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| 25 new of 293 responses total. |
rcurl
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response 247 of 293:
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Dec 18 18:19 UTC 2003 |
The Mediterranean was forested? Well, yes, when it wasn't full of water....
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jep
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response 248 of 293:
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Dec 18 18:29 UTC 2003 |
re resp:242: You could indeed state that there was/is something special
about white European Caucasians, but then I'd think you'd have to
identify that characteristic. Their general skin color is another
trait specific to Western Europeans, along with the Roman Catholic
Church. I loosely identified the Judao-Christian philosophy of self-
improvement, and their work ethic, as things that contributed to
Western European dominance. It seems more likely to me than skin
color, somehow.
re resp:245: I have no problem with that description, though I'd say
that almost all of the people who have been so dominant over the last
500 years were specifically Christian or Muslim. Almost none of them
ever even heard of Zoroaster.
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happyboy
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response 249 of 293:
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Dec 18 18:45 UTC 2003 |
but the *influence* is there anyway...sort of how most americans
prolly have no idea of who pastor ashcroft is even though he's
busy as a little fundamentalist bee taking away their rights.
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flem
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response 250 of 293:
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Dec 18 18:56 UTC 2003 |
It seems to me that there is a lot of significance in the fact that
technological progress in western europe was mostly stagnant before, and
increased rapidly after, the protestant revolution. To pick a couple of
the specific inventions in resp:232 that jep uses as evidence of the
Catholic technological prowess: The printing press was invented and
popularized by protestant men who wanted to print and distribute copies
of non-latin translations of the bible, in direct defiance of the
Catholic church. And, most of the technological progress with respect
to clocks was made by people, mostly dutch protestants, who needed it
for navigation on long sea voyages.
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rcurl
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response 251 of 293:
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Dec 18 19:46 UTC 2003 |
Re #248: it doesn't matter whether anyone has heard of Zoroaster or not.
You have probably never heard of some of your ancestors too. What is important
is what they contributed. Judeo-Christian-Islam is based in Zoroastrianism,
but they took it from there and built their own edificies upon it.
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lk
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response 252 of 293:
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Dec 18 20:57 UTC 2003 |
Is not. Jews didn't much encounter Zoroastrianism until the Babylonian
captivity, at least 600 years after Judaism was established. You aren't
thinking of Mesopotamian myths (Gilgamesh) which are recounted in the
Old Testament, are you? Or perhaps the monotheistic Pharaoh (Akhnaten)?
Flem, I'd guess that the same forces that drove the scientific renaissance
also drove the Protestant reformation. As such they'd be cousins rather
than the reformation itself directly leading to scientific breakthroughs.
Nonetheless I think this whole discussion is misguided. Europe was much
more heavily influenced by the polytheistic Greeks than by many other
things -- for better and worse. Recall that the Church was often pushing
Aristotle's teachings, and great as he may have been on some fronts, he
was nonetheless a victim of his time in scientific fields.
John, I'm not sure there is a difference in saying that someone's skin
color (or less superficially, their genetics) has less to do with this
than someone's religion. What is it about the religion that propelled this?
Did it teach to question or explore? Does it demand submission or did it
tolerate a diversity of thought?
Note: I'm not saying that genetics had anything to do with it, either.
Just that a blanket statement that religion may have somehow contributed
is not very convincing -- especially when the religion in question was
often intolerant of questioning, exploration and diversity of thought.
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bru
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response 253 of 293:
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Dec 18 23:29 UTC 2003 |
quit accusing Christians of causing warfare. Sure they did, but they were
not the only ones. The jews. islam, jainists, budhists and just about any
religion you can name have started and fought wars.
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happyboy
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response 254 of 293:
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Dec 18 23:32 UTC 2003 |
which war did the jains start, which war did *the* "budhists"
start?
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jmsaul
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response 255 of 293:
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Dec 18 23:48 UTC 2003 |
Re #241: What I'm saying (as opposed to what you may be hearing, which is
often different in a BBS conversation) is that polytheistic
societies DID overcome tribalism and practice nationalism, without
the help of Judeo-Christianity-Islam. Repeatedly. Hell, look
at Rome.
As for industrialization -- yes, that did originate in Christian
countries. The causal link is not a given, though, since there
were other factors that led to its originating in Northern Europe.
(Read _Guns, Germs, and Steel_ for more on this.)
