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Post by josephbfischer on Jun 2, 2011 15:04:16 GMT
I bought and read the US version of James Hannam's book. Reviews of the book are now starting to show up on US web sites.
What is the appropriate area of this blog to discuss the book?
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Post by merkavah12 on Jun 2, 2011 15:37:07 GMT
History, no?
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Post by James Hannam on Jun 3, 2011 9:43:57 GMT
Hi Joseph,
Thank you for reading my book. I hope you enjoyed it.
You are welcome to post any comments or queries on this thread, or start a new one whereever seems most relevant. We're not going to worry if it is slightly off topic.
Best wishes
James
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Post by josephbfischer on Jun 7, 2011 22:42:03 GMT
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Post by indianchap1234deep on Jun 25, 2011 8:39:51 GMT
Literature is indeed indispensable - nothing more so - but great literature can teach evil as well as good. Look at the Bible. It is undoubtedly to a very large extent magnificently written- pithy, vehement, superbly image conjuring, as directed and sweeping as an avalanche.
The Hindu or Buddhist scriptures by contrast are vague, diffuse, straggling. They have their great pages, but nothng like the concentrated force of the Bible.
Yet no book has done more harm than that very Bible. And for the very same reason that lends it such mighty narrative drive: monotheism.
History shows that societies tend to be freer when religions are not monotheistic. Socrates had a hard time with the government of his day in polytheistic Greece. But Athenian regimes generally allowed enormous freedom for debate, which is why the city became the field of the incredible Athenian intellectual and cultural flowering, never equalled before or since.
What happened to that thriving intellectual culture after the conquest of the classical world by monotheistic Christianity?
We know only too well. Several centuries of persecution and suppression of any thoughts that could not fit into the narrow impoverished desert creed of a Middle Eastern tribe known as the Jews, suppression of the old intellectual elites and learning, ironically too ruthless anti-Semitism leading to the expulsions of Jews themselves to “pagan” areas where there was still tolerance, smashing of the ancient temples and their replacement by churches, etc…All the dreary and (to Hindus) only too well known accompaniments of takeover by Middle Eastern monotheist fanaticisms.
There were certainly contests for power in Christendom between popes and prelates and kings, but the kings claimed to be no less representative of God than the priests – they were in effect claiming to be both kings and popes. In the Byzantine and Orthodox areas, kings were also the top priests.
All this obsession with Middle Eastern monotheistic fanaticism took a long time to fade. It was not until the Renaissance, caused by the rediscovery of pagan classical learning, from the fifteenth century onward, that clearly secular ideas made their appearance in the West, the modern idea that God is unknowable and therefore we should concentrate on what men can do.
Certainly, the reassertion of secularist thinking also had much to do with the exhaustion with religious preoccupations that came with the endless wars fostered by the Reformation and the reaction against it. People realised they were paying too heavy a price for these religious obsessions and, with the world as such having been uncovered from mythology with the discovery of America and circumnavigation, they seem to have decided to move on to a higher stage of barbarism.
That’s European history in a nutshell.
Europe escaped the barbarity of Middle Eastern monotheism because its society was always more variegated than that of, say, the Arabs, one where the merchant class had a more important role, where Roman law clearly separated the ruler’s political rights from others’ rights to property. Asian societies lacked these clear-cut limits to rulers’ rights.
European society also had the immense and invaluable wealth of pre-Christian thought to draw upon as their own to save them from the Christian intellectual nullity.
The Arabs had a naturally more ruler-oriented society, and were unable to retain the intellectual autonomy to develop towards secularism.
The bottom line is: humanity advances when it is free from Jewish religious obsessions like Christianity and Islam. It regresses when (as today) these obsessions are powerful.
In general, the post-Christian West, Hindu India and the Confucian Far East, with their easy-going attitudes to religion and the gods (in most of India Muslims can freely and publicly ridicule Hinduism, which is as it should be) will probably make much more headway in the world of thought than the Muslim world dominated by monotheistic fanaticism.
The Jews have little right to complain about Muslim fundamentalism. These Muslims are merely faithful followers of the Mosaic creed.
The only great bdifference between Jews and Muslims is that Muslims stayed in their homelands while the Jews were able to imbibe Enlightenment ideas (the fruits of the scorned “pagan” “idolatrous” Greece) in their Western exile. The fanatical Muslims of today are a mirror image of Old Testament Jews.
There is no reason whatever why Israel would have been much freer than Saudi Arabia had it not been founded by Jews from Europe.
