Theology IV

[Lief Erikson]

I'm not going to respond to your last two posts, Coffeehouse, as I think it would be entirely pointless. You've made up your mind about what you believe, at least for now, and you feel certain. I don't think it matters at all what I say at this point. If I thought it might, I'd respond.

[Insidious Rex]

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

Remember that I used the word "philosophers," not "scientists.". Men like Darwin, Galileo, Copernicus and Newton were devout Christians.

Then what philosophers are you referring to exactly? Descartes?

[Coffeehouse]

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

I'm not going to respond to your last two posts, Coffeehouse, as I think it would be entirely pointless. You've made up your mind about what you believe, at least for now, and you feel certain. I don't think it matters at all what I say at this point. If I thought it might, I'd respond.

Perhaps it is pointless in one respect, and that is that you'd have to make at least a minimum effort to try to view history through some more or less objective eyes. And it seems very difficult for you to do..

No, I have not made up my mind on very many things. History reveals itself as astoundingly different every time I come over chapters of it I had never heard or read of before.
I'm asking you questions: How can you be fond of monarchs responsible for so much persecution, bloodshed and extreme religious intolerance?
F.ex., how is it that you think Ferdinand and Isabella, responsible for the expulsion of over 100,000 Jews and other non-Christians merits, in your own words, "great admiration"?

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

Perhaps it is pointless in one respect, and that is that you'd have to make at least a minimum effort to try to view history through some more or less objective eyes. And it seems very difficult for you to do..

Actually, I think I'm more objective than most people in my ability to see history. You see, the reason almost every American believes in democracy is that they were brought up with one. Similarly, almost every Chinese person believes in Communism because they were brought up that way. And for almost every Fascist, and Monarchist, it's the same.

I was brought up in America and until just three years or so ago, I believed in the validity of the Protestant Reformation, in Religious Freedom, in Democracy, the Revolutionary War, complete Freedom of Speech, basic beliefs foundational to America's system of government and way of life.

I knew the arguments supporting those positions well, but I changed my mind about almost all my perspectives in an incredible period of two or three years that opened me to a phenomenal different worldview.

I feel as though when I talk to almost anyone, I'm talking to somebody in a box, because they're voicing what they've been brought up to think, expressing their geography, basically. They're basically saying: This is When I was raised and this is Where. That's almost all that's coming out of their mouths- not quite all, but a lot of it. Their arguments are all the product of the geography and time they were brought up in, which really is very caging for the mind. People a few hundred years before almost universally thought differently from whoever you're talking to, and people a few hundred years from now will almost universally think differently on all kinds of important issues. Geography and time lock humans up.

The ideas of countries and cultures are so very, very different across the globe. They also are constantly changing.

Beliefs are like waves of surf ascending the shore of a beach, and we are like the foam riding those waves. Just as a wave rushes up the shore, beliefs rush forward through history, carrying people along with them. The piece of foam on the wave appears and then disappears after traveling a meter or two, just as a human does, carried on the beliefs of his time traveling briefly through history.

I think of beliefs a lot as waves. It's what the globe looks like. A specific wave could be a particular ideology that spans a continent or a group of nations . . . compare the differences between many of the "waves" in the Middle East and those in the West. Radically different, though globalization is creating a good deal of new overlap between what previously were more clearly distinguished ways of thinking. Or take a tribe in the Amazon and compare his thoughts with ours. Radically different. And many of the basics of his beliefs, he takes as automatic assumption that they're true, just as we take ours.

I don't believe what I was brought up believing and believed completely up to the age of 21. That pushes me outside of my culture, and my country in many ways-- it certainly pushes me enormously out of my comfort zone. My family, whom I still live with, disagree with me, as does virtually everyone I know (only one or two Catholics I've met over the Internet are in accord). I am outside the box, no longer surfing the wave of common thought and practice.

So I am able to more seriously evaluate where I'm coming from and why I believe what I do, and having gone through such radical changes, I'm quicker now to question my assumptions on a lot of things. For instance, only a couple days ago, people around me were making all kinds of criticisms of the Bush Administration. I immediately leapt to the defense, but as I thought more about it a half hour or so after the debate, I realized that I don't have enough information to say that they behaved well and it's not right for me to assume it, even though that's my conservative instinct.

On the other hand, I don't know they were wrong either, so just because all my liberal classmates think they were isn't enough to come to that opinion.

So it is steadily sinking into me, more and more, how much I don't know. That train of thought is open to me in a way it never was before, when I was more completely a product of my age.

So I disagree with you. I think I am much more objective in my viewpoint on the past and present than the majority of people today are.

My conclusions are just different from yours.

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

No, I have not made up my mind on very many things. History reveals itself as astoundingly different every time I come over chapters of it I had never heard or read of before.

Of course you learn new things. But you also have become extremely sure of yourself on most matters I've talked with you about. I don't sense any possibility of a change of opinion without something dramatic happening to you. That's the personal feeling I've gotten from our conversations.

You are intelligent and you know a good deal, but on some issues there doesn't seem to be any point in talking with you about a different opinion.

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

I'm asking you questions: How can you be fond of monarchs responsible for so much persecution, bloodshed and extreme religious intolerance?
F.ex., how is it that you think Ferdinand and Isabella, responsible for the expulsion of over 100,000 Jews and other non-Christians merits, in your own words, "great admiration"?

As regards Ferdinand and Isabella, I look on them with great admiration for several reasons:

1) Muhajadeen invaded Spain seven hundred years before and for all that time there was almost constant war between the Christians and Muslims. Ferdinand and Isabella ended that war with a Christian victory, conquering the Muslims of the Iberian Peninsula.

2) They were very devout Catholic rulers. Especially Isabella, from what I've read, but both of them, really. They also appear to have loved each other and worked very well as a team.

3) Their initiative led to the exploration of America. The exploration, by itself, is not a bad thing at all. It was a great novelty and vastly increased the knowledge of the times.

The colonization of America that went with it had both good and bad aspects. Columbus appears to have been an evil, ruthless person. I believe that right now, though I admit that I need to do more research on his character.

Ferdinand and Isabella condemned slavery (see page 98). When Columbus gave the right to his followers for each of them to bring back a slave to Spain, Isabella said in 1498, "What power of mine does the admiral hold to give my vassals to anyone?" All those slaves were freed.

Ferdinand and Isabella felt that natives under their rule should have the same rights as any of their other subjects. However, they did permit enslavement of Indian tribes that embraced cannibalism in 1503, which many settlers exploited to enslave people that weren't cannibals. They also permitted the enslavement of prisoners of war. Settlers abused these rights to go much further than Isabella and Ferdinand intended or than the law allowed, and Charles V tried to crack down on this by making the legislation more precise.

However, in all, the Spanish and Portuguese slave trade between 1502 and 1580 (which is approximately how long it existed- and it was mainly Portuguese) accounted for only 3% of all Atlantic Slave Trade.

Ferdinand and Isabella laid out just laws, in my view, regarding slavery in the colonies. They just weren't always followed properly. And when you're managing an empire way across the sea, this isn't always easy to accomplish.

4) I love the fact that they united Spain as a Catholic kingdom. The way to reach that goal was not something you love- it was a difficult, painful road. Unjust and evil actions as well as just and great ones were committed on it.

I find the Spanish monarchs' victories over the Muhajadeen in Spain a glorious achievement.

I've also studied the Spanish Inquisition from the most recent scholarly works, and it was nowhere near as bad as common knowledge suggest. Fewer people were killed for religious crimes than for virtually any other crime. Only about 2% of the people accused by the Inquisition were condemned to death. Torture was only used very infrequently, according to the recent scholars, and many forms of it were illegal. The forms of torture used were pretty close to the Bush Administration's "enhanced interrogation" techniques. They weren't allowed to break flesh. Which doesn't make the torture valid. More important is my point that it was used very infrequently. Confiscation of property, flogging or banishment were the more common penalties for the condemned. Death was the maximum penalty, and only very, very rarely implemented. Usually, people brought before the Inquisition were told to go on a pilgrimage, give to the poor or say a certain number of prayers or something, nothing harsh. There actually are accounts from the time period of people purposefully blaspheming in the secular court so that they'd get transferred to the Inquisitional courts, because there the penalties were lighter and the judges were fairer.