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jep
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response 256 of 293:
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Dec 19 04:42 UTC 2003 |
re resp:252: Did you see resp:248, Leeron? Religions come with
philosophies; ways of looking at the world; standards by which to live
one's life. None of these things are genetic. They're learned. It's
certainly different to say that you were born into an environment
which encouraged innovation and personal self- and exterior
improvement, than to say you were born with those genetic tendencies
because of your skin color.
The Roman Catholic Church may have been, as you say, often intolerant
of questioning, exploring and diversity of thought, but it certainly
encouraged (among some people) very tight reasoning according to
strict rules. People spent their lifetimes developing arguments for
such questions as, "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"
They were hot issues for centuries. The logical rules turned out to
be practically useful as the basis for mathematical and scientific
arguments.
re resp:250: I have no problem with anything that you said. The
navigational clocks part didn't come along until the 18th century,
though. The monks invented mechanical clocks and then later, spring
clocks in the 13th and 14th centuries to more accurately determine the
hour of the day.
re resp:255: Joe, you can say I overstated the "nationalism" bit. I
still think my main point stands; that the Middle Eastern religions
were indispensable to the development of Western European culture;
through it, to the Industrial Revolution; and that they should not be
dismissively disparaged. Maybe another type of philosophy would have
gotten there anyway. No one knows that. What we know is, it didn't
happen that way.
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russ
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response 257 of 293:
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Dec 19 05:56 UTC 2003 |
Re #232: I strongly suggest that you read "Guns, Germs and Steel".
It is bound to make you reconsider your ideas of why the Iroquois,
or the Incas, or the Polynesians didn't take over Europe rather
than the reverse.
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keesan
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response 258 of 293:
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Dec 19 06:39 UTC 2003 |
The Chinese had clocks. Eastern Europeans have the same skin color as western
ones. So do northern Chinese. Northern Europe was supposedly settled from
western Asia. The Catholic Church may have been superficially monotheistic
but it had three gods and a lot of saints (local gods).
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lk
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response 259 of 293:
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Dec 19 07:09 UTC 2003 |
John, I saw #248 but in some sense I think "skin color" does have more
influence on a person than a religion. Who is more culturally similar?
A black and a white southern baptist or a white southern baptist and a
white Church of Christnik?
As an Israeli, I often look at Americans as terribly materialistic
(and wasteful). Is this my Jewish upbringing? Doubtful. Just look
at the NY and West Bloomfield "JAPs". Concentrate on the "A" in that.
(Just because I can pass as the "All American boy"....)
Are French, Polish and Italian Catholics more similar than a German
Catholic and a German protestant? I doubt it.
So what I'm saying is that I agree with you that there are REGIONAL
influences that shape our lives, but religion is just one component
of that. Nationality, skin color and other family/tribal customs
and traditions also have such influences.
The weight of these factors is not constant and there's going to be
a varying deviance, too. I just think you're putting too much weight
into the religious component, which (I think) you are presenting as
the major component if not the only component.
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bru
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response 260 of 293:
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Dec 19 14:40 UTC 2003 |
"western Asia. The Catholic Church may have been superficially monotheistic
but it had three gods and a lot of saints (local gods)."
keesan, where did you learn religion? This is not the christianity I learned.
If you don't understand the trinity, don't try and explain it.
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jp2
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response 261 of 293:
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Dec 19 15:32 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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jep
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response 262 of 293:
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Dec 19 16:28 UTC 2003 |
re: the book "Guns, Germs and Steel": It's been recommended twice now,
and maybe I would find it interesting, but I doubt if anyone here reads
whole books to pick up a point someone else is making about a drift
thread in a discussion item. I certainly don't.
If I were to read the book (which I may), I would then doubtless have
many questions and points to make with the author, some of which you
might address, but likely not most.
Meanwhile, why not *make a point yourself*? I am utterly unimpressed
by someone saying, in essence, "I'm not going to bother to say
anything, but I'll point you at some book, it's really good, and has
something to say; just assume whatever you find impressive is my point
and therefore that I'm really smart".
Now, if you want to invite the author here to debate his points, then
you'd have done something useful to contribute to the discussion.
Joe, at least, was supplementing his points with the book reference.
Imagine a discussion where we debate points by citing authors and
books? "I read _A Treatise on Medieval Church Influences_, what do you
say to that?" "Oh, yeah, well, _Arabic Technology Comic Books_
answered that one; read issues #111-115." What wonderful reading (and
fun) that would be. As if any of us has enough attention span to
follow an item that covers more than a day, let alone months.