It will be a drabber world when all that is left is the Mosque and the bible thumpers, but who needs cultural heritages? Christians will reap their due reward. They have sown contempt for the religious and cultural traditions of the polytheists, erased these even from people's memory in many places and are working hard to do so even today in places like India and Africa.......To what long term end? It is the Muslims, an even tougher brand today of the obdurate Mosaic family who are the likely winners. He who is intolerant - he will meet intolerance.
As for the Classical world - its ghost can at least smile to see that what intelligent people value today from that epoch ls is not the brayed Christian "revelation" but the despised "pagan" learning the Church did so much to decimate....So much so that people speak of "Renaissance" in reference to the resurrection (partial) of that learning, not the "Saviour"......What an apt and well deserved irony! And even the destroyers have to boast about having been friends.....
Monotheism has its well-deserved ignominy. Paganism is not without honour.
There was no unanimous Christian plan to destroy the inheritance of the Classical "pagan" world, but classical temples were smashed, worship prohibited with severe punishment, the priesthood destroyed, the learned men and institutions of learning disbanded, the books declared"sinful" according to a primitive, nihilistic cult from the Middle Eastern desert, and burnt. Is that not enough? There were of course, individual Christians immune to the destructive madness. But they did not set the general tone and policy. Just as there are today individual Muslims who are tolerant, but that most certainly does not mean Islam is.
Monotheism brings with it deadly religious bigotry and hate. Only one god can win, becaiuse only one is true and only one story about him is valid. Thisproduces intense religious hate. The desire naturally arises to wipe out the monuments and achievements of other religions so that - as in Orwell's 1984 - even their MEMORY will be lost and the totalitarian Middle Eastern cult will be all that people know. This is the attitude that led to the cultural vandalising by the Church of the classical world. The Church's war to destroy the polytheistic religions is going on today: no effort is spared to slander traditional African religions or Hinduism.
I have sat so many masses in Vancouver churches listening with amazement to all the readings about the Jewish patraiarchs and kings from the Old Testament: The intention being, as the Vatican texts say explicitly, to drum into the congregation that they are the "New Israel" that has taken over the place the original supposed favourites of god, the luckless Jews.
The intense anti-semitism of those masses astounded me; all those emotional accusations of betrayal flung at the Jews by the Church daily over two thousand years had their deadly harvest in the Holocaust. How very forgiving.
In the game of Only One God Wins the Christians will no doubt succeed in destroying the spritual and cultural eritages of much of Africa and India; but I think in the final analysis it is their blood brothers theMuslims who will win. The Muslims unlike the Hindus allow no bible-thumping by Christians in their countries, and their population grows the fastest. So Christianity will meet its fate from them. Well deserved.
There were of course, individual Christians immune to the destructive madness. But they did not set the general tone and policy. Just as there are today individual Muslims who are tolerant, but that most certainly does not mean Islam is.
I have sat so many masses in Vancouver churches listening with amazement to all the readings about the Jewish patraiarchs and kings from the Old Testament: The intention being, as the Vatican texts say explicitly, to drum into the congregation that they are the "New Israel" that has taken over the place the original supposed favourites of god, the luckless Jews......
The intense anti-semitism of those masses astounded me; all those emotional accusations of betrayal flung at the Jews by the Church daily over two thousand years had their deadly harvest in the Holocaust. How very forgiving!
Peter Watson in his well-received book, "Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud" points out about the role of the Church:“In the account of the pagan historian Ammianus Marcellinus, detailing the actions of Valens, the eastern emperor in the fourth century, who conducted a persecution of pagan practices, he said that “throughout the Orient provinces, owners of books, through fear of a like fate, burned their libraries, so great was the terror that had seized upon all.” His editor remarked : “Valens greatly diminished our knowledge of the ancient writers in particular the philosophers.” Several observers noted that books ceased to be readily available and that leaning was increasingly an ecclesiastical preserve. In Alexandria it was noted that “philosophy and culture are now at a point of a most horrible desolation.” Edward Gibbon reported a story that Bishop Theophilus of the city allowed the library to be pillaged, and 'nearly twenty years afterwards, the appearance of the empty shelves excited the regret and indignation of every spectator whose mind was not totally darkened by religious prejudice.' Basil of Caesarea lamented the atrophy of debate in his home city. “Now we have no more meetings, no more debates, no more gatherings of wise men in the agora, nothing of all that made our city famous”. ....Rome was virtually devoid of books by the middle of the fourth century, according to Luciano Canfora.....In Alexandria, in 391, the Christian archbishop had destroyed the great library of the temple of Serapis, second only to the Mouseion in size and prestige. The Mouseion itself survived for the time being, largely it appears because it had become a repository of sacred Christian texts......one by one, the schools of classical antiquity closed (Justinian....had shut the philosophical school of Athens in 529), so that by the middle of the sixth century only Constantinople and Alexandria remained. This was accompanied by a narrowing in the range of literature that was read. “Christian apologists are immune to irony or humour or they would see the grotesqueness of the Church's latterday posing as the saviour of classical free thought and science when in its glory days it revelled in damning that inheritance with bell, book and candle as a fiendish "pagan" temptation to be shunned at all costs by true followers of its morbid, Talibanic, Middle Eastern totalitarian cult.Note the typical nauseating, impudent dishonesty in the Church's first brutally MONOPOLIZING learning and THEN bleating that it had been a brave lamp of learning in the darkness....What a joke! As well might Goering have claimed for Nazism the credit of saving Western art in wartime by raiding art galleries.
