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2012 Elections Part I: All Politics is Yokel

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Re: 2012 Elections Part I: All Politics is Yokel

Bakunin said:
They had influence because most people in this country are members of one of the branches of that religion. By the same token, I could argue the people opposing those things were also influenced by that religion, since there's a long record of people using religious belief to justify all manner of mistreatment of other people.
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Just because some people misuse something for their own gain...doesn't mean it provides no other value.

McVeigh loved the concept of the United States. Subsequently he went terrorist cause he thought that the govt was endangering society. Does that make love for the United States wrong or bad? No...because everyone considers him to be a loser who used the the US to act out on his personal issues. If you don't like the McVeigh analology, there are dozens more.

I still see nothing to refute the preponderance of evidence that both modern scientific thought was hugely impacted by the Greeks and modern societal morality was hugely influenced by the Bible, the world's most popular book virtually every day over the last 500 years.
 
Re: 2012 Elections Part I: All Politics is Yokel

Kepler said:
Look, this is not a knock on you, because what you wrote is chapter and verse of "history" as taught in high school and intro college survey classes, but this is nonsense. Every statement in your paragraph is drawn from the simplistic and self-congratulatory narrative constructed after the fact by anti-Catholic historians looking to stick one in the Pope's eye. Politics, medicine, astronomy, theater, history, and every other form of intellectual life was alive and well in the west from the 11th century onwards, and reached fantastic heights both in public and private life centuries before the so-called "Renaissance." In certain ways the Renaissance was actually a big step if not backwards then at least sideways, because for decades there was a slavish repetition of the (usually fragmentary, badly translated, and misunderstood) words of the Ancients that was every bit as stifling as Scriptural Adherence (which itself was far less oppressive than Victoriana depicts). The "science vs faith" dichotomy is the anachronistic imposition of a VERY modern outlook backwards against a period which knew no such distinction, and every significant scientific and cultural figure up until about 1750 would have considered it an absurdity. It's cartoon history -- it isn't real.

I'd say my religious faith is about a 1 on a 10-point scale, but bad history is still bad history. Like I said, nothing against you -- most curricula are incredibly lacking on this topic. But having read about ten thousand pages on Medieval history I can assure you there is nothing of truth either explicitly or by implication in what you've written -- you are perpetuating a mythology that all scholars have rejected for a hundred years.

If you want to read a fantastic overview of this, I recommend "Inventing the Middle Ages" by Norman Cantor. It's really a work of historiography, but it will give you a lot of information on the historians who have been working since the late 19th century to discover what was really going on in Medieval thought. It actually got me so interested that I went and read those ten thousand pages. :)
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John Tetzel would agree.
 
Re: 2012 Elections Part I: All Politics is Yokel

FadeToBlack&Gold said:
Wow. So Obama doesn't count because he's 'too white' for you?
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Did I say anything about Obama? And he's certainly been bending over backwards for Boner.

Kepler said:
The "science vs faith" dichotomy is the anachronistic imposition of a VERY modern outlook backwards against a period which knew no such distinction, and every significant scientific and cultural figure up until about 1750 would have considered it an absurdity. It's cartoon history -- it isn't real.
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Well this post certainly explains why influential people like Martin Luther called reason the devil's whore and argued against heliocentrism because the bible said differently. Don't decry cartoon history by creating another form of it. There's always been a strong anti-intellectual force within all three of the abrahamic faiths. And there's also a strong correlation between how fervently they follow it and how much they degrade intellectual pursuits. More religious, less need there is for thought.


5mn_Major said:
I still nothing to refute the preponderance of evidence that both modern scientific thought was hugely impacted by the Greeks and modern societal morality was hugely influenced by the Bible, the world's most popular book virtually every day over the last 500 years.
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So ****ing well bastarding what? Slavery had a huge impact on the world, do we still abide by you can beat your slave almost to death but it's alright if they get up after a day or two? Do we still have slaves? (bible says this is moral)

And what is your criteria for most popular book? Does it require people actually read it? For a long time it was considered heretical to print the bible in anything that people could actually read. Also considering it's an evangelical religion that is trying to spread, it's not surprise that the ones with money will print millions of the things off. (Ever been to a hotel room)
 
Re: 2012 Elections Part I: All Politics is Yokel

Foxton said:
Did I say anything about Obama?
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You were replying to the following post:

huskyfan said:
Foxton - you don't think a few black people were thrilled to see Obama nominated and elected? even if they didn't agree with his politics? brotherhood, sisterhood.
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Foxton said:
Diversity is great, except when that person being an example of diversity is just an Uncle Tom.
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Looks like you were referring to Obama to me.
 
