Lest we forget

[Thorne]

You're forgetting that 300 years ago Europeans where doing exactly the same thing as the Arabs are doing now to each other, to other religions and to women. You are treating the Arabs, (and Persians) like they will always be like this. In the 13'th century the Arabs where the enlighetened people and the Europeans where the retards. 500 years of currupt Ottoman rule wiped out any head start they had.

No, I'm not forgetting. True, during the dark ages in Europe the Arab nations were more advanced in sciences and mathematics. The difference is, back then you couldn't kill 2000 people by running a horse drawn coach into a building. Or spread radioctive dust over hundreds of square miles of urban areas with a few pounds of explosives.

...and you're just wrong in that they have always been like this. There's an evolution and we in the West started our journey towards democracy and enlightenment 300 years ago and the middle-east started in the 1950'ies. Just comparing their culture to ours as is just isn't fair. You've got to give them some time to catch up. 50 years is not a lot in these circumstances. It takes many more generations for these values to catch on, and I'm sure they will. They did here and there's no reason it couldn't over there. Don't forget that we take on many values from our parents and the changes in values between generations are very gradual.

First you said that they were more enlightened than the Europeans, now you say we have to give them time to catch up? In other words, they have Devolved.
Personally, I don't care which religion they practice, or who they can con into practicing with them. Everyone is entitled to their own personal beliefs. What I object to is their trying to force their beliefs on the rest of the world through violence and terrorism.(And yes, I know the Roman Catholic Church is just as guilty of this historically.) In my opinion, if your religion is so screwed up that you must force people to accept it, it isn't a religion.

...and don't judge them to harshly. We still aren't free from sin and have plenty of problems. Just the fact that women and men don't have equal oportunities or pay, or that we still have rampant racism. USA has increasing numbers turning to religion. How's that for belonging to an enlightened age? Who's up for throwing the first stone? We aren't at some final stage of enlightenment. We are just as the people in the middle-east right in the middle of evolving our culture to something new. Evolution is constant and ever changing.

It's my understanding that religion in the US is in decline. Except for the very vocal religious right wing fanatics, most people of faith are more interested in their personal form of worship than in organized religion. A quote from the remake of "Flight of the Phoenix" comes to mind. The Arab character says, "Faith brings people together, religion drives them apart."

I'm with you on the space plan. Too many religious freaks down here for my taste.

Anyone ready to book a flight to Alpha Centauri? Shouldn't take more than 10,000 years to get there!

[TomOfSweden]

No, I'm not forgetting. True, during the dark ages in Europe the Arab nations were more advanced in sciences and mathematics. The difference is, back then you couldn't kill 2000 people by running a horse drawn coach into a building. Or spread radioctive dust over hundreds of square miles of urban areas with a few pounds of explosives.

That's fair, but you still have to give evolution time to work. I mean, you have to. There's no other way you or anybody else can do anything about it. We are part of the same planet and there's no way we can avoid each other. The globalisation is speeding up. There's loads of muslims in USA. One in ten Swedes where born in an other country or their parents where. We've got a huge mosque in central Stockholm. Arabs and the Arab culture is everywhere now.

First you said that they were more enlightened than the Europeans, now you say we have to give them time to catch up? In other words, they have Devolved.

Not devolved but froze. They thought they had the worlds most advanced and enlightened culture, (which was true at first). They where Europes and the regions only culture that allowed followers of other religions to stay and live, which for the time was extremly progressive. They had big churches and synagogues that where under the protection of the sultan. What went wrong is that the evolution of the culture stopped and Europe wizzed past them. The same thing that happened to the Roman empire where the "barbarians" ended up having a far superior culture.

If history teaches us anything it's that whenever people become chauvinist about their culture it stops evolving and in time becomes obsolete. Let's try to avoid that ok?

With superior culture I mean the most tollerant culture that allows for the maximum amount of diversity and still holding together. According to the US researcher Richard Florida, cultures like this have historically always been and are always the richest and most technologically advanced cultures in the world.

He floated the concept of gay-index as a way to measure this. Cities that are gay friendly, ie has the highest proportion of openly gay citizens has invariably the highest per capita income. Tollerance makes money. I agree with him 100%. In other words, a cultures superiority can be measured in money. I like things that can be measured.

Personally, I don't care which religion they practice, or who they can con into practicing with them. Everyone is entitled to their own personal beliefs. What I object to is their trying to force their beliefs on the rest of the world through violence and terrorism.(And yes, I know the Roman Catholic Church is just as guilty of this historically.) In my opinion, if your religion is so screwed up that you must force people to accept it, it isn't a religion.

I don't think Islamic terrorism is about trying to convert anybody. It has to do with what muslims consider is the "holy lands" and about attacking any un-believer that dares invade or colonialise it. That's at least what Osama said was his driving force and a good summary of what Islamic terrorisms main philosopher said, Qutb.

[Thorne]

That's fair, but you still have to give evolution time to work. I mean, you have to...Not devolved but froze.