Blaming the babarians for the Dark Ages is a cheap gambit. Barbarians normally assimilate quickly into the superior civilization they overrun. If this was delayed so long in Rome common sense shows it would have been because the Church had already destroyed the prestige of the existing civilized culture. You can't assimilate to a void..
How ironic, finally, that even Christian apologists are forced to eke out some credit for their miserable cult by claiming the reflected glory of the very despised "pagan"civilization from which the Church otherwise yawps about having SAVED the world ! Truly bizarre. They came to jeer, they almost destroyed: then they put on a pious air of having SAVED!!!! Rome common sense shows it would have been because the Church had already destroyed the prestige of the existing civilized culture. You can't assimilate to a void.. How ironic, finally, that EVEN Christian apologists are forced to eke out some credit for their miserable cult by claiming the reflected glory of the very despised "pagan"civilization from which the Church otherwise yawps about having SAVED the world ! Truly bizarre. They came to jeer, they almost destroyed: then they put on a pious air of having SAVED!!!!
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Post by noons on Jun 25, 2011 12:54:00 GMT
History shows that societies tend to be freer when religions are not monotheistic. Then would you care to explain how the modern conceptions of freedom, individual rights, and self-governance developed in Christian societies?
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Post by indianchap1234deep on Jun 25, 2011 22:08:46 GMT
noons:
I clearly explained why Europe had the inestimable good fortune to escape the deadly blighting grip of Mosaic monotheistic fanaticism:
All this obsession with Middle Eastern monotheistic fanaticism took a long time to fade. It was not until the Renaissance, caused by the rediscovery of pagan classical learning, from the fifteenth century onward, that clearly secular ideas made their appearance in the West, the modern idea that God is unknowable and therefore we should concentrate on what men can do.
Certainly, the reassertion of secularist thinking also had much to do with the exhaustion with religious preoccupations that came with the endless wars fostered by the Reformation and the reaction against it. People realised they were paying too heavy a price for these religious obsessions and, with the world as such having been uncovered from mythology with the discovery of America and circumnavigation, they seem to have decided to move on to a higher stage of barbarism.
That’s European history in a nutshell.
Europe escaped the barbarity of Middle Eastern monotheism because its society was always more variegated than that of, say, the Arabs, one where the merchant class had a more important role, where Roman law clearly separated the ruler’s political rights from others’ rights to property. Asian societies lacked these clear-cut limits to rulers’ rights.
European society also had the immense and invaluable wealth of pre-Christian thought to draw upon as their own to save them from the Christian intellectual nullity.
The Arabs had a naturally more ruler-oriented society, and were unable to retain the intellectual autonomy to develop towards secularism.
The bottom line is: humanity advances when it is free from Jewish religious obsessions like Christianity and Islam. It regresses when (as today) these obsessions are powerful.
In general, the post-Christian West, Hindu India and the Confucian Far East, with their easy-going attitudes to religion and the gods (in most of India Muslims can freely and publicly ridicule Hinduism, which is as it should be) will probably make much more headway in the world of thought than the Muslim world dominated by monotheistic fanaticism.
The Jews have little right to complain about Muslim fundamentalism. These Muslims are merely faithful followers of the Mosaic creed.
The only great bdifference between Jews and Muslims is that Muslims stayed in their homelands while the Jews were able to imbibe Enlightenment ideas (the fruits of the scorned “pagan” “idolatrous” Greece) in their Western exile. The fanatical Muslims of today are a mirror image of Old Testament Jews.
