’t that because she didn’t like religion, those supporting it, or this blog’s support of some religious issues? If that’s the case, Ellie was lost because of Ellie. Nobody could save her from herself. Nobody has a right to even try, unless they were family or loved ones.
I should have previewed first
It was probably just a period replacing the bracket.
Sorry, Ariel (#46) Wrong-o. And fairly snotty, too.
To be very clear, I don’t approve of Ariel’s self-admitted aspect of style, aka abrasive style. He is his own person, however, so I do not feel it necessary to say anything on this matter before. But to those that would like to believe that I would approve of such tactics against Tiresias because I don’t believe Tiresias is right on some particulars, I must with forthright and honorable conduct disabuse you of such thoughts. I didn’t approve of it when used against Sadie, I didn’t approve of it when used against me, and I won’t approve its use by one person against someone I am arguing with. I do, of course, reserve the right to make such decisions for my own person, in my own conduct, when I see it fit and right. I don’t seek to obtain the rights to dictate how other people behave here, however. And given the internet, I have no power to enforce it, even if I did.
Being who doesn’t usually sound out loud and clear.
Good point suek. You know what happens when someone claims they hear voices.
(see my little story at the bottom of this post)
By the way, I’m of the opinion that in large part, in a secular society the psychologists have replaced priests, and serve the function of confessors for those who may rightfully feel guilty about something and can’t unload their guilt feelings
I think you really hit it with this comment. At the going rate of $150/hr plus psychologists are not judgmental on the right/wrong. Yes, I do understand that they want the patient to come to their own conclusions, but we both know that many cannot or will not. Wondering now if church attendance would rise if the priest was also a therapist.
As an aside, I once worked for a rabbi, who was also a psychologist. I think it helped him deal with the congregational demands and needs.
The Story:
One day at the office, a man in the middle of the day came knocking on the front door. Mind you, this was during a Michigan winter, snow up to your booty, cold and windy. Imagine when I opened the door and saw this rather large man, no coat, no shoes and wanting to see the rabbi. The rabbi had been working for a state hospital (I later found this out). The big guy managed to walk off and away from the place over a very large tract of land to have a chat. I managed to casually speak in a loud enough voice, rabbi there’s someone here to see you NOW! Rabbi walks to the door and in an everyday type of voice, turns to him and says why don’t you come into my office. I was signaled to make a call to the facility. I was an emotional a wreck (there were classrooms on the other side of the bldg. filled with kids ready to be let out). Told all the teachers to lock their doors, keep kids in until it was all clear.
The kicker on this story – I called the state hospital and tell them they’re missing a patient (physical details, etc.) and come and get him NOW! Ready for this – they wanted to know his name! I had to explain that I passed on a formal introduction and that I had 60 kids that were currently in lock down because they failed to do a head count.
Sure was glad the rabbi had the training to keep him at bay until the van arrived.
Charles, you’re tremendously defensive. One could wonder why. (In fact I did wonder why, so I went back up and read everything regarding Christianity I wrote above.)
It seems to me that what I have said is that the coming of Christianity was a not unmixed blessing to everyone else in the world where it came. I think this is demonstrable, and has in fact been demonstrated – and written about by a few people other than me. It has even been written about by several of the individual mixed blessings themselves over the centuries, even as they were engaged in destruction – Diego de Landa is far from the only one who proudly recorded his accomplishments in this line while in the very midst of accomplishing them.
I cannot believe you’ll seriously argue that the advent of Christianity often led to big trouble for indigenous peoples.
I don’t think, as a matter of history, it’s in dispute. I made, I think, one fairly unfriendly comment, in the first post, when I said (about the Aztecs): ‘Still, I’m not sure they deserved Christianity.’ I think that’s my church- unfriendliest remark. (If, as you apparently do, you regard it as unfriendly.) Most everything else comes under the heading of stating facts. Where the facts are uncertain, as in the case of Alexandria, I have said, (twice): ‘Christian involvement in the destruction of the library remains unknown.’ Gibbon – who probably knows more about it than either of us – is quite certain, he doesn’t think it’s unknown at all. Strabo – who knows more about it than anybody because he was there – says the library was still standing two decades after Caesar came and went, so it wasn’t destroyed by his actions.