It seems to me that evolution HAS worked over the last thousand or so years: their culture has frozen, as you say, or gone backwards. Our culture has advanced. But cultural evolution and biological evolution work under different rules. And I believe cultural evolution works a lot faster.

If history teaches us anything it's that whenever people become chauvinist about their culture it stops evolving and in time becomes obsolete. Let's try to avoid that ok?

My point exactly. One facet of the extremist Islamic beliefs seems to be that change is bad. Therefore, no progress.
I'm not an historian, so maybe my facts are off a bit, but I think one can safely say that the beginning of the fall of Arab culture began with the rise of Mohammadism. Once again faith degenerated into religion and the common man suffers while the priests/medicine men/Imams/what-have-you flourish.

[himind]

It seems to me that evolution HAS worked over the last thousand or so years: their culture has frozen, as you say, or gone backwards. Our culture has advanced. But cultural evolution and biological evolution work under different rules. And I believe cultural evolution works a lot faster.


My point exactly. One facet of the extremist Islamic beliefs seems to be that change is bad. Therefore, no progress.
I'm not an historian, so maybe my facts are off a bit, but I think one can safely say that the beginning of the fall of Arab culture began with the rise of Mohammadism. Once again faith degenerated into religion and the common man suffers while the priests/medicine men/Imams/what-have-you flourish.

The fall of Arab culture sis not begin with the rise of Islam. IN fact for 2-4 centuries following the death of Mohammed, Baghdad was the cultural and technoligical capital of the world in many ways..Many of the ancient texts have reached us through Islamic scholars who preserved Arabic copies when the originals were burent in Constantinople.It's only later with the rise of the Seljuk Turks and other factions that Islam underwent a change and became more and moe xenophobic.Some Islamic scholars are of the opinion that this happened due to influence of the Crusaders,but I don;t think that would be an accurate description. But one thing I have to admit is tha tIslam does give out very conflicting signals,broadmindedness in some ways and extreme narrowmindedness in others.

[TomOfSweden]

It seems to me that evolution HAS worked over the last thousand or so years: their culture has frozen, as you say, or gone backwards. Our culture has advanced. But cultural evolution and biological evolution work under different rules. And I believe cultural evolution works a lot faster.

I think we agree with each other but just using different formulations. According to Richard Dawkins meme theory, cultural evolution can speed up if it allready has evolved somewhere else and there is a will to incorporate the new ideas. So there's scientific backing for your statement. Beating biological evolution in speed doesn't require much though. It's slooooooow.

My point exactly. One facet of the extremist Islamic beliefs seems to be that change is bad. Therefore, no progress.
I'm not an historian, so maybe my facts are off a bit, but I think one can safely say that the beginning of the fall of Arab culture began with the rise of Mohammadism. Once again faith degenerated into religion and the common man suffers while the priests/medicine men/Imams/what-have-you flourish.

I think you're wrong. The spread of monotheism and the extreme intollerance toward other religions and moral codes brought with it some very positive effects. The major effect was reducing xenophobia in trade. You knew you could trust others if they followed the same religion. It's regidity and inflexibility meant stable rules for trade. This was translated to big money and win-win within each region following the same religion. This is quite measurable.

Other positive effects are the monotheistic religions holy books. The rules needed to be written down to be permanent. You needed to read to understand them which enhanced literacy which we all obviously know is a great skill for book keeping, (= more money). Also measurable. There's a clear link between litteracy and BNP.

Islam is a development of Christianity. It's not a new religion. The religious text might not be all that different than the Bible, but it had one strength over it. There's no question that the Koran is the words of Mohammed. Every part of the new testament can be questioned. When Mohammed lived the versio vulgata, (ie the modern Bible) was only one of many variants of the new testament. Here's the info.

It's aparent that Mohammed wanted a more cohesive religion without really changing anything. I've read both the Bible and the Koran. They're pretty interchangable, (yes, I have a thing for religious history). Also when Islam first spread it wasn't meant to be the religion of the people. At first Mohammed had planned it to only be the religion of the ruling elite. Islam isn't anti-christian. It has never been. They embrace it as an integral part of Islam. Mohammed was first and foremost a great polititian and general. There are plenty of letters written in his own hand that have survived that we can read. We know his personal opinions. This is a major difference to christianity. We know absolutely nothing about Jesus other than what says in the Bible, and there was so many different versions of the Bible back then that it's easy to imagine that it could get very confusing.

I think it's more correct to say that the rise of Mohammedism is what made the Arab culture superior to the west European in so many ways. They embraced other religions more than Christians, which off-course meant that they had a greater inflow of ideas, (=more money according to Richard Florida).

I'd say the high-point of Arab culture was more likely something like 800-1200 during the rule of the Caliphate. In no other time in history did they crank out so many inventions western Europe could steal. Modern mathematics and our alphabet being the most significant. After that the area started to get invaded from every direction which ended it's period of inner stability. Under the rule of the Ottomans the Arabs lived under the yoke of a standard imperialistic police state which always sonner or later ends up being corrupt and hampering development. So development was painfully slow up until about 1920, at which time they'd lost any head start they had.

