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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 293 responses total. |
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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gelinas
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response 272 of 293:
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Dec 20 15:14 UTC 2003 |
Diamond's thesis is the latter, Sindi: Crowding, in close proximity to
animals, allowed diseases to jump species. Exposure to the diseases caused
the development of immunities. However, immunity does not mean elimination.
So people could bring the germs with them without actually being sick.
Example: smallpox, which would seem to be related to cowpox (since vaccinating
with the latter provides immunity to the former).
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lk
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response 273 of 293:
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Dec 21 13:05 UTC 2003 |
To return to the original topic for a second, the AFA is conducting a
poll regarding gay marriage. I happen to think that the value of these
non-scientific internet vote-early-and-often polls is null, but since
other people may think they're important (and AFA plans to inform
Congress of their results), let them know what you think:
http://www.afa.net/petitions/marriagepoll.asp
As for book references as debate, there was the Star Trek episode where
they spoke in metaphors by relating stories. So bantering book titles
back and forth wouldn't be so odd....
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slynne
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response 274 of 293:
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Dec 21 14:35 UTC 2003 |
Do you think the AFA will really share their results with Congress if
the results show that a lot of people favor legalization of homosexual
marriage?
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twenex
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response 275 of 293:
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Dec 21 14:43 UTC 2003 |
It's by all means clear how one would actually use a language based
entirely on metaphor. How did they tell the stories that led to the
metaphors in the first place, is one question.
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jmsaul
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response 276 of 293:
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Dec 21 16:05 UTC 2003 |
Apparently, the AFA is also tampering with poll results.
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twenex
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response 277 of 293:
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Dec 21 16:11 UTC 2003 |
Of course, i meant in #275 that it's by *no* means clear.
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rcurl
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response 278 of 293:
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Dec 21 18:02 UTC 2003 |
Re #275: I had the same problem with that episode. Such a metaphoric
language seemed extremely limited in ability to communicate. There are endless
situations for which a metaphor would not be available, for example, to
discuss metaphors. Would mathematics be possible?
The news media are reporting polls showing a majority of those polled oppose
gay marriage and favor a Constitutional amendment to ban it. However the
"majority" is something like 55%, which is not enough (if translated into
congressional action and state voting) to adopt such an amendment.
It also strikes me that the purpose of the Constitution is to rein in the
passions of the majority, unless they are well seasoned over a
considerable period of time. The urge of a majority to amend the
constitution to resolve every controversy is antithetical to the nature of
a Constitution.
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jp2
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response 279 of 293:
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Dec 21 19:22 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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gelinas
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response 280 of 293:
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Dec 21 20:13 UTC 2003 |
Re 276: How can you tell? I'm not willing to give them the information they
asked for, so I won't be polled.
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remmers
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response 281 of 293:
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Dec 21 21:02 UTC 2003 |
Re #278: Right, that kind of thing doesn't belong in the Constitution.
A few years ago I was asked by a couple of lesbian friends of mine to
sign a petition to add a "right of gays to marry" amendment to the
Constitution. Although I support the concept of gay marriage, I
refused to sign, on the same grounds that I would oppose an
amendment forbidding such a right.
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