Cartman
just made by the Presbyterian Church
Member # 256
posted
/me ponders what the course of history might have been like, had the Roman Empire not inadvertently turned determined, needy, fanatical followers of that mythical sect from Palestine into marters by trying to exterminate them two thousand years ago. No inspiration, no institutional establishment, no Omega talking out of his ass...
Registered: Nov 1999
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quote:Originally posted by First of Two: If we could rid ourselves of the militant fundamentalists of BOTH religions, we would all be vastly better off.
Hmmm... I sense a new reality gameshow coming on...
-------------------- "I am an almost extinct breed, an old-fashioned gentleman, which means I can be a cast-iron son-of-a-bitch when it suits me." --Jubal Harshaw
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
Loath as I am to align myself with pedantry and worse, but I have to agree with Tim. Two thousand years ago, even in the fuzzy sense, Christianity was a Jewish sect struggling to survive. More importantly, the prospects for eternal damnation in Judaism were a lot less clear. So, I'm a bit at a loss here as to what the point is supposed to be.
Registered: Mar 1999
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quote:Originally posted by E. Cartman: /me ponders what the course of history might have been like, had the Roman Empire not inadvertently turned determined, needy, fanatical followers of that mythical sect from Palestine into marters by trying to exterminate them two thousand years ago.
Slight tangent: You know, I've become more and more curious about alternative history science fiction due to a general trend in my reading, but all that Chapters has is some huge cheesy looking epic by some author...Turtledove I believe. Nonetheless, I did pick up an interesting book titled "Pastwatch" by Orson Scott Card.
In any case, we might simply have seen a world where the US has a right-wing populated by Muslims and plagued by terrorist Christians. Heh. Who knows... From my agnostic point of view, I really have no inherent preference for either faith.
Registered: Mar 1999
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"What If? Vol.2" edited by Robert Cowley has an interesting look into an alternity where Pontius Pilate refused to execute Jesus and JC lived to a ripe old age.
The two (so far) What If? volumes are, IMHO, very well thought-out and not that dry for scholarly works.
Volume 1: Infectious Alternatives: The Plague That Saved Jerusalem, 701 B.C. No Glory That Was Greece: The Persians Win at Salamis, 480 B. C. Conquest Denied: The Premature Death of Alexander the Great Furor Teutonicus: The Teutoburg Forest, A.D. 9 The Dark Ages Made Lighter: The Consequences of Two Defeats The Death That Saved Europe: The Mongols Turn Back, 1242 If Only It Had Not Been Such a Wet Summer: The Critical Decade of the 1520s If the Holy League Hadn't Dithered The Immolation of Hernan Cortes: Tenochtitlan, June 30, 1521 121 The Repulse of the English Fireships: The Spanish Armada Triumphs, August 8, 1588 Unlikely Victory: Thirteen Ways the Americans Could Have Lost the Revolution George Washington's Gamble What the Fog Wrought: The Revolution's Dunkirk, August 29, 1776 Ruler of the World: Napoleon's Missed Opportunities Napoleon Wins at Waterloo If the Lost Order Hadn't Been Lost: Robert E. Lee Humbles the Union, 1862 A Confederate Cannae and Other Scenarios: How the Civil War Might Have Turned Out Differently Vietnam in America, 1865 The What Ifs of 1914: The World War That Should Never Have Been Bismarck's Empire: Stillborn Thanks, But no Cigar The Armistice of Desperation How Hitler Could Have Won the War: The Drive for the Middle East, 1941 What a Taxi Driver Wrought Triumph of the Dictators Our Midway Disaster: Japan Springs a Trap, June 4, 1942 The Case of the Missing Carriers D Day Fails: Atomic Alternatives in Europe The Soviet Invasion of Japan Funeral in Berlin: The Cold War Turns Hot China Without Tears: If Chiang Kai-shek Hadn't Gambled in 1946 A Quagmire Avoided?
Volume 2: Socrates Dies at Delium, 424 B.C. Not by a Nose Pontius Pilate Spares Jesus Repulse at Hastings, October 14, 1066 The Chinese Discovery of the New World, 15th Century Martin Luther Burns at the Stake, 1521 If Charles I Had Not Left Whitehall, August 1641 Napoleon's Invasion of North America If Lincoln Had Not Freed the Slaves France Turns the Other Check, July 1870 The Election of Theodore Roosevelt, 1912 The Great War Torpedoed No Finland Station The Luck of Franklin Delano Roosevelt The War of 1938 Prime Minister Halifax The Boys Who Saved Australia, 1942 Enigma Uncracked Pius XII Protests the Holocaust VE Day - November 11, 1944 The Fuhrer in the Dock No Bomb: No End The Presidency of Henry Wallace A Tale of Three Congressmen, 1948 What If Pizarro Had Not Found Potatoes in Peru?
Really quite fascinating.
-------------------- "The best defense is not a good offense. The best defense is a terrifyingly accurate and devastatingly powerful offense, with multiply-overlapping kill zones and time-on-target artillery strikes." -- Laurence, Archangel of the Sword
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Sounds very interesting. I'm curious as to how Socrates' time of death affects very much. Would philosophy have been that different without him? And his only real contribution politically in Athens was to be President of the Ekklesia in 406 when they publicly tried of the generals who abandoned shipwrecked sailors at the battle of Arginusae - and then he only delayed the guilty verdict by a day.
posted
Yeah; the first volume of What If? is very good. I'm waiting for the second to come out in paperback before I get it though (mainly because I don't have �18 for the hardback). although I read quite a bit of it in a bookshop...