I think the Inquisition had just principles, though they obviously were exploited at times for evil, such as when false accusations were made for political purposes. Those kinds of manipulations of the system were evil.

Until the last two or three decades, modern knowledge about the Inquisition came from Enlightenment thinkers and Protestant Reformers' writings. Finally, scholarship has reached a point of sufficient precision that they are going through the Inquisition's records, which were very voluminous and precise, and going through all the cases and examining the evidence with careful methods rather than relying on old but biased sources. Their results have created radical changes in the perspectives of serious scholarship on the issue, though the old biased accounts continue to linger, dominating the mindset of non-scholars.

As for the Expulsion of the Jews . . .

That one is a lot harder for me. I am not convinced that Isabella and Ferdinand acted justly in this case. I believe it is generally just and right to banish non-Catholics from your country, because their influence will often damn souls to Hell and therefore it's a matter of national security and is vital for the protection of your country, which is part of the responsibility of governments. And that's not even getting into all the horrible physical consequences of non-Catholic beliefs.

HOWEVER, I do have trouble with the expulsion of the Jews. That's because they have no emphasis on evangelism. They don't try to convert people. Therefore their beliefs are a much smaller danger to the country. They might be some danger, but not a very grave one- at least not to many people.

So while I could normally see these kinds of actions as justified . . . such as Constantine's banishment of the Arians. I feel sure that that was justified . . . but I have trouble with Spain's expulsion of the Jews. I currently can't see it as a necessary or good act, though I can see how they would be strongly interested in doing that because they finally had defeated the Muhajadeen. They wanted one country with one religion. I can understand that. I have a lot of difficulty seeing that action as having been a right one, though. Much though I love the idea of a single, united, Catholic Spain, an idea that these monarchs made into a reality.



I suspect that this answers your question. I appreciate the justice of many of their laws (though they weren't always implemented properly), the fact that they victoriously ended seven centuries of war against an invader, their discovery and colonization of the New World (though I acknowledge evil things occurred too), their creation of the foundations of what would become a great Spanish Empire, their success in uniting so much of Spain and creating the foundation for further future unity, and their uniting the country as one Catholic nation (though I seriously question the validity of their expulsion of the Jews, and if it was invalid, it was a dark stain on their record of achievements).

I am not yet firmly settled in my views about the expulsion of the Jews. I think the principle they were operating on is often just, but I don't know that it was just in this case. It doesn't really look like it. I'll need to dig deeper before drawing any conclusions.

Nevertheless, they achieved so many great and wonderful accomplishments that I greatly admire them as leaders and as people.

[Lief Erikson]

Accidental double-post.

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

Then what philosophers are you referring to exactly? Descartes?

Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume are some good examples.

John Locke also caused serious problems, and was wrong on very important points.

Descartes . . . His arguments damaged the Christian world's morality because they led people no longer to see so much the value of faith in God's revelation, and instead to emphasize a human's own ability to come to the right conclusions about the universe through his own brain. Which is a parallel sin of pride to that which Adam and Eve committed when they took the knowledge of good and evil into themselves, setting themselves up as the judges of right and wrong rather than relying in faith on the fact that God had told them the fruit would kill them.

So yes, I would say he was one of the very wrong philosophers who helped tear down Christianity, though I know he definitely did not mean to. And I feel a lot more sadness for him than anything else. Regarding some of the others, I feel anger, but with him really just sadness. I know he meant to lift Christianity up, but he ended up accidentally doing the opposite.

[Coffeehouse]

"Actually, I think I'm more objective than most people in my ability to see history. You see, the reason almost every American believes in democracy is that they were brought up with one. Similarly, almost every Chinese person believes in Communism because they were brought up that way. And for almost every Fascist, and Monarchist, it's the same."

Yes, we're the sum of our cultural influences.
No, why do you say that most Chinese believe in Communist doctrine?
And what about Fascists? And Monarchists? Isn't it astounding how so many Germans managed to build new lives after WW2, after over a decade of Nazi doctrine? We're they really that fascist after all?
I think your dead wrong on this. I'll take an easy example: I live in Norway Lief. Not the Republic of Norway. But the Kingdom of Norway. Hereditary kingdom. King Harold V. Am I a Monarchist? Does it exclude me from the democratic beliefs that Americans hold?

"I was brought up in America and until just three years or so ago, I believed in the validity of the Protestant Reformation, in Religious Freedom, in Democracy, the Revolutionary War, complete Freedom of Speech, basic beliefs foundational to America's system of government and way of life."

You reject these? You think religious freedom should be denied?

"I knew the arguments supporting those positions well, but I changed my mind about almost all my perspectives in an incredible period of two or three years that opened me to a phenomenal different worldview."

You make it sound like a high school debate concerning global warming or not.
Did it occur to you that the everlasting nature of these positions were not that they were founded on some higher Protestant or American (or French) beliefs, but that they are in every respect something any human being will tell you they want for themselves too?
A safe life, freedom from prosecution, the freedom to believe what you want, the freedom to be whoever they want to be, the freedom to choose their own paths in life, a shelter, a family and food on the table? That isn't just a position Lief. That's non-negotiable.

"I feel as though when I talk to almost anyone, I'm talking to somebody in a box, because they're voicing what they've been brought up to think, expressing their geography, basically. They're basically saying: This is When I was raised and this is Where. That's almost all that's coming out of their mouths- not quite all, but a lot of it. Their arguments are all the product of the geography and time they were brought up in, which really is very caging for the mind. People a few hundred years before almost universally thought differently from whoever you're talking to, and people a few hundred years from now will almost universally think differently on all kinds of important issues. Geography and time lock humans up."

We are the sums of our influences, of our surroundings and particularly the time we live in. Kind of goes without saying though..

"The ideas of countries and cultures are so very, very different across the globe. They also are constantly changing."

...

"Beliefs are like waves of surf ascending the shore of a beach, and we are like the foam riding those waves. Just as a wave rushes up the shore, beliefs rush forward through history, carrying people along with them. The piece of foam on the wave appears and then disappears after traveling a meter or two, just as a human does, carried on the beliefs of his time traveling briefly through history.

I think of beliefs a lot as waves. It's what the globe looks like. A specific wave could be a particular ideology that spans a continent or a group of nations . . . compare the differences between many of the "waves" in the Middle East and those in the West. Radically different, though globalization is creating a good deal of new overlap between what previously were more clearly distinguished ways of thinking. Or take a tribe in the Amazon and compare his thoughts with ours. Radically different. And many of the basics of his beliefs, he takes as automatic assumption that they're true, just as we take ours. "

The waves on the beach methapor is just another way of saying what you've already stated twice.

Concerning globalization and overlapping of knowledge and different truths: Does that scare you?

"I don't believe what I was brought up believing and believed completely up to the age of 21. That pushes me outside of my culture, and my country in many ways-- it certainly pushes me enormously out of my comfort zone. My family, whom I still live with, disagree with me, as does virtually everyone I know (only one or two Catholics I've met over the Internet are in accord). I am outside the box, no longer surfing the wave of common thought and practice."

What's outside the box? God? (no pun meant)

"So I am able to more seriously evaluate where I'm coming from and why I believe what I do, and having gone through such radical changes, I'm quicker now to question my assumptions on a lot of things. For instance, only a couple days ago, people around me were making all kinds of criticisms of the Bush Administration. I immediately leapt to the defense, but as I thought more about it a half hour or so after the debate, I realized that I don't have enough information to say that they behaved well and it's not right for me to assume it, even though that's my conservative instinct."

Certainly no one else but you would be able to seriously evaluate where you are coming from and why you believe what you believe. But that's a given right?

"So it is steadily sinking into me, more and more, how much I don't know. That train of thought is open to me in a way it never was before, when I was more completely a product of my age."

And you are no longer the product of your age?


"So I disagree with you. I think I am much more objective in my viewpoint on the past and present than the majority of people today are."

