It's not hyperbolic. You probably haven't seen hyperbolic from me yet. (But that's for another conversation.)

I'm going requote snippets from your post to show how many broad generalizations you made:

If you re-read it in its entirety, there's almost nothing specific to the incident that was included in your analysis. It's just a lot of these generalizations. It's actually a very significant shortcoming of how most people understand history, which leads to a very poor understanding of it.

What happens most of the time is people pick the narrative first, and then looks for examples to match that narrative. The most common one around here is the idea that the "Dark Ages" were a result of religion. This is because they want to believe that religion is anti-knowledge, and so use a time in which there was both religion and lack of knowledge to start claiming causation. And this narrative is one that modern historians reject pretty uniformly. in fact, Christians during the period were the ones who propagated knowledge forward and there was a lot of scientific inquiry at the time. For a relatively quick online read, I'd suggest the following (you can just focus on "The Christian Dark Age and Other Hysterical Myths"):

http://www.strangenotions.com/gods-philosophers/

I think that what happened with Galileo is a tragedy and an error, and that religion did play a role. But it didn't play the role that most people think it did. From the same link as above:

So yes, the church at a certain level did prosecute him for his beliefs, but it was also a disciplinary action for violating an agreement as well as a host of other things. I agree with you that there was also a power struggle -- the church attempting to maintain the existing order -- but that this wasn't because the theory was so overwhelming that they had to dispose of the troublemaker. It was because the troublemaker had yet to actually make the case successfully and then acted subversively.

And I do not deny that the church's role in framing the universe certainly held sway in the conversation. But it wasn't just the church obstinately refusing to listen. It was a two-sided conflict with one head-strong person butting up against a very powerful system.

There was a very similar criticism of the popular "Cosmos" series with regards to Giordano Bruno. Here's a good summary of that:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/ou.../#.WDSbNrIrKUk

There's just a lot of really, really bad historical understanding and historical analysis out there. You see it with the Jesus myth people. You see it with the Dark Ages people. You see it with the Galileo people. The challenge is that people don't know what they don't know, and they don't know either the facts of history how to analyze them effectively.

As for science and religion, I simply don't have enough reason to believe that there's some fundamental issue between them. Most of the characterizations of religion that lead to that conclusion end up being narrow-minded caricatures with very little grounding in either the history of science and religion, or very little grounding in the actual religious beliefs.

Again, this doesn't mean that there *can't* be conflicts. It just means that conflict isn't the fundamental relationship.

It's naive to think historians don't do this and start with facts. Without theory, there's no way to interpret facts, and how they connect together. It's utterly impossible to even get started without theory. Perhaps when they gather more facts, they'd find a better theory, which is why it's important to keep an open mind. There is no way to even begin to figure out which facts to gather without theory.

This is a perfect example, you're starting with a theory to interpret facts.

Religion is filled with knowledge that isn't real, which is why there's a fixation on heaven which is essentially a bogus real estate market. Instead of focusing what's on earth, people are uncritically trying to build mansions in heaven, so of course there's conflict. Religion wastes time and energy from the problems that really exist. This is why religious people *know* heaven exists. They have that *knowledge* through their interpretation of events through a religious lense.


And this is where you start to build a strawman preparing to attack it.

I never said there wasn't scientific inquiry. But the institutional biases of the church are so deep that they don't accept science even when it's staring at them in the face. Science is not the child of religion. It was treated like the child of religion in the dark ages, and Galileo is an example of that. As soon as science stops serving religion, then it serves no real purpose, because the hierarchical institution is first.

Again, you're sloppily lumping me in with *the forum*, people who construct a myth that there was no achievement in the Dark Ages, or people who deny the existence of Jesus. But, if you don't think there's a lot of myth surrounding Jesus, then there's no way I can possibly agree with you.

So you avoid strawmanning me, I'll make my points clear.

Religion was a lousy parent of science during the Dark Ages, and held science back. That parent-child relationship still exists today, which has led to rebellion. Most science has been a rebellion, such as Darwin. And, now that evolution is widely accepted, religious people can claim that there religion is something else entirely, and that there was no real conflict between Darwin and an interpretation of the Bible. The church accepts only a level of reality that suits them because of institutional biases. The modern church doesn't sell indulgences anymore (in economics, a fraudulent market), but it still perpetuates the myth of heaven and hell, and I can only look to psychology (fear of death), and sociologically (institutional biases) to explain why it is still widely accepted that the truth is somewhere in the middle, and that there *may* be houses in heaven. And that you *may* or *may not* be able to sell your *soul*. The rejection of Darwin's ideas among Christian leaders (who you can characterize as being "strong-headed", and the source of conflict much like Galileo)... It makes no sense. Again, religion is at the helm, until everyone looks and say, wow, this captain really has no vision, or his vision is severely misguided. What do you suppose happened to people who questioned the crusades, and said this is misguided vision? The institutions, such as the church, and the king, would have put a stop to it.

