Religion, Science, Scepticism, Philosophy and things metaphysical

[Value Collector]

I find it funny that you even ask that question, VC, when you jump on the back of God's Laws, Christian principles, and ask if they could have made it without it.

God's Laws is one above humans.

How do you know right from wrong?
Where did it come from?
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As I just explained to rumpole, many of the moral codes you would like to say came from Christians actual predate Christianity,

Gods laws are above humans? Well considering a lot of the laws in the bible are morally wrong, I can't see how this is true, you need a good moral code before you read the bible, other wise you would not be ignoring the horrible stuff and you would be acting like Isis

The Bible is the oldest book in History

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Holy cow!!! I hope you do not honestly believe that

Do understand that the bible is not the oldest book?

There are many older books.

 

[SirRumpole]

Do you really think that the great civilisations and even tribes etc that predate the bible could have formed if people thought it was a good idea to kill each other?

Of course they could and did. You only have to look at the Romans, the majority of whose emperors were slain by people who wanted the emperor's power to know that murder was very much a part of that society, which was based not on any moral principles but simply greed and megalomania. They may well be the same today if they hadn't nailed a bloke to a cross in about 30 AD. I don't see how you can ignore the correlation of the formation of the Roman church with the decline of the Roman empire.

The Roman empire no longer exists, but the Church of Rome does. How do you explain that ?

 

[Value Collector]

Of course they could and did. You only have to look at the Romans, the majority of whose emperors were slain by people who wanted the emperor's power to know that murder was very much a part of that society, which was based not on any moral principles but simply greed and megalomania. They may well be the same today if they hadn't nailed a bloke to a cross in about 30 AD. I don't see how you can ignore the correlation of the formation of the Roman church with the decline of the Roman empire.

The Roman empire no longer exists, but the Church of Rome does. How do you explain that ?

Murdering those in your social group has been a taboo since social groups started forming.

No group is going to become a tight knit thriving social group that's functions well together if they don't trust the others in the group won't kill them in their sleep. From the formation of the first tribes, there would have been a general rule of " hey, you don't kill me and I won't kill you" that's where those moral taboos come from, not the religious texts.

Offcourse humans still then and now kill others outside their social groups, Christianity didn't stop that, and if you read the religious texts, even Moses who brought the Ten Commandments down from the mountain was later sent to massacre other tribes, and the texts order you to kill people of other faiths etc. it's only taboo to kill people in your group eg other Jews.

Not to mention that the Egyptians had rules against killing others, and remember the egyption civilisation was around long before Moses was given the Ten Commandments and the bible, and other civilisations were around before the Egyptians.

 

[Value Collector]

The Roman empire no longer exists, but the Church of Rome does. How do you explain that ?

Pretty much every empire in history no longer exists, I don't see your point.

But why does the church exist you ask?

I think for a few reasons, number one is that it taps into people's fears by offering them an eternal life, number two it threatens people with eternal torture if the don't believe, and number 3 it has a long history of killing those who spoke out against it, so the church through out history goes against those moral rules people attribute to it.

It's funny that tink attributes the 1215 Magna carter as being the height of Christian values being pressed onto society by the church, but at that time the church was still burning people at the stake, and blasphemy was still being punished by death and torture.

 

[Tisme]

As I just explained to rumpole, many of the moral codes you would like to say came from Christians actual predate Christianity,

Gods laws are above humans? Well considering a lot of the laws in the bible are morally wrong, I can't see how this is true, you need a good moral code before you read the bible, other wise you would not be ignoring the horrible stuff and you would be acting like Isis


.

Holy cow!!! I hope you do not honestly believe that

Do understand that the bible is not the oldest book?

There are many older books.

I seem to recall I was taught the Gutenburg Bible was the oldest book in the sense that it was bound and functions as a reader. I'm guessing the old testament is pretty old when it comes to yarns, but the Oz aboriginals must beat that with stories in pictures versus old clay tablets and papyrus scrolls.

 

[Value Collector]

I seem to recall I was taught the Gutenburg Bible was the oldest book in the sense that it was bound and functions as a reader. I'm guessing the old testament is pretty old when it comes to yarns, but the Oz aboriginals must beat that with stories in pictures versus old clay tablets and papyrus scrolls.

Well considering the bible itself is just a collection of books of short stories by many different authors, it suggests that a lot of writing was happening on probably many different topics long before the bible was compiled.

The Egyptians had books, and since the egyption civilisation is written about in the bible, obviously the egyption predate the bible, so yes there were books before the bible.