Red lights go off in my head when I see some write they believe they are more objective than most other people. It leaves some room for pause..
On what grounds do you justify this extraordinary claim?

"You are intelligent and you know a good deal, but on some issues there doesn't seem to be any point in talking with you about a different opinion."

I'm always open for conflicting views. But many I take with a heavy pinch of salt! It usually happens when facts are bit fuzzy, analysis a bit inconsistent.. but mostly, it's just not persuasive

Concerning your very long answer on Ferdinand and Isabella (nice effort):

You write in the end:
"Nevertheless, they achieved so many great and wonderful accomplishments that I greatly admire them as leaders and as people."

The one major accomplishment by Ferdinand and Isabella was to start the colonisation of nearly two continents (if you count South and North America as separate), and the subsequent massacre and extinction of a plethora of peoples and livelihoods.
You find that admirable? Or is it because Catholicism was brought to the Americas?

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

You make it sound like a high school debate concerning global warming or not.
Did it occur to you that the everlasting nature of these positions were not that they were founded on some higher Protestant or American (or French) beliefs, but that they are in every respect something any human being will tell you they want for themselves too?

Your appeal to "any human" is a bandwagon fallacy. "Everyone else believes this way, so you should too," is the logic you're using here, which is grossly flawed. I'll elaborate below.

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

A safe life, freedom from prosecution, the freedom to believe what you want, the freedom to be whoever they want to be, the freedom to choose their own paths in life, a shelter, a family and food on the table? That isn't just a position Lief. That's non-negotiable.

I don't want the "freedom to believe whatever I want." I want the freedom to believe what's right, what will make my life and the lives of the people around me safe (if they believe it too) because it's right.

I have nothing against shelter, family and food on the table. That has nothing to do with the positions I rejected.

I'll also point out that it's your position that the things you referred to are "non-negotiable." That IS a position. And I reject it, about some of what you talked about.

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

We are the sums of our influences, of our surroundings and particularly the time we live in. Kind of goes without saying though..

It's extremely important to say, to think about, because it shows how caged our thinking is. If we can't think outside our own environment, and that environment changes radically with the breeze (breeze being a metaphor for "centuries" here) we're locked into a completely groundless way of thinking and acting. That's a dismal thought, but true and worth meditating on because of the possible results: Out-of-the-box thinking. Which is itself not all that valuable unless it comes from that which is eternal and thus absolutely grounded.

And the eternal can only be known through revelation by the eternal to man. Because human reason changes like the turning of the tides, but the eternal does not. So it is God we must seek, as human reason separate from revelation is shown to be worthless (as it's endlessly changing and is fashioned by such irrationalities as time and geography).

I'm flinging this point about how we arrive at our conclusions at you repeatedly right now because it's so important to our debate right now. Your thoughts aren't your thoughts. They are your environment's thoughts, and they will be completely different in a few hundred years and were different a few hundred years ago, which makes those thoughts ultimately meaningless.

We cannot cling to thoughts that come from irrationalities like geography and time unless a real rationality beyond geography and time leads us to them. And that can only be found outside the intellect of mankind, in the eternal. Which can only be known through its own revelation.

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

Concerning globalization and overlapping of knowledge and different truths: Does that scare you?

Truth is absolute and non-contradictory. It might appear to contradict itself because of our limited reference frame, but it is not contradictory in reality. We all know that you aren't sitting in Washington DC and San Francisco simultaneously. Because that defies reality. That which defies reality is untrue, and that which is real is true.

Does truth scare me? I don't think so. Falsehood disturbs me, though, because it creates destruction.

The blending of truth and lies disturbs me, because it makes lies look like truth and thus empowers them to deceive and destroy people.

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

What's outside the box? God? (no pun meant)

Yes, He is.

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

"So I am able to more seriously evaluate where I'm coming from and why I believe what I do, and having gone through such radical changes, I'm quicker now to question my assumptions on a lot of things. For instance, only a couple days ago, people around me were making all kinds of criticisms of the Bush Administration. I immediately leapt to the defense, but as I thought more about it a half hour or so after the debate, I realized that I don't have enough information to say that they behaved well and it's not right for me to assume it, even though that's my conservative instinct."

Certainly no one else but you would be able to seriously evaluate where you are coming from and why you believe what you believe. But that's a given right?

I think you're missing my point. My point was that because the bottom was knocked out of my boat and now I'm in a different one, I'm much, much more capable now of questioning my own assumptions than I was, and because I'm no longer controlled by the flow of American thought which has carried me throughout most of my life, but have broken out of that, I'm more able to question basic ideological assumptions than many people are.

For instance, you yourself said that you find the values I was questioning "non-negotiable." I, on the other hand, find many of American basic "non-negotiables" to be "negotiable," or well worth seriously evaluating in comparison with other viewpoints that exist or have existed in the world, in other cultures and environments.

I can do that more easily than you can because I've fallen OUT of this environment.

"So it is steadily sinking into me, more and more, how much I don't know. That train of thought is open to me in a way it never was before, when I was more completely a product of my age."

And you are no longer the product of your age?

No, I'm not, really. When I use the term, "this age," I'm referring to the major ideologies of this time period. There are ways in which I am, of course. I know how to use computers. That comes from this age. I wear sneakers sometimes, flip flops on others. That comes from this age. Those aren't what I'm talking about.

Many of my beliefs come from the Medieval Ages. I'm more a product of that age than this one.

"So I disagree with you. I think I am much more objective in my viewpoint on the past and present than the majority of people today are."

Red lights go off in my head when I see some write they believe they are more objective than most other people. It leaves some room for pause..
On what grounds do you justify this extraordinary claim?

Throughout the previous part of my post, I was explaining this. Because I got jarred out of this cultural environment, America, I suddenly find myself able to question or accept beliefs that very few in this environment would. Which makes me less a product of this environment, of this age, and able to look at all the different environments, including my own, more critically.

"You are intelligent and you know a good deal, but on some issues there doesn't seem to be any point in talking with you about a different opinion."

I'm always open for conflicting views. But many I take with a heavy pinch of salt! It usually happens when facts are bit fuzzy, analysis a bit inconsistent.. but mostly, it's just not persuasive

I don't think you are as open as you think.

Concerning your very long answer on Ferdinand and Isabella (nice effort):

I wish I could say nice effort about your response . You didn't respond to any of the facts I produced for you about them, to explain why I admired them. You instead just suggested I actually found them admirable only because they spread Catholicism, though they were also genocidal villains. Which just ignores everything I said.

The reasons I find them admirable are the ones I explained to you in the post.

Here you find many of them summarized. If you want to challenge me on any of these points, please review my post before you do, because I already elaborated on each of these points and might already have responded to your objections.

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

I suspect that this answers your question. I appreciate the justice of many of their laws (though they weren't always implemented properly), the fact that they victoriously ended seven centuries of war against an invader, their discovery and colonization of the New World (though I acknowledge evil things occurred too), their creation of the foundations of what would become a great Spanish Empire, their success in uniting so much of Spain and creating the foundation for further future unity, and their uniting the country as one Catholic nation (though I seriously question the validity of their expulsion of the Jews, and if it was invalid, it was a dark stain on their record of achievements).

[Coffeehouse]

Lief, you write you want to freedom to believe what's right. That is exactly the freedom to believe whatever you want.
You just uttered it, but you can't seem to see it. More concisely put: The freedom to believe. It is entirely subjective what you believe to be right or wrong, and you are entitled to that opinion. That is called freedom of expression, freedom of belief. It is a freedom no one has the right to revoke from you. It is non-negotiable.

I know you have nothing against shelter, family and food on the table. Moot point!
But you seem to forget that for many that is something that they are denied, a freedom that they cannot exercise. The freedoms I speak about did not pop out of thin air. These freedoms have been fought for, spoken for,
written for, sang for, cried for. And they are not exclusive. They are all-inclusive. They are meant for all peoples on this planet. That's what makes them so unique, and that's what makes the process, that it took to arrive at these freedoms, so unique.

