Why are JUBbers so prejudiced against the religious/religion in general?

[bankside]

I just don't think you can take the theocracy out of it.

Compare with the 1960's debate about the urban form of New York. The debate was not framed in terms of what would make God smile down on New York. The debate between Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses was not about who was anointed by God.

Also, my whole point is that the feudal class system predating the colonial period was predicated on the notion of innate immutable inborn qualities. Anyway I suspect that is something worth splitting off from this thread.

 

[Kulindahr]

Yes, I expect I would have.

And if I were there one thing I would have said is, "Kulindahr, you've already told me (well you have now; I don't know if you thought it back when you were meeting with this group) that you hold Christianity to be convincingly true. Now are you saying there is no compelling overwhelming evidence elevating it above other faiths? Because if it were convincingly true, then it would really simplify the hunt for a coherent, accurate theory of intelligent design."

I'd say that the compelling overwhelming evidence rules out almost everything except the major monotheistic claims . . . and Buddhism. Any system where the "deities" are plainly just another part of the game fails reasonability.

 

[Kulindahr]

The idea of humans as property goes back to the Divine Right of Kings and the notion that God willed everything and everyone to the King's command. If a Christian serf could be the property of his lord and master then certainly a heathen foreigner was disposable with even fewer constraints. In fact it precedes Divine Right of Kings - before that kingship was a gift of the pope. Meaning that everyone's station in life, king or duke or vassal or slave, was ultimately subject to the whim of the theocrat of the day. The church had the power to make a king over all men, and everyone's lot in life flowed from that.

Divine Right was actually the first halting reform - to claim that the right to own a nation of people was based on one's bloodline rather than approval by the pope. To proclaim a divine right to rule meant that for the first time one person had human rights, even if it was only for the king. For the first time, the king was no longer subject to the will of another man. He was only responsible to heaven, not to the pope.

It would be a while yet before the Enlightenment established human rights as the basis for our interactions, but obviously the idea caught on.

Given that there was slavery even before there was an Old Testament, this sort of falls short.

 

[xbuzzerx]

I just don't think you can take the theocracy out of it.

Compare with the 1960's debate about the urban form of New York. The debate was not framed in terms of what would make God smile down on New York. The debate between Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses was not about who was anointed by God.

Also, my whole point is that the feudal class system predating the colonial period was predicated on the notion of innate immutable inborn qualities. Anyway I suspect that is something worth splitting off from this thread.

Formal opposition to the atrocities in the Americas was born in the Catholic theologian circles--- not among secularists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_Salamanca#The_conquest_of_America

 

[Kulindahr]

But the basis of individual slavery in the western world was not predicated on the notion that the enslaved person belonged in that state due to innate, immutable inborn qualities which transmitted from generation to generation. Racialized slavery did. They were not the same thing. It is the repeated contention of apologists for the western slave trade that slavery was nothing that hadn't always been going on throughout human civilization. This is based on the false proposition that culturally adoptive, temporary economic indenturement, or other forms of slavery which allowed individuals to earn their way out and then continue on as free individuals within society was the same thing as generational propertyhood based entirely on the notion that the lesser human status of an entire race of people pre-entitled others to enslave them and all of their progeny permanently, and that giving them free status or a means of achieving it was not just undesirable, but even unnatural.

Eugenics arose in North America (and was exported to Germany) as a result of many years of early pseudoscience work in things like cranial measurement and other methods to "prove" this innate, natural order of superiority and inferiority on the basis of race between whites, Native Americans and blacks-- not on individual behavior, falling into debt, being captured in war or whatever preconditions accompanied most forms of slavery in the western world previously.

A history of the slave trade I read maintained that the racial aspect came in when Christians and Muslims agreed to stop taking each others' people captive and selling them as slaves. One aspect to that was the Muslim argument that Christians enslaved other Christians (it happened), which to Europeans tended to mean whites enslaving whites. As a result of both political agreement and common skin color, then, Europeans turned to a source that was undeniably Christian or Muslim: "dark Africa".

 

[Kulindahr]

I just don't think you can take the theocracy out of it.

Compare with the 1960's debate about the urban form of New York. The debate was not framed in terms of what would make God smile down on New York. The debate between Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses was not about who was anointed by God.

Also, my whole point is that the feudal class system predating the colonial period was predicated on the notion of innate immutable inborn qualities. Anyway I suspect that is something worth splitting off from this thread.

"Theology" was roped in to excuse a trade many Christians were trying to stamp out anyway. Black Africans were neither Muslim nor Christian, so enslaving them was legitimate politically, but for domestic consumption the big thing was that they weren't Christian. For those whose economic benefit depended on ignoring the question of why not teach them Christianity, that was sufficient justification.