The Inquisition is what it is, and again, I think it’s hard to argue about. Y seems to believe there was a big diference between the Inquisition in Spain, and that elsewhere. The text on the matter that I would say is the most widely accepted and authoritative (probably because it’s the driest – not much excitement, pure acadamia] is called: The Spanish Inquisition, by Dr. Cecil Roth. I have it in paperback, published by Norton. At any rate, Dr. R. takes, and flatly states (despite calling his book The Spanish Inquisition) that the Inquisition was the Inquisition was the Inquisition. In the version in Spain they spoke Spanish, could be appointed by local authority – and that’s pretty much the difference.
I did not invent the Inquisition to insult the church, Charles. It wasn’t me. Danny asked from whence it came, who authorized it, and how long it lasted. I answered.
You accuse laspy of having a ‘hard-on’ for the church, engaging in invective, bitterness, and ranting. Pardon me, there was zero ‘invective,’ there was zero ‘ranting,’ in that post. All he/she did was retail a list of names and dates. He/she didn’t even make ONE remark that might be unfriendly – which I admit, I did. (Oh well, maybe the crack about Gandhi could be seen as unfriendly. Funny, tho’) All he/she did was retail facts and dates regarding the Inquisition in even greater detail than I did. (Though I think he/she is wrong on one count: I don’t recall any other names for the evolving Holy Office.)
And he/she had the, I guess ‘temerity’ in your eyes, to call Wojtyla and Ratzinger conservatives. I will flatly tell you, (because I saved the issues on the occasion of Paul II’s death and have pulled them out, and they are right in front of me), that all – ALL – of the reportage on the occasion of his death (I am looking at “Time,” “People,” “US News,” the “Weekly Standard,” “National Review,” the “Economist, and a ‘special interest” special edition thing put together by someone called ‘AMI Editions’) mentions at least once in the stories on his passing that he was conservative. (‘Time’ the ‘Standard’ and the ‘Economist’ in fact call him VERY conservative. ‘Time’ even thinks it’s amusing that so many not-particularly serious Catholics who seemed to love him had absolutely no clue how adamantly opposed he was to the way they practice the religion. ‘Time’ thinks it’s terrific marketing, that his image triumphed so readily over his essential fundamentalism.) I also remember most of the TV coverage, etc., and I can’t believe you’re seriously going to hold it against laspy that he referred to Paul as ‘conservative.’ So did everybody. If laspy ‘misused’ the word, then so did everybody. But I remain uncertain where calling him thus qualifies as a ‘rant,” or a ‘hard-on,’ or even ‘bitterness.’ Perhaps I am obtuse.
Open question: Is there someone out there who is unaware that John-Paul II was considered, and Benedict XVI is considered, ‘conservative?’
In fact I see no ‘rants,’ ‘bitterness,’ ‘hard-ons,’ or even ‘obvious issues’ in anything I said, either. I didn’t retail names, dates and facts in the depth that laspy did, but I wonder how retailing historical facts and episodes qualifies in your highly defensive mind as being specimens of ‘rants,’ etc. – unless you’re highly defensive about that history.
You have glossed over several things I said so you could score a point, funny it’s a technique you don’t much like. I asserted nothing about the relative ‘goodness’ of any culture, and would not presume to do so – though I notice you have no such difficulty. I was speaking in terms of ‘value,’ ‘worth,’ and ‘knowledge passed down.’ ‘Goodness’ is a little too complex for me.