So I ask then on reading this: "And I reject it, about some of what you talked about"Which of these freedoms do you reject?

Moving on concerning your breeze-metaphore (Yes I'm reading every word and comma):

You make a big point out of the changing viewpoints and social environments in human history. And that leads you to talk about the eternal, in relation to man, guided by God. But it just goes to show how little history you're actually
reflecting when you say this. If there's one thing religious history has shown us it is that nearly every single part of religious doctrine is in some
way or the other negotiable. The Catholic Church itself is a blatant example of it. The Bible, the Catholic Church, they have both been changing over 2,000 years. Yet you seem to be under the illusion that you've somehow detached yourself from any substantial influences in our modern
world. That you're outside the box.. with God.
You mention the irrationalities of geography and time, and I can't but wonder if you've completely lost it? Of all things that are so irrevocably attached to geography and time is Precisely the Bible and the Catholic Church,
forever bound to the Vatican State, glued to the legacy of Jerusalem and today's Israel, obsessed with Anno Domini,
and the ageing years of all the main Biblical characters prior to Jesus's birth. Religion is so Very Much a product
of geography and time.

Lastly, the Spanish Empire:
I did respond to your long post about Ferdinand and Isabella. Forgive me for not spending 6-7 paragraphs on something I can spell out in a few sentences The point was that the romantic, grandiose empire that
you speak of, the Spanish Empire, came about not by kind words, but by the sword. It caused a great, great deal of suffering and scarred South and Central America so much that they are still recovering.

I'll spell it out for you:
Spain, along with Portugal (and to a lesser extent Britain, France, etc.) came to these two continents, displaced nearly every single living person's identity and way of life with their packed and ready European way, bumperstickered with the Catholic faith. In return? And while disease killed most of the natives
that got in touch with their Spanish saviours, Ferdinand and Isabella and their successors found must use in the bountyfull Gold, Silver, Slaves, etc. that crossed back across the Atlantic. You seem to think this gold was spent on a national welfare program to the eternal bliss of all Catholics in Spain?
Do you know when those coffers finally emptied out? Keywords: Spanish Armada, English Channel.
Then again emptied out in long, bloody wars in the War of Succession. The sick legacy of the Spanish Empire was that it left so little useful to its victims and instead financed so many of the mad wars initiated by princes and kings across the European motherland.
Today, nations from Argentina to Bolivia to Venezuela and Mexico are grappling with the profound inequalities and straw-sucking of resources that the Spanish engaged so passionately in, all in the name of the Spanish Empire and the Good Lord.

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

Lief, you write you want to freedom to believe what's right. That is exactly the freedom to believe whatever you want.
You just uttered it, but you can't seem to see it. More concisely put: The freedom to believe. It is entirely subjective what you believe to be right or wrong, and you are entitled to that opinion.

I have repeatedly given you objective evidences on the religious threads to show what's right. God uses objective evidences as well as subjective to convince people he's the true God. This is your opinion in defiance of a very large collection of evidence that has been given you. And there's more where that came from, of course, but I think you take the whole thing (which a third of the world's population believe) with too big a pitcher of salt to give it that thorough an investigation. Which bothers me a lot.

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

That is called freedom of expression, freedom of belief. It is a freedom no one has the right to revoke from you. It is non-negotiable.

Truth is not subjective. I made an argument to that effect in my previous post, which you have yet to respond to.

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

I know you have nothing against shelter, family and food on the table. Moot point!
But you seem to forget that for many that is something that they are denied, a freedom that they cannot exercise. The freedoms I speak about did not pop out of thin air. These freedoms have been fought for, spoken for,
written for, sang for, cried for. And they are not exclusive. They are all-inclusive. They are meant for all peoples on this planet. That's what makes them so unique, and that's what makes the process, that it took to arrive at these freedoms, so unique.

Catholicism, which gives true freedom, is meant for everyone on the planet, in my view. Many Communists want their ideology all over the planet, and feel that it gives people the proper amount of freedom. For Fascists and Monarchists it's the same. They also aren't meant to be exclusive- most adherents of those belief systems would be very happy to see those ideologies all over the planet.

And American freedoms may have been fought for, cried for and all the rest, as have countless other different ideologies that smack American freedoms in the face, but that doesn't make any of them right. Passionately holding to a belief does not make that belief right.

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

So I ask then on reading this: "And I reject it, about some of what you talked about"Which of these freedoms do you reject?

Religious Freedom (as it tends to destroy many people, physically and spiritually), Democracy (as it is will of the people fashioning law, rather than the will of God), Free Speech I think is too far extended. I don't immediately recall what others we talked about. I don't believe in the validity of the Protestant Reformation or the Revolutionary War, though.

I've explained all these positions in detail earlier in the thread . . . But that's okay. I'll try to answer questions you have, unless I again start feeling like it's pointless.

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

Moving on concerning your breeze-metaphore (Yes I'm reading every word and comma):

You make a big point out of the changing viewpoints and social environments in human history. And that leads you to talk about the eternal, in relation to man, guided by God. But it just goes to show how little history you're actually
reflecting when you say this. If there's one thing religious history has shown us it is that nearly every single part of religious doctrine is in some
way or the other negotiable. The Catholic Church itself is a blatant example of it. The Bible, the Catholic Church, they have both been changing over 2,000 years. Yet you seem to be under the illusion that you've somehow detached yourself from any substantial influences in our modern
world. That you're outside the box.. with God.
You mention the irrationalities of geography and time, and I can't but wonder if you've completely lost it? Of all things that are so irrevocably attached to geography and time is Precisely the Bible and the Catholic Church,
forever bound to the Vatican State, glued to the legacy of Jerusalem and today's Israel, obsessed with Anno Domini,
and the ageing years of all the main Biblical characters prior to Jesus's birth. Religion is so Very Much a product
of geography and time.

You say that, but where's your proof?

The Catholics have never changed the Bible. In the Church councils of Hippo, Carthage and Rome in the late 5th century, the canon was established, and it has not changed. Protestants and many other Christian groups have deviated off in forging their own later canons, but the Catholic Church has not changed the one original canon.

The Old Testament wasn't even an established canon prior to that. The Jews may have created an Old Testament canon at the Council of Jamnia, although the evidence supporting this is sketchy, but the Spirit had left them at that point and was with the Catholics, because they had rejected the Christ. Therefore their rabbis' canon isn't all that important. It is certain that the OT canon was not firmly established prior to Jamnia.

So the Bible has not changed. Non-Catholics have tried to change the books around, but that is not important. The Bible the Catholic Church created and assembled remains in its ancient form (though obviously translated into other languages now).

As for your comment about the Catholic Church changing, you'll need to back that. The infallible positions declared by the Church have not changed, and its ancient body of teaching goes straight back to the Early Church Fathers.

There are some misinterpretations that have slipped in here and there on non-dogmatic issues, but I don't know of any dogma that has changed. Dogmas have been elaborated on, and thus their revelation deepened, such as Thomas Aquinas' insights about the difference between "accident" and "substance" in the Eucharist. Elaboration is a revelation of further truth, not an abolishment of old. I don't know of any repealing of old dogma having occurred by the Catholic Church.

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

Lastly, the Spanish Empire:
I did respond to your long post about Ferdinand and Isabella. Forgive me for not spending 6-7 paragraphs on something I can spell out in a few sentences The point was that the romantic, grandiose empire that
you speak of, the Spanish Empire, came about not by kind words, but by the sword. It caused a great, great deal of suffering and scarred South and Central America so much that they are still recovering.

Much of it came about through trade, which came through colonization and was pretty peaceful. There were enslavement abuses, but as I pointed out, these were often against the laws, were abuses, and were nowhere near so bad as the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade that resulted from the downfall of Catholic power. You're ignoring every part of the history except those parts that you can criticize.

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

I'll spell it out for you:
Spain, along with Portugal (and to a lesser extent Britain, France, etc.) came to these two continents, displaced nearly every single living person's identity and way of life with their packed and ready European way, bumperstickered with the Catholic faith.