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flem
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response 263 of 293:
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Dec 19 17:02 UTC 2003 |
Ironically, that is almost exactly the mode of argumentation most widely
respected by scholars during the period of Catholic dominance.
> Flem, I'd guess that the same forces that
> drove the scientific renaissance also drove
> the Protestant reformation. As such they'd be
> cousins rather than the reformation itself
> directly leading to scientific breakthroughs.
Plausible... but in either case, the Catholic church remains an active
obstacle to progress, not a facilitator thereof.
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jep
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response 264 of 293:
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Dec 19 19:43 UTC 2003 |
Flem, what were you talking about in your first paragraph? It couldn't
have been a response to resp:262, but I don't know what else it could
have related to.
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mcnally
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response 265 of 293:
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Dec 19 20:17 UTC 2003 |
re #264: it *was* a response to #262. Flem was presumably referring
to scholasticism, which Merriam-Webster's online dictionary defines as:
Main Entry: scholasticism
Pronunciation: sk&-'las-t&-"si-z&m
Function: noun
Date: circa 1782
1 : a philosophical movement dominant in western Christian
civilization from the 9th until the 17th century and combining
religious dogma with the mystical and intuitional tradition of
patristic philosophy especially of Saint Augustine and later
with Aristotelianism
For centuries, under the intellectual domination of the Church,
the scholars of western Europe mostly conducted their debates by
appeals to the philosophical works of Augustine, Aristotle, Aquinas,
(and possibly other philosophers whose names begin with the letter A, :-)
endlessly interpreting and re-interpreting the writings of accepted
authorities instead of directing their efforts towards their own
original thoughts or testing whether the authorities' claims were
verifiable.
I'm assuming flem saw similarities to that in the argument-by-appeal-
to-authority method you disdain in the last paragraph of #262.
If he didn't I certainly did..
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twenex
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response 266 of 293:
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Dec 20 01:30 UTC 2003 |
Re: 253; since Communist countries are officially atheist, atheists
started wars, too (Afghanistan (the Soviet occupation) being a case in
point.)
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russ
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response 267 of 293:
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Dec 20 04:33 UTC 2003 |
Re #239: Jared Diamond opines that one of the prerequisites for
success of a society is how well it evaluates, improves and
incorporates worthwhile new ideas and inventions - regardless of
where they come from.
Islamic societies are strongly xenophobic and do a poor job of
even understanding others. (The ancient Islamic scholars are
rightly praised for helping to preserve ancient Greek writings
in medicine and philosophy, but what most people don't realize
is that the works of great Greek playwrights were lost because
those same scholars did not see such art as useful enough to
copy, let alone translate.)
The failure of Islamic societies today is a direct consequence
of their "not-invented-here" syndrome combined with a broad
society-wide fundamentalism worse than the Amish.
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jmsaul
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response 268 of 293:
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Dec 20 06:03 UTC 2003 |
Some Islamic societies do it better than others -- look at Indonesia, for
example, or Malaysia. And while the fundamentalist ones reject outside
ideas, the comparison to the Amish is flawed because they don't reject
outside technology.
Re #262: There are strong arguments that geography and natural resources
gave Europeans an advantage in developing technology and spreading
their culture. For example, they had access to a wider range of
food crops, and had better disease immunity because of the
availability of a range of livestock. _Guns, Germs, and Steel_
develops this theory at length, and does it better than I can
summarize here. As you noted, I'm only using it to supplement
my point -- but I'm also mentioning it because I think it's a
great book, and you would enjoy it a lot.
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jp2
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response 269 of 293:
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Dec 20 13:53 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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bru
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response 270 of 293:
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Dec 20 14:30 UTC 2003 |
didn't islam come late to indonesia and malaysia? That may be part of the
reason that it ahsn't had the same impacrt as in the middle east.
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keesan
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response 271 of 293:
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Dec 20 14:56 UTC 2003 |
Many of the foods that I eat came from the Americas - corn, the common bean
(which largely replaced the blackeyed pea and fava bean even in Europe),
squash, tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, chocolate, quinoa, amaranth.
The 'better disease immunity' might refer to the fact that when people
immigrated to N. American via the Bering land bridge they no longer needed
immunity to many disease they left behind, or that many new ones developed
later in Europe and Asia due to the more crowded conditions which allowed them
to become endemic.
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