I simply remarked that a culture that has worked for millennia for those who live in and support it probably has obvious, ‘on-it’s-face’ value, and should at least be looked into before being destroyed. (And if you’re going to come down on the side of destruction of inherited knowledge, beliefs, etc. then [just for me. I only speak for myself] you’re going to need to have a somewhat better basis for doing so than: ‘they’re works of the devil!’)
And that’s the crux of what I said. I regret that so many things – buildings, statuary, books – around the world were found wanting by orthodox Christianity, and summarily destroyed. I don’t think I even called them jerks for doing it – I just regret it. (I was sarcastic about Innocent III’s ability to gurantee the Albigensian murderers a place in heaven, though, wasn’t I? Okay, maybe you can slide ‘sarcasm’ into ‘bitterness’ if you work at it.) And from this you deduce not just ‘bitterness,’ but a ‘hard-on,’ ‘anger’ and not mere anger, but ‘long-standing anger?’
The only thing you can deduce from what was said is that I regret what happened in Mesoamerica to the point where it pisses me off. (And it doesn’t even do that on a full-time basis.)Anything beyond that is a product of your own highly defensive mind. You don’t have the slightest idea what I think of, or think about, the church.
But here’s a metaphor: the fact that I think congress is shit doesn’t mean I don’t love the country.
Tiresias, I think your discussions of the lost treasures of the New World were very interesting and I certainly appreciate your diligence in citing your sources. I’m an agnostic when it comes to what treasures we may have lost from the ancient world (747s by 1350!) because I have no dog in that fight.
I do, however, have a stake in the issue of how explicitly hostile parties describe Catholicism, so I’ll respond to those of your statements that seem the most extreme.
“Knowledge frightened the hell out of them – still did as recently as my own days in catechism classes.”
As laspy would demand, “Quote! Cite! Reference!” Anecdotal resentments are not proof. However, I thought your statement revealed a long-standing antipathy toward the Church. (I’m wondering if you think there can exist Catholics who are not at all frightened by knowledge.)
“Joe Ratzinger, endearing teddy-bear that he is, has excommunicated several folks during his term as chief inquisitor. Excommunication, to a believer, is not funny. It is an eternity of burning at that stake, no hope of reprieve: you can’t die and make it stop.”
It would help your case if you could be more civil in your assertions. His name is Josef, not Joe. Who has he excommunicated (“Quote! Cite! Reference!”)? Also, as I pointed out, excommunication condemns a person to the possibility of an eternity in Hell and can be undone very simply: recant. If you are that convinced that you are right and the Church is wrong, take it like a man (or a feminist nun) and see how accounts get squared in the afterlife.
“I cannot believe you’ll seriously argue that the advent of Christianity often led to big trouble for indigenous peoples.”
Yes, big trouble, which is what happens when one culture clashes with another. No argument there. However, I suspect that a lot of Indians were kind of relieved at no longer being considered dinner.
“And he/she had the, I guess ‘temerity’ in your eyes, to call Wojtyla and Ratzinger conservatives. I will flatly tell you, (because I saved the issues on the occasion of Paul II’s death and have pulled them out, and they are right in front of me), that all – ALL – of the reportage on the occasion of his death (I am looking at “Time,” “People,” “US News,” the “Weekly Standard,” “National Review,” the “Economist, and a ’special interest” special edition thing put together by someone called ‘AMI Editions’) mentions at least once in the stories on his passing that he was conservative.”
I’ll flatly tell you right back that an appeal to authority for describing the last two popes as “conservative” just doesn’t wash. If you want to dispute my use of the proper terms, orthodox and heterodox, please explain why they are not more accurate and relevant than your ill-fitting political descriptions. (Cinderella’s sisters, anyone? “I’ll MAKE those shoes fit!) Although I know you reject the Catechism and the Magisterium, how is following core Catholic teachings “conservative?”
“‘Time’ thinks it’s terrific marketing, that his image triumphed so readily over his essential fundamentalism.”