Eg the Bible talks about Moses escaping the egyption empire, and then wandering around for 40 years,

Let's say the bible stories of Moses were written 100 years after he escaped Egypt, that means the egyption civilisation existed long before the bible, it probably existed 100's of years before Moses, so I think many books would have been written before Moses

And let's not forget the Chinese, Chinese writtings predate the bible also.

 

[bellenuit]

https://andyrossagency.wordpress.com/2010/08/02/the-first-book-ever-written/

The First Book Ever Written

Let’s begin at the beginning. The first book ever written. No. It isn’t The Book of Genesis. Contrary to popular belief, at least in certain circles, it wasn’t written by God or Adam or even Moses.

The invention of writing marks the boundary between pre-history and history. The first written language that we know of was archaic cuneiform. It is believed to have appeared around 3400 BC during the early period of ancient Sumerian civilization in the region between the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers in what is now Iraq. Cuneiform was originally a pictographic language gradually becoming syllabic and composed of wedge shaped characters ( the word, “cuneiform,” comes from the latin term cuneus meaning wedge.) The earliest writings were on clay tablets and were probably administrative lists.

The first written story that has come down to us is The Epic of Gilgamesh. It is a mythologized account of an historical figure, Gilgamesh, a ruler of the Sumerian city-state of Uruk, believed to have ruled sometime between 2700-2500 BC.

There are a number of fragmentary versions of the story. The oldest known are dated around 2100 BC. But some scholars believe that these could be transcriptions of earlier Sumerian texts. Integrated versions have been found dating from around 2000-1700 BC. The most complete “standard” version was written on 12 clay tablets sometime between 1500 – 1200 BC. It was discovered in the ruins of the Assyrian King Ashurbanipal’s library in Nineveh, which was the largest library in the pre-Hellenic ancient world.

The definition of “book” has become more flexible in the last few years. It used to be that a “book” was defined as a collection of printed sheets of bound paper, encased between two covers. But with the advent of the e-book, the definition is changing almost daily. One would have to conclude that a story written and read on clay tablets is no less a book than one on an iPad.

The Gilgamesh Epic continues to be available in hardback, paperback and as an e-book edition. There is only one copy available on clay tablets. This can be found at the British Museum.

 

[luutzu]

... I don't see how you can ignore the correlation of the formation of the Roman church with the decline of the Roman empire.

The Roman empire no longer exists, but the Church of Rome does. How do you explain that ?

The new Roman Empire (under Constantine) created the Church. Without Constantine mandating Christianity to be the state religion, Christianity would probably died off a long time ago.

You can argue that Constantine took Christianity because it was powerful (or morally superior etc) and that's why it has a large and growing group of followers around his time... But that's only one factor - the other being the meteorite that crashes just before his battle with the Western Roman Emperor and being a clever strategists he say that that''s a sign from God and Christ that his army, with shields painted with a cross, will be victorious.

Why does Rome fell and Christianity still survives? Because it serves the successive Kings and emperor better that it survive. Once a group of people is united, were taught since birth that Christ is the Lord and there is only one God and Christ is his son and saviour etc. etc.... It is much more convenient as a political leader to pretend you are with the people on that one, just that Christ follows you or chose you... if not Christ then God through the Pope ordain you.

That's why for long periods of time the Pope of Rome was all powerful - he wasn't just some dude with one big city and funny looking guards. His words matter, his words were law, and there were Popes that goes around conquering cities and states, not just reading the Bible at home all day.

In our time... just about every political leaders claim to go to Church and all that pious stuff. No political leader who are truly moral could ever stand being a politician for one day - but they have to pretend to be religious for no other reason than it looks like they can't be that bad if they go to the same Church as the masses. Well, you do get leaders like Bush and Abbott who like the Bible and those stories about the Crusades...

 

[Tink]

Tisme, I recall the same, first book published off the printing press.

VC, I have already posted this to do with Christianity and Western Civilization.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role_of_the_Christian_Church_in_civilization
http://westerncivilisation.ipa.org.au/

As I said, jumping on the back of something that is already established, is easy to say for the atheists.
Documents were kept in the Cathedrals.
Our freedoms were established because of this, responsibility and accountability.

Every totalitarian regime in the twentieth century was characterised by an obsessive desire to persecute the adherents of Christianity.

 

[Tisme]

Tisme, I recall the same, first book published off the printing press.

VC, I have already posted this to do with Christianity and Western Civilization.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role_of_the_Christian_Church_in_civilization
http://westerncivilisation.ipa.org.au/

As I said, jumping on the back of something that is already established, is easy to say for the atheists.
Documents were kept in the Cathedrals.
Our freedoms were established because of this, responsibility and accountability.

Every totalitarian regime in the twentieth century was characterised by an obsessive desire to persecute the adherents of Christianity.