Re: 2012 Elections Part I: All Politics is Yokel

Kepler said:
Politics, medicine, astronomy, theater, history, and every other form of intellectual life was alive and well in the west from the 11th century onwards, and reached fantastic heights both in public and private life centuries before the so-called "Renaissance." In certain ways the Renaissance was actually a big step if not backwards then at least sideways, because for decades there was a slavish repetition of the (usually fragmentary, badly translated, and misunderstood) words of the Ancients that was every bit as stifling as Scriptural Adherence (which itself was far less oppressive than Victoriana depicts).

I'd say my religious faith is about a 1 on a 10-point scale, but bad history is still bad history. Like I said, nothing against you -- most curricula are incredibly lacking on this topic.
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Really?? The dates I picked were a century too far forward...but I have yet to meet anyone of knowledge who has so discounted the revolutionary impact of the rediscovery of the Greeks on emerging western thought.

I suggest you read a few more relevant topics such as the 'History of Science' for starters and Greek impact will become obvious. Technically science didn't start in 1000AD...it started with Copernicus. Why? Because of the use of facts via the scientific method to arrive at scientific conclusions. Frankly the period right after dissemination of the Greek works (15th and 16th centuries) is most frequently called the 'scienfitic revolution'. And as Wiki says 'Aristotle left every future scientist and philosopher in his debt through his contributions to the scientific method.'

In the 11th century, Europe was left in the scientific dust by the middle east and China. Following within a century of the reintroduction of the Greeks to Europe...well...read the following which personally I don't see as a step sideways nor definitely backwards...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_revolution

Carrying it forward, early university cirriculum was primarily Greek thought...and today's approach by univerisites are still patterned on this. Even Greek influence is crystal clear as our entire topical vocabulary is formulated from the Greeks. Frankly if your post wasn't so long...I figured you were joking.
 
Re: 2012 Elections Part I: All Politics is Yokel

FadeToBlack&Gold said:
You were replying to the following post:

Looks like you were referring to Obama to me.
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Go back a couple posts further and you can see that Palin was the one being discussed and Huskyfan's exuberance towards her simply because she was a woman. Sure diversity is nice, up until Palin opened her mouth and showed that she had no place being in that position.
 
Re: 2012 Elections Part I: All Politics is Yokel

I think this election cycle I may find an obscure cabin in the woods and hide until its over.
 
Re: 2012 Elections Part I: All Politics is Yokel

5mn_Major said:
Just because some people misuse something for their own gain...doesn't mean it provides no other value.
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I flat-out disagree with the notion that people are "misusing" religion when they commit suicide attacks and the like. These are people who are devout in their religion acting on faith that their beliefs will carry them to the afterlife where they will be rewarded. That isn't all that far away from what we would call "moderate" religion. Yes, the actions are different - but the motivation behind them is fairly similar and faith-based.

Anything that teaches people a bunch of nonsense and asks them to shut off their minds and accept baseless claims as fact is very problematic to me. Amusingly, you also mentioned patriotism - which is eerily similar to religious fundamentalism. The only real difference between the two is the source which you are blindly accepting and obeying.
 
Re: 2012 Elections Part I: All Politics is Yokel

Foxton said:
Go back a couple posts further and you can see that Palin was the one being discussed and Huskyfan's exuberance towards her simply because she was a woman. Sure diversity is nice, up until Palin opened her mouth and showed that she had no place being in that position.
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guilty as charged. I would like to see more blacks, Latinos, Latinas, asians, gays, women, Hmong, etc in politics. qualified ones. how about you Foxton? pretty happy with the white, middle american, protestant males?
 