This kind of willful misuse of terms drives me up the wall. Are you seriously saying that the secularist writers at Time have a clue as to what fundamentalism is or means? Do you? In the sense that Time uses the word, it clearly means Wojtyla and Ratzinger are the equivalent of the Rev. Barefoot Billy Buck.
All he/she did was retail a list of names and dates
Not really.
Mike D. #74,
I will admit I fell for I. Velikovsky when I was around 10-11, and about the only thing he was correct in was that the solar system was more chaotic than first imagined. After that it was downhill…
I did read Von Daniken, simply to find out what everyone was talking about. I found the same “scholarship” there that was employed by Velokovsky. I had forgotten about the Pris Re’is map, but the rebuttals are found easily now with the internet. IIRC, and without looking it up, Von Daniken used the incredulity argument regarding those incredible gylphs on the plains of Nazca with “how could they have done it without direction from above” when simple tools and geometry would suffice. The landing strip idea just made it more comical.
It would be lovely if there were evidence of a vast and sophisticated seafaring civilization long before the Sumerians. Unfortunately, there isn’t no matter how hard one tries. Perhaps the evidence someday will be otherwise, but that is the difference between possible and probable.
Ymar #76,
I do, of course, reserve the right to make such decisions for my own person, in my own conduct, when I see it fit and right.
Thank you, I believe I will do the same.
Charles Martel #79
While I begged out of the religious argument, I would agree with you that the use of “conservative” is abused here, a non sequitur. I find it abused even in political conversation, such as calling hard-line Communists of the old Politburo “conservative”. I don’t think it conveys real meaning and just muddies things.
You’re Rev. Barefoot Billy Buck comment was a LOL moment.
I asserted nothing about the relative ‘goodness’ of any culture, and would not presume to do so
But you do presume to make other judgments that, from your words, you believe to be valid.
Using those judgments to then say that the destruction of the Aztecs were less a good than an evil, because one can’t judge which culture is better so the culture of the Aztecs or their ancestors were destroyed for no good ends, is still moral relativism, if a rather extended version of it.
A person that believes there is no difference between a murderer and their victim will believe that the loss of one or the other is equally sad. Because they see no good in the execution of the murderer, nor any greater evil in the death of the victim than the death of the murderer, their judgment automatically makes them prioritize the loss of life as the single event of importance, the single event deserving of condemnation or praise.
The same methodology applies to the perspective on cultures, when cultures try to kill each other. If you don’t pick a side, then you’re apt to only blame the winning side, the side that survived, and not the side that died.
Another thing, Tiresias, while I understand and applaud you standing up for someone who stood up your side of things, is it really wise for you to try to read his mind and tell us, flat out, that you know exactly what he did or did not say, do, or think in ALL of his correspondences here? Is humility the first thing or the last thing to be sacrificed in one’s pursuit of cultural ‘knowledge’?
Thank you, I believe I will do the same.
If you are satisfied to be on their level and to receive discourtesy in kind, that’s your choice to make.
Ymar #84
Nope, just reserving the same right you reserved for yourself. So I take it you would be just as satisfied to be on their level and to give discourtesy in kind?
So I take it you would be just as satisfied to be on their level and to give discourtesy in kind?
I haven’t made that choice. When I have, I will be glad to tell the individuals involved that it is so.
I’ll get straight to the point. It is best to treat people kindly, with courtesy regardless of whether you think they deserve it or not. You don’t have to agree with them or be convinced by their claims, nor should you refrain from countering their claims, but the messenger is not the message itself. To make such a distinction and to obey it is to preserve the body of etiquette, rather than just a lot of rules and lawyering. Etiquette becomes based upon the honor and judgment and trust of individuals, rather than trust in officials or judges. It becomes a bond of community and less an adversarial environment.
You made plenty of mistakes here with your initial entrance, attacking me and others with your brand of ridicule, disguised as superior intellect and morality.
