I wouldn’t be a Christian

[Belacqua]

So............ the good ideas/words of christianity out way the bad. 

I'm sure a lot of people believe that. 

I have no idea how they can quantify the good and the bad in order to make that assessment. As you know, in the real world of power and violence, theological disputes are never pure. They are always mixed with economic and political issues. For example:

Um........... kill them all and let god sort it out. (yeah I know, not accurate) But it was said, by a christian, for the purpose of killing, people were killed (lots of people).

This atrocity was committed while the Catholics were fighting the Cathars. The argument began as a theological dispute, but it became more than that when Catholic noblemen were told they could keep the lands of Cathar-supporting noblemen whom they defeated. Suddenly a lot of indifferent Catholics signed up to fight. 

When the guy said, "Kill them. For the Lord knows those that are his own," chances are he was also thinking, "and I don't care because the guy who pays me gets to keep the real estate." 

Confirmation bias is a real danger here.

[The Grand Nudger]

The trouble is that "christian benevolence" isn't exclusively christian, whilst christian atrocity is and has been.  

Confirmation bias...okay (huh?)...but if so, what is being confirmed........?

That god would know his own and it;s okay to gut a motherfucker because of this.  Only a christian can make this claim, because only a christian believes in the christian god to begin with..to know his own, for there to be a bias -to- confirm. Confirmation bias is not the problem, here, the bias which is being confirmed is. If the bias was that god does not deal that way and that it actually does matter who you kill and why, confirming -that- bias would not have lead to what the position lead to.

This is essentially a rehash of the position that fundamentalism is only a problem when the fundamentals are garbage. If they weren't garbage, it might not be a problem...but they are. To crib from the inimitable chris hitchens...present some good thing that only a believer can do or believe. Now present some terrible thing that only a believer can do or believe. Lets not pretend that we didn't draw a blank to the first and immediately arrive at an answer to the second.

[brewer]

So............ the good ideas/words of christianity out way the bad. 

I'm sure a lot of people believe that. 

I have no idea how they can quantify the good and the bad in order to make that assessment. As you know, in the real world of power and violence, theological disputes are never pure. They are always mixed with economic and political issues. For example:

Um........... kill them all and let god sort it out. (yeah I know, not accurate) But it was said, by a christian, for the purpose of killing, people were killed (lots of people).

This atrocity was committed while the Catholics were fighting the Cathars. It began as a theological dispute, but it became more than that when Catholic noblemen were told they could keep the lands of Cathar-supporting noblemen whom they defeated. Suddenly a lot of indifferent Catholics signed up to fight. 

When the guy said, "Kill them. For the Lord knows those that are his own," chances are he was also thinking, "and I don't care because the guy who pays me gets to keep the real estate." 

Confirmation bias is a real danger here.

Gotcha, in the end it had nothing to do with religion. Great!

Um..... chances are? Are you following your own plea for accuracy? (Knowledge of which is which requires accuracy about what was really said, by whom, for what purpose, and with what results.)

Were Thomas Aquinas good words/ideas taken into account by Sixtis IV or any following pope over the next few centuries?

Your ability to stick your head in the sand is astonishing.

[The Grand Nudger]

Saint Tommy's Good Words™ were borrowed from previously exterminated pagan greeks.....just to drop that into the mix again.  Had there never been an aquinas (or christianity) those "good words" would still exist, we know this..because they -did- exist, and predate christerism, Saint Tommy's life's work was to take them and try to make christian belief concordant with them.

[Belacqua]

Gotcha, in the end it had nothing to do with religion. Great!

That's not what I said. 

What I said was: "in the real world of power and violence, theological disputes are never pure. They are always mixed with economic and political issues."

Um..... chances are? Are you following your own plea for accuracy? 

Yes, because I didn't write, "he was thinking." I don't claim to know his thoughts. But I know that a great deal of wealth and power was also at stake in those atrocities. So we shouldn't ignore that. 

Were Thomas Aquinas good words/ideas taken into account by Sixtis IV or any following pope over the next few centuries?

Thomas wrote thousands of pages on many different topics. Sixtus did many things, which we will judge to be good and bad and indifferent. It would be difficult to trace direct influences here.

Your ability to stick your head in the sand is astonishing.

Probably it's better to end the conversation when the personal insults start, so I'll leave it here. [/quote]

---

Saint Tommy's Good Words™ were borrowed from previously exterminated pagan greeks.....just to drop that into the mix again.  Had there never been an aquinas (or christianity) those "good words" would still exist, we know this..because they -did- exist, and predate christerism, Saint Tommy's life's work was to take them and try to make christian belief concordant with them.