The fundamental relationship is slavery. People are promised mansions that don't exist in order to alleviate their fears of death, and control them. Religious institutions tried to guide the vision of science, because they believed that science properly understood would prove them correct, and this in turn would make them more powerful. People are in the life business, so achievements are always going to occur to improve people's lives.

Now religion peers away at science on the frontiers of economics, psychology, sociology, by offering inferior explanation, but it's no longer able to keep its own institutional power, because the benefits from works of reason are undeniable.

I do struggle to structure my thoughts, but it's not to dismiss them and lump them in with people who deny Jesus existed, etc.

You can frame it this way if you choose. You'd just be wrong. I don't deny that they have their own biases when they're pursuing a question. But to assume that they are starting with a specific narrative and searching for evidence to confirm or deny it is much more of an error. Similar to anthropology, they do as much as they can to first let the people tell their own stories. This is why there's such a great value in things like journals and newspapers and other collections of writings. And once they understand the setting, then they can start to see which meta-narratives actually cohere with the events.

Nope. The error is precisely *starting* with a narrative instead of starting from facts. I just don't think you understand the thing you're talking about if you insist that one starts with a historical theory before looking at facts.

Again, you've got a narrative in search of facts to justify it and not facts in search of a narrative to make them coherent. Because you've got this entire process backwards, it's not going to do much good to address it point by point.

You have a thesis you're trying to defend. This is not how historical inquiries actually happen. You can try to come at your thesis in other ways, but to try to build the historical case as you're doing is completely and utterly flawed. (Basically, you're following the path of the worst revisionist historians. You're starting with a conclusion and trying to manipulate the facts around it to support your case. That's just not how history is done. We can revise our understanding of history based on new facts, but we don't start from declaring our own narrative. -- If you want the technical term for what you're doing, you should look up historical negationism.)

I said I wouldn't do it, but I'll do it anyway.

You have 11 sentences here. I've roughly grouped them into cohesive motifs.

(1-2) Science and Religion
(3-5) American Christianity and Darwin
(6-7) Tangential Commentary
(8) Darwin Returns
(9-11) Random Speculation

You start off at (1) with a bold claim. I would ask you to provide evidence from the period of about 10th to 15th centuries to support your claim.

At (2), I would ask you to compare the function of the church in the today's world with the function of the church in the 10th to 15th centuries.

At (3), I'd just point out that the framework of science as a rebellion is unsubstantiated and you'd need to provide evidence to support that it's actually rebellious and not something else. For example, most of the advances in science are gradual and only rarely do we find utterly disruptive events that change the entire framework.

At (4), I'd ask you to provide the evidence of what religion was "before" and "after" and check to see whether you're actually looking at things broadly or if you're just cherry-picking perspectives. (Hint: You're almost certainly cherry-picking.)

At (5), I'd say that you're arguing disingenuously.

I'd just ignore (6-7). It's just a ramble and barely an analysis of anything. If your *best* argument is to lean on "fear of death" and "institutional biases" without anything more than a passing thought, you'd be much better off just not saying it at all. Nobody should take you seriously if you're going to hand-wave that much to make your point.

At (8), I'd agree with you that the rejection of evolution doesn't make a whole lot of sense and accept that there's definitely a thread of anti-intellectualism (that I've discussed elsewhere in this forum) in American Evangelicalism that can be traced back to the mid-1800s or so, and I would reference "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" as a book that you should read if you had an actual interest in understanding history.

And then I'd ignore (9-11) as being pointless and irrelevant speculation. There are actual answers to your questions, but that would require you to look at history instead of just postulating about it.

Here's some philosophy on theory and facts, which I think you can use right now.

https://www.quora.com/%E2%80%9CFacts...t-do-you-think

There's a recursive relationship between facts, and theories. Facts do not simple speak for themselves.

I never once claimed that facts speak for themselves or anything like that.

The difference is between starting with a narrative and searching for facts that CONFIRM the theory (which leads to cherry-picking, as you've plainly done) compared with exploring the facts in search of a narrative that fits them. You can explore facts with a number of theories in the back of your mind to form the conceptual foundation for how to interpret them. But that's different from walking into a set of facts with the presumption of a particular narrative that you're seeking to confirm.

Your approach has been the latter. All of your claims about history and religion are narratives in search of supporting evidence. This is *NOT* how historical analyses are done.