There is no reason whatever why Israel would have been much freer than Saudi Arabia had it not been founded by Jews from Europe.
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Post by captainzman on Jun 25, 2011 22:40:23 GMT
You got the "nut" part right, at least
You should probably reword stuff like this, if not rethink it completely.
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Post by humphreyclarke on Jun 26, 2011 1:39:56 GMT
Is this a wind up ?
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Post by James Hannam on Jun 26, 2011 9:41:39 GMT
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Post by chuff on Jun 26, 2011 15:06:52 GMT
Given that his posts are long, overly verbose, and only tangentially related to the topic at hand, I decided to throw a chunk of his passage into google to see what I could find. It turns out that it looks pretty familiar: www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/comment-permalink/10953658He seems to be recycling his material.
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Post by indianchap1234deep on Jun 27, 2011 6:24:18 GMT
James:
Thank you for taking the trouble to reply to my earlier communications and apologies for having overlooked your replies until now.
I think you have gone as far as an uremitting Catholic can do in admitting the major part of my indictment of Christianity for its destruction of Classical civilization. As you yourself say:
"Christianity did destroy ancient paganism. It caused enormous damage to many wonderful works of art and fine buildings. Even the art and architecture produced in the name of Christianity can scarcely hide the fact that if you happen to prefer classicism to gothic, the end of paganism was an aesthetic set back. It also seems likely that many pagan religious texts have been lost...".
What does surprise me, even for a person well used to Christian rubbishing of the value of non-monotheistic religious and cultural traditions, is how you go on to say that the destruction of major pagan religious institutions like temples dd not mean Classical science suffered a setback. Why should the erasing pagan superstion mean a defeat for rationality, you and your co-thinkers ask with magnificent innocence.
One would think, to read you, that the religion of virgin births, risings from the dead, the curious doctrine whereby the Son is the Son of God and God simultaneously, and of the literal consuming of Christ's body and blood in the form of a wafer, brings cool, impeccable reason in its train.
This is really giving the game away. He who tries to prove too much, proves that he is wrong.
What the victory of a fanatical brand of Middle Eastern monotheism in the Roman world meant was the obliteration of a relatively open society, with great freedom of debate and possibility for religions or to flourish together, and its replacement by a totalitarian world where the state ruthlessly imposed one religion and concentrated on wiping out all the cultural institutions and ideas of others.
The meticulous smashing of the pagan temples was a catastrophe for the West's artistic inheritance ("pretty buildings", you say condescendingly) but more importantly, marked the wiping out of a world of free ideas and debate, in return for the calustrophobic Mosaic closed shop admitting only Christianity.
History tells us the growth of science needed some freedom of debate and exchange of ideas.
This Christianity put an end to in the West for a very long time. In India, Hinduism ceased to be creative in science and philosophy when Christianity's sister Islam destroyed the Hindu temples and likewise ended free debate. In the Arab world, science ceased to develop when the relative freedom of discussion of the first centuries of Islam ended.
What surprise then, that monotheistic fanaticism ruthlessly imposed set the West back as an area of scientific growth?
I am a Hindu agnostic, and I do deeply regret the takeover by fanatical monotheism of Classical civilization. It meant that history became far more bitter ideologically, hatred -driven: now only one religion was true, and only one version of the story about God. There could be only one winner, and those who got the story wrong, like the Jews and the pagans, were doomed. The destruction of non-Christian cultures did not matter. One can easily understand the Holocaust in this context. To this day in the Catholic mass the role of the Jews in "handing over" Christ is mentioned - in an astoundingly inflamed manner during the Easter Passion.
The Christian attempt to erase non-Christian, particularly polytheistic cultures, is going on fiercely to this day.
The monotheists will very likely win, as they have fanaticism on their side. But what a drabber world, culturally, these Koran and bible thumpers will inherit!
And why should we be sympathetic to the plight of Christian communities at the hands of Islam? It is only a replay of what Chistianity did itself, without apology.
I do hold that Islam is only an Arab version of Abrahamic monotheism. Muslims venerate Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph, Job, David, Solomon, John the Baptist, Jesus and Mary.
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Post by indianchap1234deep on Jun 27, 2011 6:31:44 GMT
A CORRECTED VERSION OF MY REPLY ABOVE. APOLOGIES
Dear James
Thank you for taking the trouble to reply to my earlier communications and apologies for having overlooked your replies until now.
I think you have gone as far as an uremitting Catholic can do in admitting the major part of my indictment of Christianity for its destruction of Classical civilization.