That's right, Thomas's main accomplishment was to introduce Aristotelian systems into Christian theology. 

My claim has been that it changed Christian theology. I didn't say that without him Aristotle would be forgotten.

[The Grand Nudger]

Saint Tommy's Good Words™ were borrowed from previously exterminated pagan greeks.....just to drop that into the mix again.  Had there never been an aquinas (or christianity) those "good words" would still exist, we know this..because they -did- exist, and predate christerism, Saint Tommy's life's work was to take them and try to make christian belief concordant with them.

That's right, Thomas's main accomplishment was to introduce Aristotelian systems into Christian theology. 

My claim has been that it changed Christian theology. I didn't say that without him Aristotle would be forgotten.

I agree.  I'm pointing out only that it is not necessary to know anything about aquinas or christianity to know about aristotelian systems, and that in point of fact thee main risk of those things having been lost came from christianity.  Our western tradition is not incomprehensible or impossible to arrive at absent christian contributions because our western tradition is not based upon christianity..and this is a glaring example of how christian theology is based on our western tradition, instead.  

It's something that privately tickles me pink when the hardcore believers among us insist that our ideology is based on christianity, is all.  Not only did the early med christians mold theology to their (classical) liking....later european christians further redacted and amended so that the religion bore a more striking resemblence to their own native traditions - and even in colonization this pattern was repeated.

[Angrboda]

That's right, Thomas's main accomplishment was to introduce Aristotelian systems into Christian theology. 

My claim has been that it changed Christian theology. I didn't say that without him Aristotle would be forgotten.

I agree.  I'm pointing out only that it is not necessary to know anything about aquinas or christianity to know about aristotelian systems, and that in point of fact thee main risk of those things having been lost came from christianity.  Our western tradition is not incomprehensible or impossible to arrive at absent christian contributions because our western tradition is not based upon christianity..and this is a glaring example of how christian theology is based on our western tradition, instead.  

It's something that privately tickles me pink when the hardcore believers among us insist that our ideology is based on christianity, is all.  Not only did the early med christians mold theology to their (classical) liking....later european christians further redacted and amended so that the religion bore a more striking resemblence to their own native traditions - and even in colonization this pattern was repeated.

Well, in fairness, I think they would say, or would if they were smart, that they were basing Christianity on reality, and Aristotle and Plato were just middle men.

[The Grand Nudger]

They say many things. 

[Belacqua]

Our western tradition is not incomprehensible or impossible to arrive at absent christian contributions because our western tradition is not based upon christianity..[...]

This is a new idea for me. I'm surprised by this.

I guess when I think of western tradition I just think of the tradition we have. Good and bad, like it or not, the way it worked out. 

Are you saying that there's a real western tradition independent of Christianity, despite the fact that there's a lot of Christian stuff in European history? Is this a kind of essentialism, which goes underground when the Christians are influential? 

I mean, I know that Christian theology is a mixture of ideas from various sources -- Greek, Hebrew, what have you. But I guess I thought that was all a part of western tradition.

[The Grand Nudger]

We're sitting here discussing how the already syncretic christians further injected classical western philosophy into their religion, aren't we? The things that christianity is made of, are western traditions. It's not the other way round.

It didn't go underground when christians were influential..they literally burnt it -to- the ground...then, at some point (many individual points, in truth), realized that this may have been a big "oops" moment. Consider the regional differences in christianity, consider the syncretic history of all faiths transported from one place to the next. They are always molded to better suit the prevailing cultural paradigm of the new believers. No one throws away their entire culture and worldview..they make the new faith concordant with their culture and worldview. Christianity, for it's part, had already been made concordant, aquinas just gave it another coat of western paint.

Hellenism was not what happened to greek culture when judaism influenced it, it's what happened to judaism influenced by greek culture. Out of that, and with further snycretic elements...a bunch of nutbars arose (most of which are now defunct) and the ones which came to power and became the religion we now know were the ones that most efficiently and easily embedded themselves within the apparatus of authority in the culture of the time.

The jews weren't wrong when they called the christians pagans and heretics, lol. Christianity, both as we know it today -in- the western tradition and as it formed then.... had nothing to do with the cultural paradigms of the ane, and everything to do with the prexisting beliefs of n. mediterranean and w. european peoples. AKA..."The Western Tradition", which predated christianity, and from which christainity is comprised and arose.

Now, ofc, they spent the next thousand years swearing they invented everything from puppies to sliced bread, and regardless of the absurdity in this claim it became a part of the conceptual framework of "the west" as history was memory holed.