Those ways of life included, from tribe to tribe, cannibalism, human sacrifice, idolatry, sometimes incessant tribal warfare, all kinds of horrible things. European Christianity was more civilized, was a heck of a lot better. It produces better material lives and better spiritual ones.

Much of this was achieved through willing conversion. Especially in Peru, where, when the natives saw that Pizarro had conquered the emperor, they decided he must be favored by the divine and then flocked to the new faith.

In Mexico also, we know that Cortes sought to convert the emperor by word of mouth. These were blessings they were offering, improvements to the lifestyles of those who already lived in those lands. When Cortes brought human sacrifice to an end and destroyed the abominable Aztec Empire, that was a good thing for Mexico. The Aztecs had been brutally crushing the entire land. And it was not the fault of Cortes or any other Europeans that disease came with them and killed hundreds of millions of natives.

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

Ferdinand and Isabella and their successors found must use in the bountyfull Gold, Silver, Slaves, etc. that crossed back across the Atlantic. You seem to think this gold was spent on a national welfare program to the eternal bliss of all Catholics in Spain?
Do you know when those coffers finally emptied out? Keywords: Spanish Armada, English Channel.

They had good reasons to try to use the Armada against England. The English were supporting rebels against them in the Netherlands and were repeatedly, brazenly attacking their shipping.

And it was with the downfall of Portugal and Spain that the Slave Trade really came to its heyday. They, as I pointed out earlier, only accounted, with all their shipping, for 3% of the TransAtlantic Slave Trade. And most of that 3% was Portugal, not Spain.

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

Then again emptied out in long, bloody wars in the War of Succession. The sick legacy of the Spanish Empire was that it left so little useful to its victims and instead financed so many of the mad wars initiated by princes and kings across the European motherland.

A few points you're overlooking: First, many of the "mad wars" the Spanish fought with that money were defensive conflicts against Ottoman invaders. That was fully valid. It would, in fact, have been irresponsible of them to have let the Ottomans conquer their subjects in Algeria and Tunis without a fight.

Spain also spent a good deal of the money building colonies and engaging in exploration in the 16th century. Many of these colonies it spent treasure on produced trade goods which brought great profits for people at home and overseas. Half of the colonies you criticized Spain's handling of actually benefited a great deal from Spanish rule, economically. I'll go into much greater detail on that in a moment, as it really is important to the kind of picture we get of what the Spanish Empire was and did.

But first, as regards the wars against the European powers Spain fought using its new treasure, I haven't researched them sufficiently to have a reasonable opinion on who was right and who wrong, or if either side was right. I'm ready to accept the possibility that the Spanish Empire was wrong in a lot of those wars! Maybe they were, as far as I know. I'm definitely not arguing they were perfect.

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

Today, nations from Argentina to Bolivia to Venezuela and Mexico are grappling with the profound inequalities and straw-sucking of resources that the Spanish engaged so passionately in, all in the name of the Spanish Empire and the Good Lord.

You're completely wrong about Mexico, as this article goes into great depth to explain. Mexico was doing extremely well under Spanish colonial government. Its economic collapse came as a result of its War of Independence and a few subsequent wars in which the Spanish tried to take Mexico back, afterward.

This article details how well they were doing as New Spain, and how the War of Independence brought their economic wellbeing and stable government to an end:
http://historicaltextarchive.com/sec...icle&artid=528

Argentina's troubles also largely are the result of decades of political instability, civil war and anarchy that followed their independence from Spain. But they recovered and got a pretty good economy after that, until different struggles completely unrelated to the Spanish Empire, which erupted with Juan D. Perón in the mid-20th century. That really kicked their economy, and is the reason for their current problems.

Here's what they were experiencing under Spanish rule:

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Spain established a permanent colony on the site of what would later become the city Buenos Aires in 1580, as part of the Viceroyalty of Peru. Settlers initially arrived primarily overland from Peru.

The natural ports on the RÃ*o de la Plata estuary could not be used because all communications and commerce were meant to be made through the port of Lima, a condition that led to contraband becoming the normal means of commerce in cities such as Asunción, Buenos Aires, and Montevideo.

The Spanish raised the status of this region by establishing the Viceroyalty of the RÃ*o de la Plata (in Spanish: Virreinato del RÃ*o de la Plata) in 1776. This short-lived viceroyalty comprised today's Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, as well as much of present-day Bolivia.

Buenos Aires became a flourishing port only after the creation of the Viceroyalty, as the revenues from the PotosÃ*, the increasing maritime activity in terms of goods rather than precious metals, the production of cattle for the export of leather and other products, and other political reasons, made it gradually become one of the most important commercial centers of the region.

The viceroyalty was, however, shortlived due to lack of internal cohesion among the many regions of which it was constituted and to lack of Spanish support. It collapsed when Napoleon successfully invaded Spain and overthrew the Spanish monarchy.

The Spanish rule of Argentina was a mixed bag, some good and some bad. We couldn't say that they were primarily a bad influence on Argentina in material terms, because there wasn't much of anything in Argentina before they arrived anyway. Argentina was only sparsely inhabited before Spain created settlements there. There were some natives, but not many.

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

The area now known as Argentina was relatively sparsely populated until the period of European colonization.

So there wasn't much there originally to "mess up." And toward the end of their rule, under the viceroyalty, the country experienced enormous improvements because of the Spanish rule. So the country didn't inherit long-term problems from the Spanish. The viceroyalty took out their old problems. Their longer term problems came from their decades of anarchy and war following independence, and their conflicts in the 20th century.


Venezuela was pretty much at peace throughout Spanish rule, and in the 18th century its economy became extremely healthy.

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

The Province of Venezuela was under the jurisdiction of the Viceroyalty of New Granada (created in 1717). The Province was then transformed into the Captaincy General of Venezuela in 1777. The CompañÃ*a Guipuzcoana de Caracas held a close monopoly on trade with Europe. The Guipuzcoana company did a commendable job of stimulating the Venezuelan economy, especially in fostering the cultivation of cacao beans, which became Venezuela’s principal export.[4] It opened Venezuelan ports to foreign commerce, but this was recognizing a fait accompli. Like no other Spanish American dependency, Venezuela had more contacts with Europe through the British and French islands in the Caribbean. In an almost surreptitious, though legal, manner, Caracas itself had become an intellectual powerhouse. It had its own university since 1721, where you could learn Latin and follow courses in medicine and engineering, apart of course from the humanities. Its most illustrious graduate was Andrés Bello, the greatest Spanish American polymath in his time. In Chacao, a town to the east of Caracas, there flourished a school of music whose director Jose Angel Lamas produced a few but impressive compositions according to strictest 18th century European canons.

Venezuelan difficulties began principally when they'd thrown off Spanish rule. Wars and political turmoil in the 20th century are the real cause of their problems. Not the Spanish.



As regards Bolivia, with that one, I think you have a point. Whereas the Spanish ruled the other colonies you mentioned quite well, Bolivia didn't get much of anything from the Spanish and was in a state of constant turmoil and violence because of rebellions against the Spanish and wars to put them down. Bolivia did poorly indeed under Spanish colonial rule.

The other colonies you mentioned did not; their present-day problems stem from conflicts and political struggles of the 20th century and/or the wars of independence they fought against Spain in the 19th century.

[Coffeehouse]

Lief, I am not going to argue with you about the existence of God or not, because nothing you've argued so far is remotely satisfying as evidence. You may think so, but remember you are already a convert, you've made a choice to believe in a God. I have an opinion, and you have an opinion. The problem you face in much of your analysis is that you mix up your personal beliefs in God and the doctrine that your religion expresses, with the historical facts on the ground. But I want to challenge you on those points, because it is fairly easy to expose just how intolerant some of your arguments are!

"Catholicism, which gives true freedom, is meant for everyone on the planet, in my view. Many Communists want their ideology all over the planet, and feel that it gives people the proper amount of freedom. For Fascists and Monarchists it's the same. They also aren't meant to be exclusive- most adherents of those belief systems would be very happy to see those ideologies all over the planet."