My point is very simple. When you are being discourteous to people you think deserve it, which would include your treatment of me and Sadie, not to mention Tiresias, you are not being superior. That claim is ridiculous. If you accept that you are not superior, I’ll give you grace to act as you see fit, or act as hostile and aggressive as you wish, so long as Book tolerates such, as this is her place not mine. If you don’t accept that your behavior here makes you boorish and rude, exactly as Tiresias has said, then you have violated the rules of etiquette.
Nope, just reserving the same right you reserved for yourself.
I did not make use of that right here. You have. I am not the same as you, because I wouldn’t have made the same decisions. I did not make the same decision. A commenter here specifically addressed me in a special instance and made it his business to attack me personally. Tiresias never said anything personal about you. You just thought he was ridiculously wrong and set out to prove it by treating his person like your personal toy. I strongly abject to such violations of honorable conduct.
Do you understand my point here? Or shall I provide more substance and clarification.
Ymar,
You ride a high horse, enjoy the view.
Are you attempting to give the field to me and admit that my objection to your treatment of Tiresias is both valid and true?
I wouldn’t want to misunderstand you, or accuse you of something you haven’t done.
It was meant to be snotty and flippant, given all that you wrote especially the “now how did they know that?”.
Personally, horses are better than walking, especially with the muddy floods here in the South recently. I see no reason to be prejudiced against horses. They are a noble partner of humanity.
If you don’t wish to extend basic courtesy to people you don’t want to agree with, then I hope you would kindly tell the rest of us that you have made such a decision, if you have indeed done so. It helps to reduce miscommunication, at least.
Again, Bookworm’s place, or the public space to which common and uncommon courtesy is designed to shield, is designed for people to feel safe and secure enough to air their views without personal invective being launched against them for simply stating their case that some may or may not agree with.
If one accidentally ends up being offensive and rude to others, or even if one intentionally does so for various reasons, an apology is in order. Public flaunting of the rules, taking pride in such, along with an arrogant belief that this makes you superior than the person you abuse, is not something I can condone.
I reserved the right to make decisions about courtesy or discourtesy as a mark of my personal behavior, because I am a responsible adult and it is up to me to decide, not anyone else. But even then, I would not decide to purposefully harm the public persona of an individual, even had that individual sought to do the same against me.
It seems to me that what I have said is that the coming of Christianity was a not unmixed blessing to everyone else in the world where it came. I think this is demonstrable
Well, for it to be an ‘unmixed blessing’, you would have had to have shown some of Christianity’s blessings on the Aztecs and other cultures that had lost such knowledge. I seem to be unable to find such instances. If you believe you have written such examples that have praised Christianity’s contributions that replaced the lost knowledge of foreign cultures, would you be so kind as to point it out to me/us?
Correction: mixed blessing.
Y seems to believe there was a big diference between the Inquisition in Spain, and that elsewhere. The text on the matter that I would say is the most widely accepted and authoritative (probably because it’s the driest – not much excitement, pure acadamia] is called: The Spanish Inquisition, by Dr. Cecil Roth. I have it in paperback, published by Norton. At any rate, Dr. R. takes, and flatly states (despite calling his book The Spanish Inquisition) that the Inquisition was the Inquisition was the Inquisition. In the version in Spain they spoke Spanish, could be appointed by local authority – and that’s pretty much the difference.
Not a big difference, simply enough of one to create a degree of separation. Which is why your statement about Christianity, after detailing what the Spanish had done in foreign lands, is simply untrue.
So the difference is like the difference between locally elected politicians that have to answer to the people of a state and the federal government. And you say that is a not a significant difference? Significant enough to stop a careless remark about Christianity being responsible for the Spanish political conquest and religious Inquisition?
I would say differently. There’s a big difference between community organizers from one region, say the military in Iraq, and another region, say ACORN’s recruiting offices. Big gap. Local, yes. Significant difference, nonetheless.