As you yourself say:
"Christianity did destroy ancient paganism. It caused enormous damage to many wonderful works of art and fine buildings. Even the art and architecture produced in the name of Christianity can scarcely hide the fact that if you happen to prefer classicism to gothic, the end of paganism was an aesthetic set back. It also seems likely that many pagan religious texts have been lost...".
What does surprise me, even for a person well used to Christian rubbishing of the value of non-monotheistic religious and cultural traditions, is how you go on to say that the destruction of major pagan religious institutions like temples dd not mean Classical science suffered a setback. Why should the erasing of pagan superstition mean a defeat for rationality, you and your co-thinkers ask with magnificent innocence?
One would think, to read you, that the religion of virgin births, risings from the dead, the curious doctrine whereby the Son is the Son of God and God simultaneously, and of the literal consuming of Christ's body and blood in the form of a wafer, brings cool, impeccable reason in its train.
This is really giving the game away. He who tries to prove too much, proves that he is wrong.
What the victory of a fanatical brand of Middle Eastern monotheism in the Roman world meant was the obliteration of a relatively open society, with great freedom of debate and possibility for religions to flourish together, and its replacement by a totalitarian world where the state ruthlessly imposed one religion and concentrated on wiping out all the cultural institutions and ideas of others.
The meticulous smashing of the pagan temples was a catastrophe for the West's artistic inheritance ("pretty buildings", you say condescendingly) but more importantly, marked the wiping out of a world of free ideas and debate, in return for the calustrophobic Mosaic closed shop admitting only Christianity.
History tells us the growth of science needed some freedom of debate and exchange of ideas.
This Christianity put an end to in the West for a very long time. In India, Hinduism ceased to be creative in science and philosophy when Christianity's sister Islam destroyed the Hindu temples and likewise ended free debate. In the Arab world, science ceased to develop when the relative freedom of discussion of the first centuries of Islam ended.
What surprise then, that monotheistic fanaticism ruthlessly imposed set the West back as an area of scientific growth?
I am a Hindu agnostic, and I do deeply regret the takeover by fanatical monotheism of Classical civilization. It meant that history became far more bitter ideologically, hatred -driven: now only one religion was true, and only one version of the story about God. There could be only one winner, and those who got the story wrong, like the Jews and the pagans, were doomed. The destruction of non-Christian cultures did not matter. One can easily understand the Holocaust in this context. To this day in the Catholic mass the role of the Jews in "handing over" Christ is mentioned - in an astoundingly inflamed manner during the Easter Passion.
The Christian attempt to erase non-Christian, particularly polytheistic cultures, is going on fiercely to this day.
The monotheists will very likely win, as they have fanaticism on their side. But what a drabber world, culturally, these Koran and bible thumpers will inherit!
And why should we be sympathetic to the plight of Christian communities at the hands of Islam? It is only a replay of what Chistianity did itself, without apology.
I do hold that Islam is only an Arab version of Abrahamic monotheism. Muslims venerate Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph, Job, David, Solomon, John the Baptist, Jesus and Mary.
Quick Reply Message:
Shortcut to Quick Reply box: Alt+Q. Shortcut to post message: Alt+S. Forum Jump--------------------» Home--------------------» Feedback--------------------- Feedback, comments and questions--------------------» Science, History and Religion--------------------- Philosophy- History- Science- Christianity Thank you for taking the trouble to reply to my earlier communications and apologies for having overlooked your replies until now.
I think you have gone as far as an uremitting Catholic can do in admitting the major part of my indictment of Christianity for its destruction of Classical civilization. As you yourself say:
"Christianity did destroy ancient paganism. It caused enormous damage to many wonderful works of art and fine buildings. Even the art and architecture produced in the name of Christianity can scarcely hide the fact that if you happen to prefer classicism to gothic, the end of paganism was an aesthetic set back. It also seems likely that many pagan religious texts have been lost...".
What does surprise me, even for a person well used to Christian rubbishing of the value of non-monotheistic religious and cultural traditions, is how you go on to say that the destruction of major pagan religious institutions like temples dd not mean Classical science suffered a setback. Why should the erasing pagan superstion mean a defeat for rationality, you and your co-thinkers ask with magnificent innocence.
One would think, to read you, that the religion of virgin births, risings from the dead, the curious doctrine whereby the Son is the Son of God and God simultaneously, and of the literal consuming of Christ's body and blood in the form of a wafer, brings cool, impeccable reason in its train.
This is really giving the game away. He who tries to prove too much, proves that he is wrong.
