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Post by James Hannam on Feb 6, 2014 9:51:37 GMT
Hi Tim,
I'd be very happy to read a draft when you have got that far. Some flattering comments on the thread!
I think you also need a chapter on slavery and colonialism. Not, obviously, to condone either but to explain that both were driven by economics pure and simple, before which religion had little impact. It is interesting to read a book like Why Nations Fail that covers these topics and their legacy. It doesn't really mention religion at all as a factor.
Best wishes
James
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Post by sandwiches on Feb 6, 2014 19:10:55 GMT
Basic structure and topics look pretty sound. What's the selling-point? i.e. what might attract comment and reviews and discussion? How about a concluding chapter on Christianity and comparison with other philosophies/religions? Would the World have been better off without Christianity? What if the Battle of Tours had gone the other way?
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Post by timoneill on Feb 7, 2014 7:00:11 GMT
What's the selling-point? i.e. what might attract comment and reviews and discussion? "The New Atheists have got something badly wrong, and it's an atheist who is pointing it out" seems like a good marketing angle to me. What kind of comparison? On what exactly? I don't find "what ifs" very productive. They are usually just expressions of the hypothesiser's biases.
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Post by ignorantianescia on Feb 7, 2014 15:09:10 GMT
7. Hitler's Pope?The origins of the myth of "Hitler's Pope" Hitler and Religion The Concordat and the Third Reich "Ally of the Jewish War Criminals" The Vatican and the Holocaust Is "Hitler and Religion" going to be about Hitler's own religious views, how he interacted with religions or the degree to which religions cooperated with Hitler and Nazism? All these are interesting subjects of course, but the last option can be something of a minefield.
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Post by timoneill on Feb 7, 2014 19:27:08 GMT
7. Hitler's Pope?The origins of the myth of "Hitler's Pope" Hitler and Religion The Concordat and the Third Reich "Ally of the Jewish War Criminals" The Vatican and the Holocaust Is "Hitler and Religion" going to be about Hitler's own religious views, how he interacted with religions or the degree to which religions cooperated with Hitler and Nazism? All these are interesting subjects of course, but the last option can be something of a minefield. Mainly the first two. It's to address the nonsense claim that Hitler was baptised a Catholic and so was a Catholic believer. By that logic I'm a Catholic too. I'll also briefly address the myth that Hitler was an occultist or a neo-pagan and look at what he said publically about religion and Christianity, especially in his rise to power, as opposed to what he believed.
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Post by sandwiches on Feb 8, 2014 16:44:33 GMT
7. Hitler's Pope?
The origins of the myth of "Hitler's Pope" Hitler and Religion The Concordat and the Third Reich "Ally of the Jewish War Criminals" The Vatican and the Holocaust
8. Reason, Faith and History
Sorry, but your conclusion seems a bit vague. You will hate this suggestion but it needs making.
Looking at the kind of idiocy posted on the internet (All religion is evil, Christianity has been responsible for the slaughter of millions, atheism had nothing to do with Communist atrocities etc etc) I think you need to grasp the nettle.
Were the European "religious wars" of the 16th and 17th centuries about religion? Looking at the state of the Islamic and non-Abrahamic world, is Christianity that bad? Does Christianity have female infanticide, FGM, honour killings or ajizya? Would you rather have the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (what influenced that?) or The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam? Was the extermination of the peoples of America due to Christianity or the greed of colonialism? Did the atrocities of Mao and Stalin and Pol Pot have nothing to do with atheism? (Possibly not but why is Christianity responsible for slavery, colonialism, war and every other evil?) The Soviets had their "League of the Militant Godless" and Mao invaded Tibet with the slogan "Religion is poison". John Gray is an agnostic/atheist but points out these contradictions in popular atheism.
One does not need to be a Christian apologist to point out such matters. Nietzsche hated Christianity but was perceptive enough to wonder what would replace it?
I think some attempt in the concluding chapters of your booh to estimate the place and influence (for better or worse) of Christianity in the world would add substance.
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Post by ignorantianescia on Feb 8, 2014 17:56:08 GMT
It's not addressed to me, but... Were the European "religious wars" of the 16th and 17th centuries about religion? Yes, they were. Looking at the state of the Islamic and non-Abrahamic world, is Christianity that bad? No. Does Christianity have female infanticide, FGM, honour killings or ajizya? Not female infanticide, I'm sure. There are Christian groups in sub-Saharan Africa that commit FGM (and historically the Russian sect of the Skoptsy practised it too), in either case it has been condemned by Christianity and condemnations in Islam. I suppose that condemnations are not as universal in Islam. The Falasha also have FGM, for what it is worth. The relevant origin is regional culture, not religion. I'm not sure about honour killings, except that perpetrators in the West are mostly Muslim. Whether it is practised by Christian minorities in the Middle East is someting I don't know. Jizya is of course an Islamic practice, not a Christian one. Would you rather have the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (what influenced that?) or The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam? The former, influenced by Christian thought. Was the extermination of the peoples of America due to Christianity or the greed of colonialism? Due to a variety of factors, for one the early epidemics that killed so many were not a deliberate act of extermination but an accident.