Ymar,
You conveniently forget that when I first came to this blog, I came in disagreement and was quickly attacked for it, and accused of things that I never wrote. You also conveniently forget that Book gave me a clean bill of health, and that Sadie understood what I meant regarding taking the “high road”. You also conveniently forget the round of character assassination on my “public persona”
you and Suek gleefully pursued. You also conveniently miss that you often do misunderstand what others write and then run with that misunderstanding. And that I have had to write over and over again clarification, which you still, willfully or not, misunderstand. As for insults, you bury yours in passive verbosity to maintain your self-declared virtue. And you never apologize, you simply become more combative.
I don’t believe I’m superior, that ‘s your fantasy turned into your reality. You deny others the right to say who you are from your writings but claim the right to say who others are? You reserve the right to be nasty, though you’ll bury it in verbosity, to others while excoriating others for claiming that same right? Really, could you be more arrogant?
Riding a high horse means inflexible, arrogant, uncompromising, tinged with hypocrisy. Unfortunately, it does not include pompous.
I guess every blog needs a self-appointed Mrs. Grundy, you’re welcome to the job. (To any others, yes I realize that was redundant.)
As for Tiresias, I thought it kinder to be cruel. Another right you seem to reserve to yourself.
This has been an interesting discussion, very informative on all sides.
I do take exception to any suggestion, and re-reading the thread there may have not been an overt suggestion, but subtle enough to categorically reject– the idea of moral equivalence.
The excesses of the Catholic church during this period of history are not a reflection on the gospel of Jesus Christ, but rather the fallen nature of man, even redeemed men.
But it also needs to be put in perspective of the times. Life was hard, dangerous and boundaries of ideas were still being sorted out. In terms of European life, what constituted treasonous behavior and what would be the appropriate penalty? What are the limits of defense to treason? When does dissent turn into treason? In a theocratic state, does heresy constitute treason?
As late as the 1700′s in America, one would be cautious of expressing a religious tenet contrary to the local community. That’s why we had the colonies we did.
Convert or die, I suspect, was a result of a misundestanding of the Great Commission, where believers are commanded to go into all the world and make disciples.
Since salvation comes through the acceptance of the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus for our sins, I’m not sure to what benefit conversion at the point of a sword was.
As the Bible became accessible to everyman, our understanding of the gospel (good news) developed. It also produced the Reformation.
As to the Christian Bible, Protestants consider both the Old and New Testaments to be God’s Words. The Old Testament pointed to the Messiah, revealed in Jesus, and the New Testament gives witness to the fulfillment of that prophecy. The four gospels tell the story from different perspectives. The remainder of the New Testament flesh out the gospels, written by Jesus’ disciples, with the exception of Acts. Most of the letters were written by Paul, who claimed direct revelation from Jesus, and was accepted by the other disciples as genuine.
The Council of Nicea established the Bible as we know it. Conspiracy theories aside, the Bible as we have it today, is a reliable, accurate guide for all people to live in fellowship with their Creator.
Convert or die, I suspect, was a result of a misunderstanding of the Great Commission, where believers are commanded to go into all the world and make disciples.
I have a problem with the word ‘misunderstanding’. I think it was pretty clear cut directive from what I have read here and my basic understanding of history from the middle ages. No elections and no objections was the political style. The operative word ‘commanded’ certainly suggests to me that those who did not want to become disciples had only two choices.
I’m not sure to what benefit conversion at the point of a sword was.
Obviously, the sword was mightier than the pen. Kidding aside, same response here as above.
The Old Testament pointed to the Messiah, revealed in Jesus, and the New Testament gives witness to the fulfillment of that prophecy.
This statement can be qualified as a truth only if one is Christian.
Holy cow, talk about a mega number of posts.
SADIE: if you’re still listening in, a little note about how Christians (and I think Jews also) consider books to be canon or not.
The official line is that we do not determine canonicity; we merely realise it. That is to say, the difference between determination and realisation is the same difference between awarding a soldier the MoH and calling President Lincoln a ‘great president’. The book was already canon, we just needed to figure it out.