I don't think any ideas spread and become totaly dominant in a region if there's nothing to gain from it. But that doesn't mean that they can't linger a lot longer than what's useful. It's hard to see how being christian of muslim today will lead to any fiscal gains over the non-believers. We have laws that regulate trade so morality doesn't really count in that sector any longer. And people tend to like learning to read for other reasons than reading religious texts.

My very long rant here was just me trying to explain how religion has been great for the world.

[Thorne]

Other positive effects are the monotheistic religions holy books. The rules needed to be written down to be permanent. You needed to read to understand them which enhanced literacy which we all obviously know is a great skill for book keeping, (= more money). Also measurable. There's a clear link between litteracy and BNP.

In much of the Christian world, literacy was restricted to the wealthy and the ruling elite. Very few middle class members were able to read Latin, and almost none of the poor. And the Church made sure that almost everything was written in Latin. Actually, I believe the Jews, and possibly the Arabs, were among the most literate in Europe and Western Asia. Almost every Jewish boy had to learn to read Hebrew so that he could read the Torah. I don't know about the Chinese or Japanese, but I expect that they were also very literate.

My very long rant here was just me trying to explain how religion has been great for the world.

While I will admit that religions in general have sometimes had a positive effect in the world, overall I believe they've done more to hold back progress and divide people than any other institution. While attitudes around the world have changed, and some aspects of religion have changed with them, I feel it is mostly because the churches could see that failure to change would result in loss of power. I was raised a Catholic and back in those days the church was just starting to allow Catholics to marry non-Catholics as long as any children were raised Catholic. But it was because people were doing it anyway, and saying to hell with the consequences. So they had all those potential Catholic children being raised in other religions. I believe it was even harder for Jews to marry outsiders, but I'm not all that familiar with any other religions.
But my point is that, in general, religious institutions resist change to the point of ridiculousness. It took the Vatican what, about 600 years, to admit that Galileo was right, and that the Earth does indeed revolve around the sun. Back in the early 80's I worked with a man who was a preacher in a small church. He believed that,since the Bible states there are four corners of the Earth, the Earth had to be flat. All evidence to the contrary was wrong or blasphemous. And Christian views on evolution in this country (USA) at least, are absurd beyond belief. And equally absurd are the fanatical atheists who want to erase God and Jesus and Christ from the American dictionaries. Children in school can get into serious trouble just by wishing their teachers a Merry Christmas instead of the sillier Happy Holidays.
Ah well. If only the rest of the world were like me. What a boring world THAT would be!
'Nuff Said!

[TomOfSweden]

In much of the Christian world, literacy was restricted to the wealthy and the ruling elite. Very few middle class members were able to read Latin, and almost none of the poor. And the Church made sure that almost everything was written in Latin. Actually, I believe the Jews, and possibly the Arabs, were among the most literate in Europe and Western Asia. Almost every Jewish boy had to learn to read Hebrew so that he could read the Torah. I don't know about the Chinese or Japanese, but I expect that they were also very literate.

Yes, and these few litterate created masterpieces. Thomas of Aquinas would never have happened without the church. I'm sure of it. He was a monk who devoted his entire life to proving gods existance but all he did was to make it clear that god probably doesn't exist. It just took 700 years before people caught on and started putting two and two together. Or Schopenhauer did. People have extreme subconcious fears of breaking with the social norms. Even the people who try their hardest to do it rarely do. Just look at the Indie pop kids. They all try so hard to be different they all look the same.

Freeing your mind and thinking in new ways is extremly rare and far apart. It can take centuries before there comes a guy with a new idea. When did atheism have it's big breakthrough? 150 years ago, and we've still got religious people around. Aristotle gave us the logical system with which we today can invalidate all the supernatural claims of any religion. This was 2300 years ago. Ideas catch on so extremly sloooooow.

While I will admit that religions in general have sometimes had a positive effect in the world, overall I believe they've done more to hold back progress and divide people than any other institution.

You still haven't answered why anybody would convert to christianity to begin with. Why and what could they gain from it?

[Thorne]

You still haven't answered why anybody would convert to christianity to begin with. Why and what could they gain from it?

I haven't the slightest idea why anyone would voluntarily convert to ANY religion. It is my view that all religions only perpetuate superstition, of one form or another. Most people are born into a religious group, the same group their parents where born into. This was the case with myself, but I stepped away from it.

People will join church groups, for social reasons primarily I think, and therefore enter into the religion promulgated by that church. Many of these groups perform good and honerable services to their community. But the propaganda which accompanies those services is pervasive.

And of course, there's always the "convert or die" method of recruiting new members. That's always filled the churches in the past. "God told them to" may not be valid, but "that soldier with the nasty sword told me to" will convert thousands!