Creation or Evoloution? Big Bang or Big Belief -- which is it? (II)

[MIG29pilot]

Incidentally I suggest you Read Introduction to the devout life by Francis de Sales if you want a picture of the Catholic ideal.

[HOM001]

That is why, even if there is no God, we need a Christian religion. Why? Not only does Catholicism teach your "Love truths," teaches equality, teaches charity, teaches wisdom, teaches kindness, teaches generosity, teaches mercy, teaches fairness, teaches acceptance, teaches humility, teaches moderation, teaches modesty, teaches self-control, teaches patience, teaches chastity and teaches responsibility, but it also teaches that there are just and fair consequences for those who are bad, punishment for evil, in fairness and moderation. What can any secular acceptance, love, etc., do to firmly implant these truths into the minds of its pupils? What impetus can it give to them to love, accept, etc; to not kill, to not rob, to not rape, to not enslave, to not control, to not sin? In this setup, when the person feels he can get away with it he will do it. In Christianity he at least knows that even if he avoids the punishment of man, there is the Almighty punishment of God.

To say that humanity needs your religion to know right from wrong is, at the least, close-minded. Do you think your religion is so infallible, that it doesn't have a history of teaching people to kill, rob, rape, enslave, control, or sin? I direct you to the Spanish Requirement of 1513:

On the part of the King, Don Fernando, and of Doña Juana, his daughter, Queen of Castile and León, subduers of the barbarous nations, we their servants notify and make known to you, as best we can, that the Lord our God, living and eternal, created the heaven and the earth, and one man and one woman, of whom you and we, and all the men of the world, were and are all descendants, and all those who come after us.

Of all these nations God our Lord gave charge to one man, called St. Peter, that he should be lord and superior of all the men in the world, that all should obey him, and that he should be the head of the whole human race, wherever men should live, and under whatever law, sect, or belief they should be; and he gave him the world for his kingdom and jurisdiction.

One of these pontiffs, who succeeded St. Peter as lord of the world in the dignity and seat which I have before mentioned, made donation of these isles and Terra-firma to the aforesaid King and Queen and to their successors, our lords, with all that there are in these territories,

Wherefore, as best we can, we ask and require you that you consider what we have said to you, and that you take the time that shall be necessary to understand and deliberate upon it, and that you acknowledge the Church as the ruler and superior of the whole world,

But if you do not do this, and maliciously make delay in it, I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter into your country, and shall make war against you in all ways and manners that we can, and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and of their highnesses; we shall take you, and your wives, and your children, and shall make slaves of them, and as such shall sell and dispose of them as their highnesses may command; and we shall take away your goods, and shall do you all the mischief and damage that we can, as to vassals who do not obey, and refuse to receive their lord, and resist and contradict him: and we protest that the deaths and losses which shall accrue from this are your fault, and not that of their highnesses, or ours, nor of these cavaliers who come with us .

Want a more modern example? How about all of the cases of child molestation by Catholic priests? Persecution of homosexuals? Vatican Money Laundering?

Now, are there secular entities who have done crap just as terrible? Yes. Because that is how humanity works. And as right and wrong is a human sense, born from conscience and not doctrine, Catholicism, or any branch of Christianity that is, is not necessary for humanity. (in the current era) Perhaps a lack of conscience can be changed with your religion, but historically, your religion has used itself to justify horrible actions.

EDIT:
I apologize if I came across as arguing that one thing is better than the other. That certainly was not the intention.

[KL-666]

We can have a long discussion about who is worse than the other. But i like to look a bit more globally. Why do we have religion?

Humans seem to be hardwired to function in groups. For the cohesion of a group you need the individuals to be interested in eachother. To guarantee that we are social, we have something built in that makes us meddle. A very eloquent result of that meddling nature is religion. There the meddling is kind of institutionalized. A very logical result of our very own nature.

It is also fascinating to watch colonies of apes. There you see the same social structures as of humans, with the same meddling going on.

Kind regards, Vincent

[MIG29pilot]

I am afraid that quote is rather meaningless unless
A.) You tell me where you got it
B.) You tell me who wrote it
C.) You tell me to whom it was written.

[MIG29pilot]

But wherever or whatever it came from, I do not deny that there was some pretty ugly stuff going back then. Bad times I admit, but if some of the people--even if most of the people were bad (and they were not), I am not talking about people. I am talking about ideals and policies which are to be striven for. As for modern scandals, they do not surprise me. After the Second Vatican Council, everything went haywire and it seems it will take considerable time and effort to reverse all of the ills done then, and the ills that have come since because of it. I am not talking of people, but if we must talk of people, let me talk to you about Isabella, the Catholic Queen of Spain; et me talk to you about Isabella of Castille, Catholic, who united a country of turmoil and bloodshed; let me talk to you about Isabella of Castille, Catholic, who reformed her country and rid it of such evils as we see today; who loved her nation and her God above her person; who did not revenge herself upon her enemies; who attempted to prevent the enslavement of the natives off the New World; who permitted Moslems in Granada to practice their faith; whose faith they only forfeited--of their own will--after they themselves rebelled.

[MIG29pilot]

You ought to read Isabella: The Catholic Queen by Warren Carrol.