In this argument you state that Catholicism gives true freedom. But that of course is entirely subjective. There are many kinds of freedoms in this world, and with it many kinds of happiness. Happiness is individual, a myriad of elements varying from person to person. It is also cultural. And that is why the freedoms presented in the United Nations Human Rights Charter are so important, because they do not exclude, they do not deny or say that this freedom is truer than the other.
This is the UN Human Rights Charter: This text is my moral guideline:

"Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people.

Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,

Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,

Whereas the people of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in large freedom,

Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nation, the promotion of universal respect and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,

Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge."

Article 2 in the Human Rights Charter Lief:
"Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furtermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty"

I am under the impression Lief, that you disagree with this text. Especially from what you write in the following paragraph:

"Religious Freedom (as it tends to destroy many people, physically and spiritually), Democracy (as it is will of the people fashioning law, rather than the will of God), Free Speech I think is too far extended. I don't immediately recall what others we talked about. I don't believe in the validity of the Protestant Reformation or the Revolutionary War, though."

How does religious freedom destroy people physically and spiritually Lief?

How Lief, do laws made by mankind, specifically the Human Rights Charter, in any way serve less a peaceful purpose than the 10 commandments?

"The Catholics have never changed the Bible."

Too easy:
Original commandment, in the Bible:
I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Commandment changed by the Catholic Church:
I am the LORD thy God. Thou shalt have no strange gods before Me.

Second commandment!
Original commandment, in the Bible:
Exodus 20:4-6 You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my Commandments.
Commandment, Deleted by the Catholic Church....... Why? Because there is idolatry in the Vatican and the in the Papal system.

Which leaves 9 commandments: And this is how that was solved by the Catholic Church, which actually is quite funny!
Original, 10th commandment, in the Bible:
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.
10th Commandment changed by the Catholic Church into a 9th and a 10th commandment:
9th: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife.
10th: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's goods.

The Catholic Church Lief, also changed the the day of worship from the Sabbath to Sunday. That is in fact a direction contradiction to the "word of God".

You write:
"The infallible positions declared by the Church have not changed."
This isn't objectivity Lief. This isn't even a valid argument. It's actually quite circular. The infalliable positions of the Church have not changed because they are infalliable positions and therefore they cannot change by definition...

Now for the discussion of the Spanish Empire Lief, which you've made a really good job of rose painting. I congratulate you on some devious, devious writing. Really, half-truths are worse than lies because they are so hard to spot! Nonetheless..

"Much of it came about through trade, which came through colonization and was pretty peaceful. There were enslavement abuses, but as I pointed out, these were often against the laws, were abuses, and were nowhere near so bad as the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade that resulted from the downfall of Catholic power. You're ignoring every part of the history except those parts that you can criticize."

The first half-truth: Much of it came aboue through trade.
Yes, it is in fact possible to call it trade. The trade-off however wasn't apples for oranges. It was gold and silver for the Spanish, and slave labour for the natives.
You see most natives in America were put to work in mines, and on plantations and the average amount of time a native lasted on this mines was less than a year. The figures for this are hard to be specific about, but a fair estimate is that well over a 1/3 of natives in the Americas died in the 16th century because of direct Spanish rule. It wasn't remotely humane, and it wasn't remotely peaceful. It was colonial rule and everything it involves.

More half-truths!

"Those ways of life included, from tribe to tribe, cannibalism, human sacrifice, idolatry, sometimes incessant tribal warfare, all kinds of horrible things. European Christianity was more civilized, was a heck of a lot better. It produces better material lives and better spiritual ones."

Apart from slanting Native Americans for regular acts of cannibalism and human sacrifice, you forget yourself:
Idolatry of course exists in your own church.
Tribal warfare is perhaps the single-most defining factor of Europe, and Western Civilization in general. What on earth do you call the countless wars fought on the continent? It is tribal warfare at its largest scale, and it has been occurring for over 2,000 years (finally coming to a minimum level after the creation of the European Union, but that's another discussion)

As for horrible things Lief.. I mean c'mon, are you seriously making these arguments?
Should I list all the horrible things Christians have done to one another in the name of the Lord in Europe?

Next half-truth:
"And it was with the downfall of Portugal and Spain that the Slave Trade really came to its heyday. They, as I pointed out earlier, only accounted, with all their shipping, for 3% of the TransAtlantic Slave Trade. And most of that 3% was Portugal, not Spain."

Lief, the reason why Spain did not engage substantially in the TransAtlantic Slave Trade was because the labour that they needed for their colonies existed in those very same colonies.. Remember that Spanish rule covered most of the Americas. It was not necessary for them to bring African slaves across the ocean. The slave labour was readily available there on the soil!
On the other hand, the Portuguese (who had the initial control of the West African slavetrade), and the British and the French (and even the Dutch) could not find the available slave labour in their colonies in the Caribbean and in the quite sparcely populated eastern part of Brazil.

"A few points you're overlooking: First, many of the "mad wars" the Spanish fought with that money were defensive conflicts against Ottoman invaders. That was fully valid. It would, in fact, have been irresponsible of them to have let the Ottomans conquer their subjects in Algeria and Tunis without a fight."
Spain did fight defensive wars. Spain did also fight highly aggressive wars.
But my point Lief, which you eloquently eluded, was that the gold and silver sucked from the American continent, was not used for widespread social welfare, but on costly, bloody wars, defensive or aggressive. Wars nonetheless. The Spanish Empire was a highly imperialistic empire.
They did not go into the Americas on a mission to promote welfare among Native Americans, but for wealth. Gold, Silver, Spices. Sent back to Spain in large coffers, leaving a poor state of affairs in the Americas.

"You're completely wrong about Mexico, as this article goes into great depth to explain. Mexico was doing extremely well under Spanish colonial government. Its economic collapse came as a result of its War of Independence and a few subsequent wars in which the Spanish tried to take Mexico back, afterward."

Lief, the average life of a native in Mexico was a poor life. The study of Mexico in this era is extensively documented and everything suggests that native Americans along with a smaller minority of imported African slaves, were treated as inferior, treated with contempt, and seen to be unable to govern themselves.
The Spanish colonial rule of Mexico was colonial in every sense of the word. The majority of natives worked not in nice households or in beautiful cafes on the beach, but in mines and in plantations.
A life of tranquility was reserved for the small minority of upper class peoples, including the well-looked after clergy.
And you've got it wrong: The collapse of the Mexican economy was the collapse of a colonial economy, based on slave labour.

"Spain also spent a good deal of the money building colonies and engaging in exploration in the 16th century. Many of these colonies it spent treasure on produced trade goods which brought great profits for people at home and overseas. Half of the colonies you criticized Spain's handling of actually benefited a great deal from Spanish rule, economically. I'll go into much greater detail on that in a moment, as it really is important to the kind of picture we get of what the Spanish Empire was and did."
Another half-truth:
Obviously the treasure spent on building colonies came from the colonies themselves. The exploration in the 16th century was financed in hope of bountiful rewards in these new lands, what we all know as the Spanish Empire.
Again, the Spanish Crown had one goal when they conquered the Americas.
To bring back wealth to Spain. Very simple.
Those who did enjoy the luxuries of wealth in the colonies were not the average native Americans, who were oppressed, but the upper classes.
This is elementary history Lief.

Regarding Argentina, it is a special case obviously because the majority of people currently living there are of European descent.

Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, the Central American nations:
They share the common heritage of having been colonized by Spain.
The immense drainage of resources that the Spanish performed in their long Empire-building seriously damaged both peoples and environments in the Americas. And the lessons the Spanish learned were put to good use in the colonialization of Africa much later.
The Spanish set the precedent, and with it has followed the destruction of people's lives, languages, cultures, homes and histories.
But apparently you think that is okay, as long as the Catholic faith is present.
The Catholic Portuguese that came to the Indian Ocean, pillaging from Sofala in southern Africa to Calicut, by India are the most blatant example of the sort of inhumane behavior the Spanish and the Portuguese excelled in.
The Portuguese actually managed to tear down over 800 years of trade, Indian Ocean cultures, beautiful cities and colorful civilizations in less than 50 years.