Registered: Feb 2002
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Vogon: No Socrates (or less, anyway) yields a different Plato and Aristotle... pretty much the foundations of philosophy at the time. Different schools of thought take over.
-------------------- "The best defense is not a good offense. The best defense is a terrifyingly accurate and devastatingly powerful offense, with multiply-overlapping kill zones and time-on-target artillery strikes." -- Laurence, Archangel of the Sword
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Missing entry: "Smart Leadership in the Holy Land" During the last 20 years of the 12th century, Rome and the pope takes a more active role in the last crusade and cleanses the administration in Jerusalem and Gaza, putting in place leaders and a Grandmaster Templar who have extensive knowledge and experience with the surrounding countries, and a good appreciation for their resources in terms of Templars and Johannites, and also encouraging cooperation between the two monkhoods.
Instead of the disaster that ensued, where ignorant, cowardly, powerhungry "monarchs" wasted their whole stock of elite knights and soldiers in a few hopeless battles against the outstanding commander Salah al-Din...
Also, something I'd much rather see, believe me: "World spared of another jackass" L. Ron Hubbard slips in the bathtub in 1950. End of story.
-------------------- "I'm nigh-invulnerable when I'm blasting!" Mel Gibson, X-Men
Registered: Aug 1999
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Oh, good . On the other hand I live in Lincolnshire which is usually several months behind everywhere else... *sigh*.
-------------------- "I am an almost extinct breed, an old-fashioned gentleman, which means I can be a cast-iron son-of-a-bitch when it suits me." --Jubal Harshaw
Registered: Feb 2002
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-------------------- "I am an almost extinct breed, an old-fashioned gentleman, which means I can be a cast-iron son-of-a-bitch when it suits me." --Jubal Harshaw
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
2,000 years ago, people believed that they were alive.
2,000 years ago, people believed that the external world existed.
2,000 years ago, people thought that orange ruffie was rather good.
Need I go on?
Well, that depends on whether you have a point to make or not, now doesn't it?
-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
Registered: Mar 1999
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capped
I WAS IN THE FUTURE, IT WAS TOO LATE TO RSVP
Member # 709
posted
ah, 2,000 years ago people had basic knowledge, therefore they could never be wrong. proving the far-fetched plot of that novel about the Jewish carpenter is true!
Registered: Sep 2001
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posted
2,000 years ago, people thought things. Some of these things were right. Some of these things were wrong. Therefore, the fact that something was thought by people who lived 2,000 years ago has no impact whatsoever on its truth value.
-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Well, yes, that's true. Some things were right, and some were wrong. Perhaps I was not specific enough.
Theories about the nature of the universe, philosophy, science -- all of these have had to be modified or abandoned decades or centuries ago. As our methods of reasoning and tools for learning about the universe around us have improved, we have consistently modified those beliefs. And yet throughout that, religious beliefs have stayed basically static. And not just your religion, Omega. Just about all of them.
That, in my mind, is one of the primary reasons why religious beliefs are regressive, superstitious, and without real basis.
And before you whip out the "faith" card, let me point out that there are a lot of other people out there who have faith in beliefs completely contrary to yours. I think that rather than one of them being right and the rest wrong, they're ALL wrong. I suppose it's a use of Occam's Razor: if non-Christian religions are wrong, then why would Christianity be right?
Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha -- all of these were almost certainly real men, with many great beliefs and actions attributed to them. Each is supposedly well-documented. Yet just what makes Islam the "real" religion over Hinduism? Or any of the others?
(In my use of the term "religious," I am referring to the belief of supposedly supernatural beings, not the moral codes supposedly handed down by those beings.)
History is replete with examples of the mass propagation of thoughts that have twisted versions of the truth, or are completely false. Whole societies have been changed, controlled, led astray, directed or otherwise misled. From harmless superstitions about sailors falling off the edge of the world if they travel too far from land, to the purely evil assertions that the Caucasian race was superior to those of African descent -- social history is full of stories of untruths widely adopted by entire civilizations.
Religion is simply the last major holdover of our ancient background and the quest to achieve understanding about that which could not at the time be explained. Today, I think, the majority of religious people are simply afraid; afraid of taking responsibility, afraid of feeling alone, afraid of perceived hopelessness. The concept of a god allows them to place an almost desperate hope on some illusory being who can change that which might not be changed.
To come full circle, today's religions are based almost entirely on ancient documents that were written by people who wanted some way to explain that which they could not explain -- the origin and nature of the world, for example. To provide a conceptual object for their high hopes and desperate wishes. It's a belief that has persisted mainly because of that fear.
But I for one don't need that fear anymore. I respect your choice to believe that there really is a God out there. Heck, given the nature of things, I admit that I could be wrong. But that won't stop me from using my own reasoning and experience to decide my own worldview, and to explain it here -- and explain why I don't accept your assertion that I'm going to burn in Hell.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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![[Smile]](smile.gif)
. On the other hand I live in Lincolnshire which is usually several months behind everywhere else... *sigh*.
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