Tink, it is obvious you are well grounded in common sense. We all know there are the awkward few who just argue for the sake of arguing and have no world view like yourself. Of course the Bible was the first book, scholars agree that is the case, but to save face those "few" will throw anything in the mix, including tenuous references from non peer reviewed internet sites.

A book is a bound works, whether that be a "book of books" or otherwise. The library of Alexander was a bunch of scrolls, not books. Imagine the size of an imaginary ancient book with the thick two or three layer papyrus pages and the large symbols using the reed pen; the16k line Iliad, for instance, would be huge and need a D9 to load it into your schoolbag ...

And yes I think the Poms gave us parliament and the rule of law and that was predicated on Roman history and the persistence of Christianity. All the empire builders like England, France, Spain, Germany took their bibles with them and the Irish monks made sure they brought their fire and brimstone too.... all of them loving their neighbours and not coveting what the others had.

 

[luutzu]

Tink, it is obvious you are well grounded in common sense. We all know there are the awkward few who just argue for the sake of arguing and have no world view like yourself. Of course the Bible was the first book, scholars agree that is the case, but to save face those "few" will throw anything in the mix, including tenuous references from non peer reviewed internet sites.

A book is a bound works, whether that be a "book of books" or otherwise. The library of Alexander was a bunch of scrolls, not books. Imagine the size of an imaginary ancient book with the thick two or three layer papyrus pages and the large symbols using the reed pen; the16k line Iliad, for instance, would be huge and need a D9 to load it into your schoolbag ...

And yes I think the Poms gave us parliament and the rule of law and that was predicated on Roman history and the persistence of Christianity. All the empire builders like England, France, Spain, Germany took their bibles with them and the Irish monks made sure they brought their fire and brimstone too.... all of them loving their neighbours and not coveting what the others had.

I thought the Chinese were the first to have made 'printed and bound' books - and had them on flat papers too.

And like VC said, the Magna Carta and all its freedoms for the masses was an accident. It was for "free men", and the only free men were... Men, men with titles and land. The rest were either women, serfs or slaves. And the only reason King John agreed to it was because the Nobility were too strong and the King too weak.

But as accident goes, it was a happy one - one that's fast being undone for some 3 decades now. Justice for those who can afford it; presumed innocent? Tell that to the drone operators or American police beating and shooting coloured suspect; Privacy? Terrorists are everywhere and talking on every smart phone and internet so we must know everything about everyone...

 

[Tisme]

I thought the Chinese were the first to have made 'printed and bound' books - and had them on flat papers too.

And like VC said, the Magna Carta and all its freedoms for the masses was an accident. It was for "free men", and the only free men were... Men, men with titles and land. The rest were either women, serfs or slaves. And the only reason King John agreed to it was because the Nobility were too strong and the King too weak.

But as accident goes, it was a happy one - one that's fast being undone for some 3 decades now. Justice for those who can afford it; presumed innocent? Tell that to the drone operators or American police beating and shooting coloured suspect; Privacy? Terrorists are everywhere and talking on every smart phone and internet so we must know everything about everyone...

I don't think it's bound (kind of hard to bind one very large page), more a wall poster, but will I stand corrected.

I was listening to some pointy head on the ABC radio the other day about the Magna Carta... is that topic kismet or wot!

The 1225 Henry III version we quote as a freedom document is still really a non sequitur to supposed rights of the individual, but we are all lords of our own manors and "free men" these days, so it must be relevant, even if only two or three of the clauses from both docs are still valid in law.

 

[Value Collector]

Tisme, I recall the same, first book published off the printing press.

]

So you think the because the bible was the first book printed on a press it was the first book?

That's like saying the first song broadcast on the radio was the first song.

The fact is, books were being written long before the bible.

Our freedoms were established because of this, responsibility and accountability.

Only if you were a Baron, as I said that original document did not provide freedom to the masses.

And what do you have to say about the fact that when that document was written the church was still burning people at the stake who were unbelievers or for silly crimes such as being a witch?

 

[Value Collector]

A book is a bound works, whether that be a "book of books" or otherwise. The library of Alexander was a bunch of scrolls, not books..

If that's the definition you are using, then who cares. There is no significance to the fact that the bible was one of the first works to be printed on a press and bound.

I mean that's like saying X song is more meaningful than all other songs because it was the first to make it to a record or a cd.

If fact even the bible existed for thousands of years before the printing press.

 

[Tisme]

If that's the definition you are using, then who cares. There is no significance to the fact that the bible was one of the first works to be printed on a press and bound.

I mean that's like saying X song is more meaningful than all other songs because it was the first to make it to a record or a cd.

If fact even the bible existed for thousands of years before the printing press.