Today we can look back at the Americas, at the western coast of Africa, at the eastern coast of Africa, at the peoples living by the Indian Ocean:
It all came by the sword, it all caused death and destruction, and it is ridiculous to say that this bloodshed has been balanced positively out by European technology and by the religion called Christianity.
For all the Bible-preaching that the Spanish engaged in, they rather more preferred to deal in blood than in words: guns, germs and steel.

Finally, you seem to be under the impression that all the things that went wrong in the Americas happened in the 20th century.
It was only in the 20th century that the peoples of the Americas managed to obtain self-rule. But your turning the logic on its head and argueing that because they obtained self-rule they ended up with much bloodshed, while the truth of matter is that when the people of America arrived at that moment where they could rule themselves they simultaneously had to deal with all the immense inequalities in development and resources, in education and in social standing that the hundreds of years of oppressive Spanish colonial rule had resulted in.
It is the exact same story in Africa. Africans are not fighting each others because they do not know better, or because they are not following the Catholic doctrine, but because when they finally managed to achieve independence they had to rebuild nations founded on colonial greed, founded on the nourishing of tribal hatred, of racial and geographical inequality.
That's the great irony of the colonial heritage! The freedom from Spain, or from Portugal or England, meant not only freedom of self-rule, but an unleashing of all the disastrous policies that the colonial nations had imposed.

So when you state nonchalantly that "wars and political turmoil" are the real cause, not the legacy of Spanish rule, it only shows me that you've understood nothing of the problems currently facing Latin America.

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

Coffeehouse. I tried to respond to this with multi-quote, and lol.

I have been enjoying reading your responses in this thread.

But I felt I had to comment on this one. Red lights go off in my head when I see some write they believe they are more objective than most other people. It leaves some room for pause..

That's a particularly acute observation.

Here's a brief summary of the diagnostic criteria for 'personality disorder' (from Wikipedia...always so convenient. )

Diagnosis of a personality disorder must satisfy the following general criteria in addition to the specific criteria listed under the specific personality disorder under consideration.

A. Experience and behavior that deviates markedly from the expectations of the individual's culture. This pattern is manifested in two (or more) of the following areas:

cognition (perception and interpretation of self, others and events)
affect (the range, intensity, lability, and appropriateness of emotional response)
interpersonal functioning
impulse control
B. The enduring pattern is inflexible and pervasive across a broad range of personal and social situations.

C. The enduring pattern leads to clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

D. The pattern is stable and of long duration and its onset can be traced back at least to adolescence or early adulthood.

E. The enduring pattern is not better accounted for as a manifestation or consequence of another mental disorder.

F. The enduring pattern is not due to the direct physiological effects of a substance or a general medical condition such as head injury.

There are large numbers of people who feel only they understand 'the answer". They often find that problematic, irl. Being able to recognise this is a valuable skill, I think.

[Lief Erikson]

This post is to both Coffeehouse and Sis.

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

Red lights go off in my head when I see some write they believe they are more objective than most other people. It leaves some room for pause..

You know, those kinds of claims tend to start warnings off in my head immediately too. And I hated to even say what I did, because it looks so conceited.

But I think that the role of environment in forming the perspectives of almost our entire current world, and the irrationality center of that environmental power, and the necessity of breaking from that into the eternal and absolute for opinions to have meaning, is CRUCIAL for people nowadays to understand. Environment is an irrational, changing force, and it is extremely powerful. It controls rationality while itself being irrational. Which is wrong. None of us should buy into it. It is a prison for the mind.

Originally Posted by sisterandcousinandaunt

Here's a brief summary of the diagnostic criteria for 'personality disorder'
[. . .]
A. Experience and behavior that deviates markedly from the expectations of the individual's culture.
[. . .]
There are large numbers of people who feel only they understand 'the answer".

So you would say that if there aren't lots of people in accord with somebody on his position, that position is wrong and the person who has it has a personality disorder?

Your whole point here is a bit irrelevant, though, as it has nothing to do with my comments. I don't think that I'm the only one who has "the answer." My opinion is that almost the entirety of the Western population for over a thousand years had a lot of correct answers that the majority of the Western population since then has lost its grip on. I'm FAR from alone in my point of view! "My" point of view appeared extremely rational to most of the Western world for most of the history of the Western world since Christ, and they shared it.

If somebody from the 12th century had developed 19th century Enlightenment philosophies all of a sudden, I suppose that rather than thinking much of that person, you'd say that that person also has a personality disorder .

Not that I deserve to be thought much of- I didn't invent any of the ideas I'm supporting. I just feel that I've been blessed by being removed from a mental cage.

[Coffeehouse]

You write Lief: "I just feel that I've been blessed by being removed from a mental cage."

Every now and then I find that I come across people who to some higher degree than what is normal, observe and explain with so much clarity and sense that my mind literally goes 'mushy', these persons making crystal clear a matter that I hadn't understood before. Rare experience though, always makes an impression.

I don't want to sound rude, but had you come with a fresher, more interesting outlook on your particular faith-based worldview.. then it could be fascinating. But it seems more like a downtrodden path, and not that uncaged, because what you seem to offer is one of the most worn out systems in the 'book': And that is prohibition, of this and that, setting up barriers. Sounds more like a double cage than anything!

I'm going to paraphrase this text I stumbled upon in my sister's American Literature course book today (I had to jot this down on a piece of paper so it may containt misspelled words)
"When Columbus sailed from Europe in 1492, he left behind him a number of relatively centralized nation-states with largely agricultural economies. Europeans spoke some two or three dozen languages, most of them closely related, and they were generally Christian in their religious belief and worldview, although manyu groups had had contact and conflict with adherents of Judaism and Islam. A written alphabet had been used by Europeans to preserve and communicate informations for many centuries, and Guthenberg's invention of moveable type in the mid-1400s had shown the way to a mechanical means of 'writing'; by 1492, Europe was on its way to becoming a print culture.

By contrast, in 1492 in North America, Native people spoke hundreds of languages belonging to entirely different linguistic families (e.g. Athapascan, Uto-Aztecian, Chinookan, Sioxan, Algonquian) and structured their societies in widely diverse forms. In the Great Basin of the West, small, loosely organized bands of Utes eked out a bare subsistence by hunting and gathering, while sedantery Pueblos peoples of the Southwest and the Iroquians of the Northeast had both highly developed agricultural economies and complex modes of political organization. In spite of some common features, religious and mythological beliefs were also diverse. Among North American peoples alone, eight different types of creation stories have been catalogued, most of these quite different from those found in Judaism, Christianity and Islam."

[Nurvingiel]

Er... Sis, I don't think I'll be diagnosing people with personality disorders based on what I read on the internet.

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

You write Lief: "I just feel that I've been blessed by being removed from a mental cage."

Every now and then I find that I come across people who to some higher degree than what is normal, observe and explain with so much clarity and sense that my mind literally goes 'mushy', these persons making crystal clear a matter that I hadn't understood before. Rare experience though, always makes an impression.

I don't want to sound rude, but had you come with a fresher, more interesting outlook on your particular faith-based worldview.. then it could be fascinating. But it seems more like a downtrodden path,

You know, one of the things that's pretty typical of the modern era, I think, is the demand for NEW stuff. Which shows very little respect for ancient wisdom, and therefore can easily result in foolishness.

If what I believed was new, though, it would be less likely that it's eternal . And if it's not eternal, it's more of the ceaselessly fluctuating environment we need to be free from to better understand the world.

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

and not that uncaged, because what you seem to offer is one of the most worn out systems in the 'book': And that is prohibition, of this and that, setting up barriers. Sounds more like a double cage than anything!

Praise God for barriers that keep people from killing or severely damaging one another.

I define freedom differently than you do. To me, true freedom is the ability to do what's right. Freedom to do what's wrong -- murder, steal, etc. -- is at its core anarchic and destructive. The legal right to do what's wrong is not real freedom.