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Post by sandwiches on Feb 8, 2014 18:54:34 GMT
Were the European "religious wars" of the 16th and 17th centuries about religion?
Yes, they were.Were they? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_warWhile technically, the millennium of Muslim conquests could be classified as "religious war", the applicability of the term has been questioned. The reason is that the very notion of a "religious war" as opposed to a "secular war" is the result of the Western concept of the separation of Church and State. No such division has ever existed in the Islamic world, and consequently there cannot be a real division between wars that are "religious" from such that are "non-religious". Islam does not have any normative tradition of pacifism, and warfare has been integral part of Islamic history both for the defense and the spread of the faith since the time of Muhammad.And where did the Western concept of the seperation of Church and State come from? Matthew 22:21 "Caesar's," they replied. Then he said to them, "So give back to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's."Are current events in Syria a religious war? Religion is a marker but rivalries between Iran and Saudi go much deeper.
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Post by timoneill on Feb 8, 2014 19:33:33 GMT
7. Hitler's Pope?
The origins of the myth of "Hitler's Pope" Hitler and Religion The Concordat and the Third Reich "Ally of the Jewish War Criminals" The Vatican and the Holocaust
8. Reason, Faith and HistorySorry, but your conclusion seems a bit vague. You will hate this suggestion but it needs making. Looking at the kind of idiocy posted on the internet (All religion is evil, Christianity has been responsible for the slaughter of millions, atheism had nothing to do with Communist atrocities etc etc) I think you need to grasp the nettle. Were the European "religious wars" of the 16th and 17th centuries about religion? Looking at the state of the Islamic and non-Abrahamic world, is Christianity that bad? Does Christianity have female infanticide, FGM, honour killings or ajizya? Would you rather have the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (what influenced that?) or The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam? Was the extermination of the peoples of America due to Christianity or the greed of colonialism? Did the atrocities of Mao and Stalin and Pol Pot have nothing to do with atheism? (Possibly not but why is Christianity responsible for slavery, colonialism, war and every other evil?) The Soviets had their "League of the Militant Godless" and Mao invaded Tibet with the slogan "Religion is poison". John Gray is an agnostic/atheist but points out these contradictions in popular atheism. If I tackled all that the book would be thousands of pages long. And take me years to research. I've settled on the topics that (i) seem to come up most often when new atheists make arguments about religion and (ii) more importantly, I already know a reasonable amount about. The final section will touch on that, though probably not in the ways you're suggesting. Feel free to write a book of your own, of course.
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Post by sandwiches on Feb 8, 2014 19:52:29 GMT
I was thinking of writing the last chapter for you?
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Post by timoneill on Feb 8, 2014 20:17:45 GMT
I was thinking of writing the last chapter for you? Hmmm, maybe. I'm not too keen on it being a collaboration - I'd prefer it to have one perspective, tone and voice all the way through. And I forget - are you an believer or no?
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Post by sandwiches on Feb 8, 2014 21:19:06 GMT
I was teasing, though perhaps not entirely. You wouldn't need thousands of pages to give some impression of Christianity's effect? Even though it is guesswork to say whether civilisation would have been better off without X when X is unarguably a part of civilisation. Evidently "pagan" civilisation felt some need for Christianity or else it would not have taken root. It was not allied to an expanding imperialism, like Islam, but rather was grasped at by a fading Empire. It is also impossible to ignore that though Christianity in its overt practice may be fading in areas of the world it is growing in influence elsewhere. See e.g. this work by co-authors (one of whom I think was an atheist): www.newstatesman.com/books/2009/05/religion-american-modern-worldGod Is Back: How the Global Rise of Faith Is Changing the World By John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge
If there is any trend that can be discerned in the parts of the world that are most rapidly modernising, it is that secular belief systems are in decline and the old faiths are being reborn. Might not be a bad thing to have a couple of chapters from someone (particularly someone already published) on the contribution of Christians to science and Christianity in the 20th and 21st centuries - not suggesting any names on this messageboard - whatever it's called.
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Post by timoneill on Feb 8, 2014 22:13:01 GMT
I was teasing, though perhaps not entirely. You wouldn't need thousands of pages to give some impression of Christianity's effect? Even if I did a truncated summary of the wide range of topics you suggest above, it would need many months of research on subjects and periods of which I have no detailed knowledge. So I'll be sticking to the topics I've outlined for the reasons I've given above/ That's still way to close to a series of "what ifs" for my taste thanks.
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Post by merkavah12 on Feb 9, 2014 16:13:22 GMT
Tim, are you going to discuss the 'steampunk greeks' myth (the idea that the ancient greeks were some kind of super genius wonder civilization that would have given the human civilization flying machines/ the end of irrationality/the cure for premature balding if only situation x,y, and/or z had not occurred)?
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Post by timoneill on Feb 9, 2014 20:02:59 GMT
Tim, are you going to discuss the 'steampunk greeks' myth (the idea that the ancient greeks were some kind of super genius wonder civilization that would have given the human civilization flying machines/ the end of irrationality/the cure for premature balding if only situation x,y, and/or z had not occurred)? You bet.
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