The general ideas behind NT canonicity are;
(a) Was it written – or dictated – by someone with apostolic authority? The only people with apostolic authority were the Twelve Apostles and St Paul (Rabbi Shaul of Tarsus)
(b) Was it in widespread use?
(c) Was it accurate and recent?
(d) Do people regard it as God-breathed? Again, this is not determination, but merely realisation.
(e) Are there any internal contradictions with the other books of the Bible (such that cannot be harmonised)?
Note that the above doesn’t tell you whether it is really canon or not – but it will tell you whether it *isn’t*. The other ‘Gospels’ you speak of are *not* canon and have *never* been considered canon because (a) they were not from one of the Twelve or Paul, (b) was never in widespread use, (c) neither accurate nor recent, (e) flat-out contradicted what Jesus actually said and did.
It is worthwhile to note that the NT was already in a more or less recognisable form by AD 400, and a great deal of agreement between the various local churches well before that. The people had formed their own opinions on the matter, and the only book in the NT that people argued over for a really long time was the Revelation to John (hardly surprising). Every other book in the NT has had its canonicity recognised long before.
Re Brian #92: “The excesses of the Catholic church during this period of history are not a reflection on the gospel of Jesus Christ, but rather the fallen nature of man, even redeemed men.”
That, I think is an extremely important point regarding the Christian faith, its virtues (which are, and were, many) and its excesses (which, fortunately, seem confined to the past).
And again, let me return to my original point (a point I like a great deal), which is that history is a whole lot more interesting when we look at all of it, instead of just shadow figures that neatly conform to prevailing prejudices.
The Gospel of Mark says “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not (disbelieves) shall be damned (condemned).”
We (most Protestants and probably Catholics) accept that God’s Spirit draws us to the truth (the understanding that Jesus provided a means for our reconciliation with God, after our separation due to our willful disobedience.
God has chosen not to violate our free will, which has put us in this position of being spiritually dead due to that disobedience. He draws us to him through Jesus, and one of the great debates in Protestanism is whether we can resist the
Spirit (Calvinism).
Anyway, I suppose those delivering the message of Christ during that time were more than willing to pass judgment and condemn anyone refusing the message right then and there.
Though Paul made a great presentation of the gospel message on Mars Hill in Athens at an alter “To an Unknown God” in Acts 17, it didn’t include the use of any swords or even knives.
And yes, only a Christian would probably accept that the Old and New Testament is God’s revealed word.
gkong3
Mega posts, indeed. Holy cow, well that’s another subject (smiling here).
I think there is a door prize for the 100th post.
Judaism does not subscribe to canon as you describe it. This is a Christian concept or doctrine. We have the Torah. For Jews this is ‘the’ written word of G-d – period along with, of course, the 10 Commandments. In fact each and every letter in the Hebrew aleph-bet (alpha-bet) has meaning and each an assigned number as well. The very act of writing a Torah scroll is an entity unto itself. There can be no errors, no mistakes not even in one letter.
You can read about Torah on several sites.
There is also Midrash and Gamara that are an accompaniment for discussion and study purposes for the very serious (rabbis, scholars, translators, etc).
Want to win
the
prize! Ta da!
I want to thank SADIE for inspiring me, as well as Bookworm for having this site in the first place, and Tiresias, Ariel, Ymarsakar and all you other wonderful crazy posters for helping me get to this milestone. Love you all!
Where’s my door prize?
Charles: We, the little people here, were glad to do our bit so that you, the brightest star in the commenters’ firmament, could emblazon your shimmering words on our collective consciousnesseseses (whatever….).
But seriously, I’m just a little disappointed, because what I really wanted to hear (read?) from you was the “You like me! You really like me” speech, with some appropriate tears dripping across the bottom of the computer screen. Anything less leaves me feeling . . . I don’t know . . . a little emotionally cheated.
