RE: "Why is it reasonable to believe in prisons, but not in the hell?"
January 5, 2021 at 8:37 am
(This post was last modified: January 5, 2021 at 8:38 am by Belacqua.)
In the 16th century the Spanish explorers brought back hundreds of artworks from Central America. These went on display in the capitals of Europe, and despite their extreme foreignness, their beauty was recognized and acknowledged by nearly everyone.
Albrecht Durer, one of the greatest draftsmen who ever lived, described the artifacts in a letter and asserted that the men who made them had to be geniuses, of great worth, and not inferior to Europeans. It was an important step forward in the recognition that one's own taste is not necessarily the only possible taste, and that a multi-cultural world is a good thing.
But of course the Mayan and Incan and Aztec gods DO NOT EXIST. And some people thought that it would be wrong to preserve the reminders of these falsehoods. So all the objects were eventually melted down and no visual record of them remains.
Today most people consider this to be a terrible crime. Yet other people would reproduce this crime, on a different set of artifacts.
Albrecht Durer, one of the greatest draftsmen who ever lived, described the artifacts in a letter and asserted that the men who made them had to be geniuses, of great worth, and not inferior to Europeans. It was an important step forward in the recognition that one's own taste is not necessarily the only possible taste, and that a multi-cultural world is a good thing.
But of course the Mayan and Incan and Aztec gods DO NOT EXIST. And some people thought that it would be wrong to preserve the reminders of these falsehoods. So all the objects were eventually melted down and no visual record of them remains.
Today most people consider this to be a terrible crime. Yet other people would reproduce this crime, on a different set of artifacts.