I think it's fair to say that God, Moses, and Jesus would all conclude that "Christianity", in it's current form, is in fact a scam.

It's a scam in a similar way that political ideologies are a scam. God's laws define what is just and fair, and all of these other ideas take the population away from the game theory optimal government that the law provides, thus leaving them open to exploitation.

Consider the brilliance of this policy that God hath ordained: Numbers 33:54 And ye shall divide the land by lot for an inheritance among your families: and to the more ye shall give the more inheritance, and to the fewer ye shall give the less inheritance: every man's inheritance shall be in the place where his lot falleth; according to the tribes of your fathers ye shall inherit.


Contrast this promise of an inheritance designated in God's contract with the so called benefits of the competing worldly contracts like the Magna Carter or U.S. Constitution and it should be clear that the "Christian" has been had.

what so brilliant about it? Doesnt sound very brilliant to me

It's been about a month - I haven't looked into this particularly, but I happened across this statement from the World Health Organization:

Reducing HIV risk by 60% is a hugely positive intervention.

Avoiding homosexuality - whose avoidance is prescribed by Christianity and Judaism as it is an "abomination" according to God - also reduces HIV infection rates, and by far more than circumcision.

Is that also God's wisdom? That homosexuality is bad and they should be stoned? Because following God's wisdom and killing homosexuals reduces HIV infection rates greatly, both for homosexuals and for the rest of society (i.e. 61% of new HIV cases occur in the 2% of men who are MSM (men who have sex with men, according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC). Most black female HIV cases occur with a partner who is a MSM).

I think if you go through the above logic, it becomes obvious that religious genital cutting doesn't really become ok just it has some very very minor positive side effects among many negative ones. Nor does it show the wisdom of God.

You're right that religious genital cutting doesn't become okay because it has some minor positive effects. It is okay because it is not harmful to the people involved and is within the normal parameters of authority parents should have to raise their children.

so should it be ok, for example for girls or young women to have their breasts amputated to lower the risk of breast cancer?

Some do. Angelina Jolie had her ovaries removed for that reason.

More importantly, your analogy is silly in that it equates a piece of unnecessary foreskin to a woman's life-giving functional breast. A better comparison would be having a mole removed to avoid skin cancer which is, of course, a very common procedure.

Probably not.

You're right, I need to get onto this and I truly can't think of a better starting point than the WHO. It may take some time though- I'm part way through the development of a sports betting model. Owing to my prehistoric coding skills, my love-hate relationship with R and my part time job- I may be some time.

I hate to do this, but I think I'll need another month or two.

I'm teaching myself to code by building a political prediction model myself. Take your time.

I dont see the difference, or at least, if there is a difference, its not huge.

I think many people in the US regard breast removal as disfiguring, but not circumcision. Thus, the social impact at minimum is quite different.

Oh, I thought we were talking about your support for circumcision? So you arent for it, but understand why other people are?

If my analogy is silly, yours is just as bad. "unnecessary" in your opinion. Breasts are unnecessary, you can just bottle feed, and function just as well in the world, probably function better, as you dont have body parts weighing you down and unbalancing you.

I've argued ITT that circumcision is morally permissible, not that it is required. I don't support or oppose it particularly.

Of course it's a scam. Christianity at the moment is largely a political movement. Or at least most prominently that's what it is. The scam is that you flaunt your membership in the in-group, rally and enrage the rabble against imaginary enemies like Latinos, gays, and fancy-pants scientists, and then they will happily embrace a leadership that profits from the very ignorance they exploit, and that leads to the rabble's misfortune. The ones who are working feverishly to reduce lower incomes, healthcare, health, well-being generally. The sellers of lottery tickets, high fructose corn syrup, cigarettes, supplements, infomercials, 401ks, real estate bubbles, fast food, hand guns, for profit schools. "Gimme Jesus and lock up all em who think they're better than me." Blessed are the meek! And the miserable! It's either hilarious or the saddest thing possible.

Desperate post is desperate

There is a reason why your prayers are met with silence. The reason is obvious, but as a former Catholic I can say it is a little scary to accept. At first. After a while though, it is incredibly freeing.

Are you coming from a Mormon background? It sounds like it... I don't know of any Protestant Christians who use that term, nor do I know of many Catholics that focus on that concept at a level that they would actually talk about themselves in that way.

In many Mormon families, there's an added level of social pressure that actually serves to magnify things in ways that I view as often being unhealthy.

Consider what it is that you're struggling with. Struggling to force yourself to believe something? Struggling to do all the right things all the time? Struggling with a sense of inadequacy under threats of condemnation all the time?

If so, I would argue that it's possible you're burdened under a false sense of what Christianity really is.