What the victory of a fanatical brand of Middle Eastern monotheism in the Roman world meant was the obliteration of a relatively open society, with great freedom of debate and possibility for religions or to flourish together, and its replacement by a totalitarian world where the state ruthlessly imposed one religion and concentrated on wiping out all the cultural institutions and ideas of others.
The meticulous smashing of the pagan temples was a catastrophe for the West's artistic inheritance ("pretty buildings", you say condescendingly) but more importantly, marked the wiping out of a world of free ideas and debate, in return for the calustrophobic Mosaic closed shop admitting only Christianity.
History tells us the growth of science needed some freedom of debate and exchange of ideas.
This Christianity put an end to in the West for a very long time. In India, Hinduism ceased to be creative in science and philosophy when Christianity's sister Islam destroyed the Hindu temples and likewise ended free debate. In the Arab world, science ceased to develop when the relative freedom of discussion of the first centuries of Islam ended.
What surprise then, that monotheistic fanaticism ruthlessly imposed set the West back as an area of scientific growth?
I am a Hindu agnostic, and I do deeply regret the takeover by fanatical monotheism of Classical civilization. It meant that history became far more bitter ideologically, hatred -driven: now only one religion was true, and only one version of the story about God. There could be only one winner, and those who got the story wrong, like the Jews and the pagans, were doomed. The destruction of non-Christian cultures did not matter. One can easily understand the Holocaust in this context. To this day in the Catholic mass the role of the Jews in "handing over" Christ is mentioned - in an astoundingly inflamed manner during the Easter Passion.
The Christian attempt to erase non-Christian, particularly polytheistic cultures, is going on fiercely to this day.
The monotheists will very likely win, as they have fanaticism on their side. But what a drabber world, culturally, these Koran and bible thumpers will inherit!
And why should we be sympathetic to the plight of Christian communities at the hands of Islam? It is only a replay of what Chistianity did itself, without apology.
I do hold that Islam is only an Arab version of Abrahamic monotheism. Muslims venerate Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph, Job, David, Solomon, John the Baptist, Jesus and Mary. Report to Mod - Link to Post - Back to Top Logged
Quick Reply Message:
Shortcut to Quick Reply box: Alt+Q. Shortcut to post message: Alt+S.
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Post by humphreyclarke on Jun 27, 2011 15:07:43 GMT
Why should the erasing of pagan superstition mean a defeat for rationality, you and your co-thinkers ask with magnificent innocence? One would think, to read you, that the religion of virgin births, risings from the dead, the curious doctrine whereby the Son is the Son of God and God simultaneously, and of the literal consuming of Christ's body and blood in the form of a wafer, brings cool, impeccable reason in its train. Right. As opposed to the magnificently rational pagan society which preceded it, which featured - among other things - the Flamen Dialis, the priest of Jupiter who was not allowed to touch or name a female goat (or take off his underwear outdoors); who had to bury his hair and nail trimmings under a healthy tree, coat his bed with clay and leave a box at the foot of it containing sacred cakes. Another good example would be the sacred chickens that were kept in special cages and fed with little cakes and then watched very closely by special priests skilled in interpreting how the birds ate them (If the chickens ate the cakes enthusiastically this would be an excellent sign, but if they did not the gods were not well disposed). The army actually had a post - 'the keeper of the sacred chickens' and it was thought that Publius Claudius Pulcher lost the Battle of Drepana when he threw the chickens into the sea after getting a bad omen. There was even a whole science of reading animals entrails to determine what the Gods thought of the sacrifice. And if we are talking strange births, if you refer to Suetonius 'The Lives of the twelve Caesars' you'll find he claims that Augustus's mother was impregnated by a snake (a manifestation of the god Apollo) while she slept in the God's temple. She discovered this the next morning when she washed herself and discovered the 'mark of the snake' - whatever that is. So against the nativity, the trinity and the Resurrection we have holy poultry that can predict the future, a women getting knocked up by a God in the guise of a horny reptile and (to quote Tim) a high priest with a 'magic condom-shaped Smurf hat' a 'clay-smeared bed' and a box of divine cakes. I mean, as incomprehensible as the trinity is, it at least is more rational than an entire theology based around baking desserts for capricious deities.
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Post by humphreyclarke on Jun 27, 2011 15:18:07 GMT
And why should we be sympathetic to the plight of Christian communities at the hands of Islam? It is only a replay of what Chistianity did itself, without apology. Last time I checked most of the anti-christian violence in India was being conducted by Hindus. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Christian_violence_in_India
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