To me, seeing otherwise intelligent and rational people defending organized religion in this day and age is kind of like seeing your adult friends walking around with a security blanket, sucking their thumbs. You feel a little bit embarrassed for them and wish they would grow up.
and representational art, and religious tolerance, and a social safety net, and a well maintained road system, and astronomy, and philosophers that influenced the Christians who actually came up with useful shit like humanism...
Militaristic, nationalist, imperialist in foreign affairs, a hardon for violent entertainments, sounds like America.
When I was posting regularly at The Darwin Award forums my sig was "I miss the lions". Pissed off a whole bunch of tight-assed whiners A few hundred years ago? Absolutely. Now? Not so much. /raises hand Maybe not "beautiful", but certainly better off. Jew tend to not bother about other peoples beliefs. That is until they are a majority... Let's not be silly. Of course not. In summation; Remember those threads that people ask: If you could travel back in time, who would you kill, if anyone? Common answer is usually Hitler. My answer would be Emperor Constantine.
Tell that to the Carthaginians, and all the others that were slaughtered as Rome expanded. Actually, going out and conquering places was a fine Roman tradition for going on the campaign trail to make one's self popular for election. And I say this as someone who actually does admire Rome; I just also make sure to acknowledge their nastier side. Like how the paterfamlias could have family members killed and have it not count as murder, or how surviving in politics was meant in a much more literal sense - stuff like that.
Certainly during The Dark Ages. How did you think western learning came back during The Renaissance? God dropped it from the sky?
This... after a fashion. If there's one thing Christianity should take credit for, it's [Western] music and art. Most music leading up to the Baroque period was largely religious in nature (Gregorian chants, Masses), and slowly composers started to move to the more secular forms of music, building on the framework provided by these works. Without them, we wouldn't have the large-scale genres found in the Classical genres -- concertos, sonatas, symphonies (especially symphonies!), operas, etc -- and to an extent, that extends into Jazz and Rock and other Western forms. Within the Classical forms, many composers attribute their music to divine inspiration, most notably, Handel's Messiah. He claims that's what inspired himself to sequester himself for a fortnight to right the piece, not even emerging for food, and it's difficult to imagine finding a reason that doesn't evoke God to write such a piece that so heavily leans on the scripture.
It's not like we have access to alternate dimensions to know what Handel's Evolution Ellegy would have sounded like.
Religious people are like drug addicts. They're both a form of mental escape from a shitty life, they'll use it to rationalize and justify almost any behavior, many of both groups will try and convert you, and most of the time when you get hooked it's for life.
Abrahamic religion has made the world culturally bland and uninteresting. We'd be living on fucking Mars if it weren't for 500 years of darkness and stupidity.
That wasn't my point. Who was talking about how to treat people? My point was that the world was headed toward technological advancements in comfortable living, sanitation, medical knowledge, communication, transportation, etc, until The Church precipitated the Dark Ages and spread fear and ignorance across Europe.
Stupid OP, of course, seeing up the usual false dichotomy between "the sum of all the general rage and hate" and presumably total innocence. "Humanity" is capable of both good and bad, in different measures and mixes. Religion and irrationality makes us tend toward the latter.
I personally think there are 2 things that humans do that are even worse, the need for power and hatred. Especially when hatred is used by those wishing to increase their power,.... whether religious, irrational or not.
That's because they controlled basically everything. Hard not to be the largest sponsor in that case. Evidence? The forerunners of the Enlightenment were Galileo and Newton. Their activities were not marked by "philosophical zeal".
While I agree with much of the criticism of religion that goes around, it's fully possible that Christianity was an improvement to Roman religious beliefs. After all, the Romans were still practicing human sacrifice in the late Republic, around 100 BCE. And I've been reading a fascinating book--The Origins of Political Order by Francis Fukuyama--that proposes that the formation of modern states in Europe is largely a consequence of following the pattern set by the Catholic Church, which abolished hereditary power transfers by imposing celibacy on priests and presaged the rule of law by codifying and systematizing Canon Law. Prior to this, the West was politically underdeveloped compared to China and India, both of which had more comprehensive, modern government. Although I think religion is something that human beings are on the verge of outgrowing, it shouldn't be assumed that it was at every point in the past more objectionable than the alternatives...
Because human sacrifice is so much more barbaric than burning witches and heretics... C'mon! I guarantee you that the body count of the Inquisition is many orders beyond Roman sacrifices,