Re: 2012 Elections Part I: All Politics is Yokel

Bakunin said:
I flat-out disagree with the notion that people are "misusing" religion when they commit suicide attacks and the like. These are people who are devout in their religion acting on faith that their beliefs will carry them to the afterlife where they will be rewarded. That isn't all that far away from what we would call "moderate" religion. Yes, the actions are different - but the motivation behind them is fairly similar and faith-based.

Anything that teaches people a bunch of nonsense and asks them to shut off their minds and accept baseless claims as fact is very problematic to me. Amusingly, you also mentioned patriotism - which is eerily similar to religious fundamentalism. The only real difference between the two is the source which you are blindly accepting and obeying.
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Youre shifting the argument to something else entirely different from the original point and I'm not following you there.

Your position that I can tell was...that Christianity has not had a significant impact on modern day compassionate society. But all you can do is cite some negative examples of what some people have done under the guise of the religion as reason that Christianity could not possibly have been a positve. I have advanced examples of specific positives influences from the church and you retreat. So no, I don't buy your argument.
 
Re: 2012 Elections Part I: All Politics is Yokel

huskyfan said:
guilty as charged. I would like to see more blacks, Latinos, Latinas, asians, gays, women, Hmong, etc in politics. qualified ones. how about you Foxton? pretty happy with the white, middle american, protestant males?
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Then why do you like Sarah Palin?
 
Re: 2012 Elections Part I: All Politics is Yokel

5mn_Major said:
Youre shifting the argument to something else entirely different from the original point and I'm not following you there.
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You opened up the tangent, and I took it to its logical conclusion.
Your position that I can tell was...that Christianity has not had a significant impact on modern day compassionate society.
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Actually, it went as follows: Duper said something about religion and how it gives people a code of conduct to live by, and I stated that morality arises from another source given that the vast majority of people - religious or not - don't commit criminal acts or otherwise behave badly. You disputed this (our first instance of "changing the argument") and then spouted off about Greeks and such. You then conveniently (in my view) linked Christianity to various progressive movements such as the abolitionists, women's suffrage, and civil rights. I countered that since people have used religion to take opposite stances on all those issues, it was more likely that the people involved in these movements simply happened to be of the Christian persuasion (due to the makeup of our population in the first place) as opposed to there being overt religious influence. You then went on a tangent about patriotism run amok, and I responded that it was a nice parallel with fundamentalist religious belief in that followers of both do so via blind allegiance and faith, rather than supporting their actions via reasoned analysis and weighing of evidence.
 
Re: 2012 Elections Part I: All Politics is Yokel

Bakunin said:
You don't need religion to have a set of morals and ethics by which to live your everyday life. Regardless of their religious belief/non-belief, the vast majority of humanity does not murder, rape, steal, or commit any other criminal acts. That tells me that most of us have an internal moral compass whether or not we are devoutly religious and that the "set of values" to which you refer comes from somewhere other than religion.
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Thanks, Captain Obvious! :D

I'm not sure if you somehow thought I was arguing that non-religious people are immoral or amoral or something. If you thought that, you probably read a lot into my comment that wasn't there, or at least wasn't meant to be there. All I said is that science doesn't give a set of values for everyday life. So, extrapolating from that and the rather obvious fact that the vast majority of non-religious people are basically good moral people, one can assume that my belief is that, while religion clearly and obviously does provide a set of values by which to live everyday life, those values can also be gotten from other places. Otherwise, I suppose I would have gone on a spree of serial rape and murder, because I dam sure don't believe in any religion.

Edit: having caught up, I think that religion provides a source values for everyday life, and that those of us who don't buy it get those values from somewhere else.

The fact that a nonreligious person has a moral code IN NO WAY indicates that moral codes don't come from religion. To make an analogy, if you tell me people use cars to get around, but I don't have a car and I get around anyway, does that mean that people actually DON'T use cars to get around? I don't think so.
 
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Re: 2012 Elections Part I: All Politics is Yokel

bronconick said:
If you do that, you'll be back just in time for the leadup to the 2016 race.
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Good point. Fortunately I will be focused on getting married during next summer so my attention will be diverted to a much more worthy cause.

As far as I am concerned, I have yet to see a single candidate coming up for 2012 worth voting for on either side. They spend more time blaming each other and arguing over who has the bigger **** than getting work done. These political blowhards could really care-less for us or anyone else...they care about lining their pockets and their own personal legacies.
 
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