Agreed, the Bible is of no significance insofar as this context, but a book is generally considered bound and having a worldwide view, plus Tink used it as example. We are all of us armchair historians and we all think we know about past events, ideals, cultures, ethics, customs, ad infinitum and backed up by ad nauseam retweeking and rewriting of history to suit contemporary consumption.

The bible, the old testament in particular, stands as a rather unpolluted set of stories and isms that do embrace what we consider common sense ideals of freedoms, sacrifices, and social cohesions and it is the foundation of our modern democracies whether we like it or not. I used the aboriginal example to contrast the basic human need to belong to a tribe and of course a tribe must coalesce for the safety, economy of scales and synergy a community brings. But with codification of expected behaviours that in turn gives impetus to religions the tribe becomes obedient to the rules.....some of those religions are not benevolent, as evidenced by many blood lusting civilisations articulated by priests and oracles (apparently), some are malevolent masquerading as civic minded, one of which we are currently witnessing manifestly on the nightly news.

We can't even explain the first half of last century and the virtuous versus the evil, without endless reincarnations of the facts surrounding the WW1 and WW2, how can we hope to know what Egyptians thought savoury, except we know the true Jews were in there as both labour and high ranking public servants, plus probably making a buck finagling whatever and writing down scripts to keep their communion with God staunch. It's supposed the local Egyptians weren't all that fond of Joseph and his nepotistic Hebrew relatives filling all the plum jobs, eventually p!sslng off one Phraoah who decided to take the Hitler method of action and send them off to labour camps ....

I think Tink's intended message is on song when it comes to 1st world democracies ... so long as the pendulum swings back to centre from its current far right possie.

 

[Value Collector]

plus Tink used it as example.

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No, Tink was trying to say it has extra significance because it is the worlds oldest book, which it is not.

The bible, the old testament in particular, stands as a rather unpolluted set of stories and isms that do embrace what we consider common sense ideals of freedoms, sacrifices, and social cohesions and it is the foundation of our modern democracies whether we like it or not.

I do hope you don't believe that, that book certainly doesn't embrace what I consider common sense ideals of freedoms.

I mean stoning people to death for working on the Sabbath? Killing unbelievers? killing gays? Slavery?

how are these things common sense?

Sure there might be some good stuff, but you have to pick through a lot of rubbish superstition and gross bronze age immorality to find it.

 

[Value Collector]

Egyptians weren't all that fond of Joseph and his nepotistic Hebrew relatives filling all the plum jobs, eventually p!sslng off one Phraoah who decided to take the Hitler method of action and send them off to labour camps ....

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The Christian church wasn't shy of lynching those who spoke against it.

As I said to tink, the same church she attributes free society to was burning people at the stake for speaking against the church or for silly superstitious reasons.


Various Popes order massacres, and laws that squashed the discussion of ideas that went against their teachings.

Only a secular society can be truly free.

the old testament in particular, stands as a rather unpolluted set of stories and isms that do embrace what we consider common sense ideals

Not true, plenty of other fairy tales are good morals, even the three little pigs can teach kids something.

and atleast most fairy tales don't endorse slavery or genocide.

 

[Tisme]

No, Tink was trying to say it has extra significance because it is the worlds oldest book, which it is not.



I do hope you don't believe that, that book certainly doesn't embrace what I consider common sense ideals of freedoms.

I mean stoning people to death for working on the Sabbath? Killing unbelievers? killing gays? Slavery?

how are these things common sense?

Sure there might be some good stuff, but you have to pick through a lot of rubbish superstition and gross bronze age immorality to find it.

I was hoping you would throw in the violence themes, because it cements my opinion that a benevolent society is a newer society that has evolved because of the advent of concepts driven by Magna Carta and the English emire.

 

[Value Collector]

because it cements my opinion that a benevolent society is a newer society that has evolved because of the advent of concepts driven by Magna Carta and the English emire.

Yes offcourse society has grown and evolved, it has done this despite the religions, not because of them.

The fact that you can sit and read a bible and cherry pick the good stuff from the bad stuff, is because you (hopefully) have a moral system that is independent of the religious texts, based of secular ideals.

Knowing the contents of the old testament, how could you make the earlier claim that it was common sense ideals and freedoms?

opinion that a benevolent society is a newer society that has evolved

I am glad you used the word evolved, because I think our society has been evolving since our first primate ancestors started living in social groups.

 

[SirRumpole]

I am glad you used the word evolved, because I think our society has been evolving since our first primate ancestors started living in social groups.

Society has been evolving due to the influence of many factors including religion. You can't just take any of these factors out of the equation and say that society would have been better or worse without this factor. These factors exist as fact and can't be erased.