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

I'm going to paraphrase this text I stumbled upon in my sister's American Literature course book today (I had to jot this down on a piece of paper so it may containt misspelled words)
"When Columbus sailed from Europe in 1492, he left behind him a number of relatively centralized nation-states with largely agricultural economies. Europeans spoke some two or three dozen languages, most of them closely related, and they were generally Christian in their religious belief and worldview, although manyu groups had had contact and conflict with adherents of Judaism and Islam. A written alphabet had been used by Europeans to preserve and communicate informations for many centuries, and Guthenberg's invention of moveable type in the mid-1400s had shown the way to a mechanical means of 'writing'; by 1492, Europe was on its way to becoming a print culture.

By contrast, in 1492 in North America, Native people spoke hundreds of languages belonging to entirely different linguistic families (e.g. Athapascan, Uto-Aztecian, Chinookan, Sioxan, Algonquian) and structured their societies in widely diverse forms. In the Great Basin of the West, small, loosely organized bands of Utes eked out a bare subsistence by hunting and gathering, while sedantery Pueblos peoples of the Southwest and the Iroquians of the Northeast had both highly developed agricultural economies and complex modes of political organization. In spite of some common features, religious and mythological beliefs were also diverse. Among North American peoples alone, eight different types of creation stories have been catalogued, most of these quite different from those found in Judaism, Christianity and Islam."

Well . . . so . . . what's your point? If they had multiple contradictory creation stories, a lot of people must have been in error and some improvements to their education on that matter would be a good thing. The greater unity of language in Europe made communication between the various nations far easier, which isn't a bad thing. Though hundreds of languages, while possibly making a lot of communication barriers, still is exciting from a linguist's perspective. Diversity in social structure is interesting, but it too isn't necessarily a good thing. It could be, if all the different social structures were good, but if they weren't, it's less good.

I find the social structure in Europe at that time to have generally been well developed, and not a bad system overall. So having something different . . . well, could be good or bad, depending on whether it was better or not.

Diversity isn't always a good thing. If there's something really good that works, and lots of diverse people have different ways of doing things, you might have lots of less good or even bad ways of doing things going on. Better for them all to be united in adhering to the best system.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

Descartes . . . His arguments damaged the Christian world's morality because they led people no longer to see so much the value of faith in God's revelation, and instead to emphasize a human's own ability to come to the right conclusions about the universe through his own brain.

But Aristotle taught the exact same thing...with correct premises and correct syllogistic form, correct conclusion infallibly follows. Aristotle also held a great reverence for reason.

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

A lot of traditionally male-dominated fields like being a doctor or a mechanic have nothing to do with sexual characteristics.

Interesting note: in Russia, most doctors are women.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

"The Catholics have never changed the Bible."

Too easy:
Original commandment, in the Bible:
I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Commandment changed by the Catholic Church:
I am the LORD thy God. Thou shalt have no strange gods before Me.

Second commandment!
Original commandment, in the Bible:
Exodus 20:4-6 You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my Commandments.
Commandment, Deleted by the Catholic Church....... Why? Because there is idolatry in the Vatican and the in the Papal system.

Which leaves 9 commandments: And this is how that was solved by the Catholic Church, which actually is quite funny!
Original, 10th commandment, in the Bible:
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.
10th Commandment changed by the Catholic Church into a 9th and a 10th commandment:
9th: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife.
10th: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's goods.

Oh, come now. Making these petty and false claims makes it very, very hard to take one seriously. The Catholic Church did not change the commandments. Every religious body which uses the Commandments introduces some summary. The "graven images" commandment is considered by the Catholic (and Lutheran) churches to be included under the "false gods" Commandment.

Look at the actual text:

Web site logo
The Ten Commandments (a.k.a. The Decalogue)
Three versions of the Decalogue.
Grouping the Exodus 20 commandments.

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Text of all three versions of the Ten Commandments:

There are three versions of the Ten Commandments in the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament). They are at Exodus 20:2-17, Exodus 34:12-26, and Deuteronomy 5:6-21.

Exodus 20 version:

This is the most commonly used set of Commandments. In the King James' Version. Conservative Jews and Christians generally believe that the text was written by God on stone tablets and given to Moses during the Exodus, circa 1450 BCE. Liberals typically follow the Documentary Hypothesis, and attribute the writing to an anonymous author generally referred to as "E" who lived sometime between 922 and 722 BCE. More details.

The text reads:
2 I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:
5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;
6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
7 Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:
10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
12 Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.
13 Thou shalt not kill.
14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.
15 Thou shalt not steal.
16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.
Exodus 34 version:

Every religious tradition which uses the ten commandments divides them up in different ways. By the way, if you look carefully there are more than ten actual directives. Everyone, Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, and Jewish, sort of slides the commandment against "bowing down and serving" graven images with the commandment against "making" graven images, though they are not the same thing. Are we to say then that every tradition which uses the ten commandments has twisted the Bible to their own scheming ends? Do the Protestants roundly condemn the making of images, but permit the worship of images once made? Hardly. This argument is simply absurd.

The Catholic Church Lief, also changed the the day of worship from the Sabbath to Sunday. That is in fact a direction contradiction to the "word of God".

The Sabbath is made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. Under a new dispensation, there is a new Sabbath, which is on the first day of the week, as is made clear in Scripture. Read Acts 20:7, for one of many examples. In the New Testament it is stated many times that the Christians meet on the first, not the last, day of the week. There are innumerable reasons for this, and Sabbath/Sunday theology is very rich and very broad. Note that the Catholic Church forbids working (ekonomia notwitstanding) on Sunday. Why? It is the Sabbath of the New Covenant.

But I felt I had to comment on this one. Red lights go off in my head when I see some write they believe they are more objective than most other people. It leaves some room for pause..

That's a particularly acute observation.

Here's a brief summary of the diagnostic criteria for 'personality disorder' (from Wikipedia...always so convenient. )

[I][FONT="Arial Narrow"][COLOR="Red"]Diagnosis of a personality disorder must satisfy the following general criteria in addition to the specific criteria listed under the specific personality disorder under consideration.

A. Experience and behavior that deviates markedly from the expectations of the individual's culture. This pattern is manifested in two (or more) of the following areas:

Hmm...don't people tend to think the Catholic Church is overbearing and wrong in defining people who differ from her norms as heretics? And yet the Americo-European culture is perfectly right in defining people who differ from her norms as disordered? This is just tyranny, dogmatism without any valid basis.

[Coffeehouse]

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

You know, one of the things that's pretty typical of the modern era, I think, is the demand for NEW stuff. Which shows very little respect for ancient wisdom, and therefore can easily result in foolishness.

If what I believed was new, though, it would be less likely that it's eternal . And if it's not eternal, it's more of the ceaselessly fluctuating environment we need to be free from to better understand the world.

Praise God for barriers that keep people from killing or severely damaging one another.

I define freedom differently than you do. To me, true freedom is the ability to do what's right. Freedom to do what's wrong -- murder, steal, etc. -- is at its core anarchic and destructive. The legal right to do what's wrong is not real freedom.

Well . . . so . . . what's your point? If they had multiple contradictory creation stories, a lot of people must have been in error and some improvements to their education on that matter would be a good thing. The greater unity of language in Europe made communication between the various nations far easier, which isn't a bad thing. Though hundreds of languages, while possibly making a lot of communication barriers, still is exciting from a linguist's perspective. Diversity in social structure is interesting, but it too isn't necessarily a good thing. It could be, if all the different social structures were good, but if they weren't, it's less good.

I find the social structure in Europe at that time to have generally been well developed, and not a bad system overall. So having something different . . . well, could be good or bad, depending on whether it was better or not.

Diversity isn't always a good thing. If there's something really good that works, and lots of diverse people have different ways of doing things, you might have lots of less good or even bad ways of doing things going on. Better for them all to be united in adhering to the best system.

Lol, well, that kind of ends my interest in this discussion

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by Gwaimir Windgem

But Aristotle taught the exact same thing...with correct premises and correct syllogistic form, correct conclusion infallibly follows. Aristotle also held a great reverence for reason.

Yet I'd say that our correct premises can only be established through divine revelation, because of the limitations of the human mind.

People's premises for their moral systems vary widely.