CONGRATULATIONS CHARLES MARTEL…!!!! WINNER !!!!
You can claim your prize at TA DA Central Headquarters. A lovely gift basket filled with, of course, your official TA DA Button, hand crafted by artisans, who have been funded by the goodwill and under the tutelage of the UN. Some lovely idol carvings of indeterminate tree dwellers and huggers. Yes, there’s much more, Charles. Hold on, you are being sent as an Ambassador to …. yes, Charles to… (wait a moment the phone is ringing, I am getting additional information and facts for you).
Grab your passport, keep it handy and current and just as soon as you write that check and deposit it to my Nigerian account, I can offer you riches beyond your wildest dreams.
You leave the room for just a second and bam, there goes the glory.
I don’t know what happened to Tiresias– I think still looking for Queen Maud land or some such, but Y and Ariel are in the other room arm wrestling.
Yes, Charles, you may sally forth to the fields of golden poppies where heroes recline dreaming dreams mere mortals shall never know.
After writing that, I shall join the Order of the Flagellants. Before Book requests it.
Book, if I did my part right, Charles will be shedding more than tears right now. My guess he just wet his pants laughing and knocked over his beer and will be looking for a new keyboard in his gift basket.
SADIE: Yes, I know the strict work that goes into safeguarding TaNaKh; the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. And although the scribes and the priests were doing this for the glory of G-d, I am myself thankful that the Old Testament has indeed survived incredibly – dare I say almost miraculously – intact over the centuries and millennia.
Jewish canonicity does, indeed, exist. http://www.aishdas.org/toratemet/en_canon.html says as much, at any rate. How accurate this website is, I won’t claim. But the fact remains that TaNaKh = Old Testament. The Jews did have a fairly similar idea as to what constituted canon and what did not. And of course, having two great honking stone tablets engraved with the Decalogue would tend towards Divine authorship.
Speaking of, though, the term ‘convert or die’ is a peculiarly Islamic phrase, and one would be hard-pressed indeed to find instances of this before AD 600. Just another instance where the barbarians infect our culture, what to do?
It really had nothing to do with the Great Commission, though. The command was to the *disciples* to go and make other disciples. Now, here’s a secret; Jesus had three years worth of the Twelve and many many others following Him around. They knew exactly how He made disciples (hint: it was NOT by the sword).
By saying “As the Father has sent Me, so I send you”, Jesus is as much saying that His followers (i.e. it’s our turn now) are to go and make disciples of all nations. He even specifies how they are to do so; baptise them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Again, no sword. The problem with the church was Emperor Constantine turning it into a state organ. Christ’s church was never meant to become Caesar. Bad, bad Constantine! It’s pretty obvious that when the church tries to do the state’s work, and the state tries to do the church’s work, neither church nor state get their work done.
You should be able to appreciate this: King Saul got into a lifetime of trouble due to his trying to perform Samuel’s office. Well, obviously you’re gonna have problems when you have people with police powers trying to enforce religious laws.
Bookworn: History is incredibly interesting, as long as you teach it right. It’s when you have revisionists trying to muddy the waters, argh, that’s when you feel like taking a belt and strapping the whole lot of ‘em.
But history’s also depressing as heck. Man killing man, man sieging towns, man overruns town and rapes, pillages, plunders, man setting up empires, man dying without clear succession (or even with), rinse, repeat. We’re not all that different, today, except our choices of weapons.
Damn.
Soiled pants, ruined keyboard.
SADIE. . . . . . .
gkong3,
“But history’s also depressing as heck”
It is also uplifting, full of nobility. The Indian wars in America show both the debasement of man and the nobility, on both sides…I’ve read of BIA agents who should rot in hell, and others who put their careers on the line to help the Indians in their care. It depends on where you dwell and how wide your perspective. Don’t let the evil obscure the good. Too many of the revisionists let their vision thus be obscured.