[MIG29pilot]

Please also remember that it was the Catholic Church which saved Greek and Roman Literature by copying it and keeping it, ready for the revolution of the Renaissance. The Catholic Church, and its monasteries, were also the only ones to provide schooling for the poor. Secular government except those extremely Catholic ever provided for the beggars and destitute, the widows and the orphans; the Church did. Who established so many periods of truce and ceasefire in Medieval times that, had they been paid attention to by half the kingdoms in Europe, it would not have been worthwhile to make war? You talk of the crusades. Let me remind you that, Firstly, those land were the territory of several Christian Kingdoms at that time, and that they also were carried out to defend the Byzantine Empire. As for mass murder and the Sacking of Constantinople, let me also remind you that soldiers then were soldiers then, and if you keep them in the field in the desert for years and years in bad company it is small wonder they do such things. They had an excuse for Constantinople, at least; namely, that nation repeatedly relying on them to protect itself, and being unreliable and unhelpful, despite the fact that the Crusaders were defending them.

[MIG29pilot]

Also, you may talk of the Inquisition. In the 1500s, heretics and infidels were a public hazard. Look at the Peasants' War. Moreover, in this case the Jews were suspected of carrying out secretive pagan ceremonies, possibly involving child sacrifice. Torture (not including the rack, and generally in mild forms) was used on less than 20% of all tried. Personal enemies of the accused were struck off the list of witnesses. The Inquisition was known as such a fair and just court that most of the Spanish preferred to have cases held in it.

[jwocky]

Hummm, I believe in mathematical models, where does that leave me? I mean, all I have to say about strategical and tactical problems is something, you can verify in several ways (or all of them if you feel like doing a lot of work).

The mathematical way
- In any confrontation, the parties have a limited number of options due to limited number of skills, limited resources, limited intelligence and opponent's counter measures. They all weight those options by theri goals, the tenments of their beliefs and what they consider the most probably options, their opponents take. There is on a strategical level nothing mysterious or spiritual in it. A terrorist planning an attack goes through the same process as any other military type planning any other kind of mission. So we are talking basically game theory here.

- The beliefs of any involved parts determine only the goals in an abstract sense and the limits of how far a party is willing to go. Therefore, all mysticism and spirituality aside, they are when it comes to predict what a party will do, mathematically constants.

- since parties are "parties" and not "individuals", the decisions depend not on the whole aprty but a limited number of higher ranking operatives and leaders. This group are the higher ranking guys and leaders for one reason only: They represent the extreme in decision parameters. A "caliph" can't be less subscribed to his faith than the regular believer in the streets of his realm. At least, he can't appear that way or he loses his leadership position. So even if he would be a cold-hearted cynical bastard doing it all for his personal gain, his need to play into his follower's beliefs will make him decide like a real follower. And once more, the whole thing becomes a mathematical constant.

Mathematical models like this are of course a little bit too big to be calculated through on paper, so you want to use a computer and some recursive algorithms. Example:
- Since everybody was expecting the US as target, the probability the next attack would hit an ally increased (avoidance of opponent's counter measure)
- Since there was already an active cell in the wider area, the probability that the target would be a country around Belgium, was increasing (usable resources determine the options)
- Since in this group, France was the first to ally with the US in the Syrian campaign, the probability for France increased (beliefs, in this case the delusion to be attacked unrightfully in Syria, determine the goals)
And so on and so on. The problem is, out own authorities will never make all data available, we hear only about the data points after something happened.


The historical way
- people always think, they are the first to encounter the specific strategical and tactical problem

- people are wrong. Leaders in the past encountered the same problems as we did today. We can study the solutions, those leaders in the past have chosen and the results.

Examples:
Illegal immigration: Actually, already the ancient Egypts fought with the problem and discussed the same ideas from integrating them, make them citizens, build a wall, the whole shebang. The only difference was, the boss wasn't called "President" then but "Pharaoh" and the illegals came from Greece ... and on, I don't list what they tried and how it worked out, you have to read it up for yourself.
Terrorism: Well, that problem is old as dirt. Of course, they used arrows instead of automatic rifles and mass poisoning was far more popular than bombs because there were very few explosives available in ancient times. The Hyksos kings in Egypt fought with an underground organization trying to get them ousted, the Romans had the problem with the Sicarians and Zealots. Catholic terrorists tried to change the times in England in 16th century and the so-called Watergeusen tried the same in what would become the Netherlands against the Spanish line of the Habsburgs. As history teaches us, some of those terror groups, and I use that term only based on their methodology, succeeded, some because they got enough resources and allies, but a considerable number also because their opponents decided for the wrong "solution".
Economy: That is where you hear always "times have changed". Sure they have. An unemployed person not knowing how to feed his family was so much different in Assur or Egypt from an unemployed person not knowing hos to feed his family today. Yeah, right! And of course, globalization is so totally new ... did you know, the Vikings marauding England in the 8th century used chain mail produced mostly in Constantinople? The copper consumption of ancient Egypt was fed by Celtic miners in today's Ireland and England and the wood to build the Pharaoh's ships came from Lebanon. Egyptian cotton was traded till Babylon and Ireland, England and Germany which was then not Germany of course. Dried Italian peaches have been found in tombs in Egypt and jars with Egyptian beer made it till India ... so yes, globalization is totally new, right? And over all thoese millenia, people had the same ideas: Capitalism, plan economy, even socialism and communism. So after having gone through those sandbox games a dozen of times, we can conclude from history what works (and how) and what doesn't.

There are more ways to analyze what is going on, for example the socio-economic way, social-dynamic bubble analysis, attracto and detractor logic. Some of them overlap of course, and all of them are too complex to squeeze them all together in one post, but I guess, you get the gist.

[Lydiot]

I got to about page 6 or so and then the thread drifted. I propose the moderator splits it into two threads (or more).