As for innate immutable inborn qualities", that was another after-the fact justification of the phenomenon that large landholders with loyal retainers became the effective loci of power once the mantle of Rome collapsed in the West. As the administration of the Roman church moved in to try to maintain some sort of order in the absence of the Empire, they gave their blessing to a system that was to a large degree actually the absence of a system, and feudalism was born (arguably it was born in the Roman patronage system, but that was substantially less geographical; it lent more of a philosophical "parenthood" than a practical one).

 

[Kulindahr]

Formal opposition to the atrocities in the Americas was born in the Catholic theologian circles--- not among secularists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_Salamanca#The_conquest_of_America

I have to wonder if they drew on the early position that to hold the image of God in man legitimately subject to being property a matter of blasphemy.

 

[xbuzzerx]

I have to wonder if they drew on the early position that to hold the image of God in man legitimately subject to being property a matter of blasphemy.

My understanding is that the central question they focused on was: do Native inhabitants of the Americas have a soul. When the council concluded yes, a moral imperative was recognized to "save" and "uplift" Natives as a Christian duty, and not to kill and exploit them. Little though that may have been followed or heeded by any colonial power.

 

[Stardreamer]

Well, yes, because there was very little real religious motivation for the Crusades -- it was political. The religious motivation was on the part of those who went along.

It is why war gods exist in so many pantheons, they are really useful for stirring up and motivating the troops when you need to take something away from or keep it from the neighbors. The rulers and powers that be simply used 'God is on our side' for the same purpose. It has nothing to do with God.

 

[oakpope]

There is nothing in the Universe that is beyond comprehension or explanation by science, once sufficient evidence has been uncovered.

One question then : why does the universe exist ? Not how, but why. Try explaining this with only science...

 

[bankside]

Given that there was slavery even before there was an Old Testament, this sort of falls short.

Theocracy precedes the old testament.

 

[borg69unimatrix]

One question then : why does the universe exist ? Not how, but why. Try explaining this with only science...

Everything has it's polar opposite. Up, down, in, out, lite, heavy, dark, light, life, death, positive, negative, hot, cold, fast, slow, pressure, vacuum ... including existence and non-existent. Why shouldn't the universe exist?

You use faith to believe God exists without questioning why or how. Why can't you do the same for the universe?

 

[blackbeltninja]

One question then : why does the universe exist ? Not how, but why. Try explaining this with only science...

Well if you look at this purely from the faith angle and ask that question, what is a good answer? Because Mr G wanted a universe, and then chose to populate a single tiny planet somewhere towards the middle of it? All that power, all that whatever else this deity has, and we're it?

Admittedly without putting an inordinate amount of time into thinking about it, I'm not sure theology has any good ideas as to why we're here, either.

-d-

 

[johaninsc]

One question then : why does the universe exist ? Not how, but why. Try explaining this with only science...

it started as a harmless prank


...kinda got outta hand

 

[zoltanspawn]

It is the only internally coherent claim so far. But if it proves to be wrong, no scientist will mind, because that's the whole point of science.

I appreciate that you are saying something specific here, rather than merely being optimistic: that science can reach everything there is to be known is the only internally coherent claim so far. Do I have that right? Are you saying it's internally inconsistent to claim that science cannot reach everything there is to be known?

 

[zoltanspawn]

One question then : why does the universe exist ? Not how, but why. Try explaining this with only science...

That there is something rather than nothing was an old vexing question once upon a time.

Nowadays, we have science.

As Neil deGrasse Tyson counsels, asking deep questions will probably only lead to pointless delay in progress with the real business at hand.

 

[pat grimshaw]

Marx said God was for fools back in the 1860s. Freud deconstructed God-ism and its foolishness in the 1880s.

Only childish fools and Lapsed Catholics persist in needing gods now in the 21st century—

 

[xbuzzerx]

Marx said God was for fools back in the 1860s. Freud deconstructed God-ism and its foolishness in the 1880s.

Are you even aware of any scholarly work on any subject post-19th century?

Completely serious question.

 

[pat grimshaw]

^
I have sent you a personal reply.

 

[oakpope]

I remark that nobody has been able to answer my question. I didn't imply that I knew the answer, mind you. Just that one shouldn't treat Science as a God. Science is a marvelous tool at our disposal, but it is wisdom to know where it is weak and where it is strong.

'Only childish fools and Lapsed Catholics persist in needing gods now in the 21st century'.

Which one am I in your eyes please ? And I don't 'need' God. I believe in him because in me He is as real as a rock hitting my skull. I don't 'need' the rock to hit my head either...