Since we've gotten told to stop talking generally about religion twice in the Homosexuality and Religion thread and were told that, if we want to talk generally about religion, we need to make a new thread, I have made a new thread.
Full disclosure: I am an agnostic atheist and anti-theist, but I'm very interested in theology and religion.
Mod Edit: All right, there are a couple of ground rules here:
- This is not a thread for mindless bashing of religion or of atheism/agnosticism etc. All view points are welcome here. Let's have a civil debate.
- Religion is a volatile subject. Please don't post here if you can't manage a civil discussion with viewpoints you disagree with. There will be no tolerance for people who can't keep the tone light hearted.
- There is no one true answer for this thread. Don't try to force out opposing voices.
edited 9th Feb '14 1:01:31 PM by Madrugada
Wandering Jew
If I may quote Wikipedia:
The caricature of the period is also reflected in a number of more specific notions. For instance, a claim that was first propagated in the 19th century[45][46] and is still very common in popular culture is the supposition that all people in the Middle Ages believed that the Earth was flat. This claim is mistaken.[46][47] In fact, lecturers in the medieval universities commonly advanced evidence in favor of the idea that the Earth was a sphere.[48] Lindberg and Ronald Numbers write: "There was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did not acknowledge [Earth's] sphericity and even know its approximate circumference".[49]
Other misconceptions such as: "the Church prohibited autopsies and dissections during the Middle Ages", "the rise of Christianity killed off ancient science", and "the medieval Christian church suppressed the growth of natural philosophy", are all cited by Ronald Numbers as examples of widely popular myths that still pass as historical truth, although they are not supported by current historical research.[50] They help maintain the idea of a "Dark Age" spanning through the medieval period.
Unlike pagan Rome, Christian Europe did not exercise a universal prohibition of the dissection and autopsy of the human body and such examinations were carried out regularly from at least the 13th century.[51][52][53] It has even been suggested that the Christian theology contributed significantly to the revival of human dissection and autopsy by providing a new socio-religious and cultural context in which the human cadaver was no longer seen as sacrosanct.[51]
The Dark Ages are Flanderized to the point of ridicule. If anything was responsible for that age, it was the fall of the Western Roman Empire. This is why Western Europe's suffering was the greatest.
Although Christianity did hold back the Renaissance. That much is very accurate.
edited 3rd Apr '13 9:59:10 PM by DeviantBraeburn
Everything is Possible. But some things are more Probable than others. JEBAGEDDON 2016
Blaming Christianity for Dark Ages is excessive. there are a lot of cause of Dark Age: Justinian plague, government collapse, people migrations, lost of Egypt and Africa to Islam, muslim piracy, etc. Christianity do try to preserve science, and they have Carolingian Renaissance on 12century.
Hinduism and Chinese religion is no more adaptable to new information than Christianity. There are a lot of Hindu that reject science, preserve caste system, etc. Gandhi murderer is Hindu fanatic. Chinese religion is also not always adaptable, Confucianism is authoritarian and sexist, Taoism believe a lot of pseudo-scientific healing, etc. Adaption of science also questionable, there are Hindu and Buddhist who reject evolution.
Also Hinduism is losing a lot of land : Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia are originally Hindu. Buddhism also once had a period when it more successful than Hinduism and dominated India.
Crediting religion for success or non-success on resisting invader, develop science or maintain welfare is abusing history. Religion is a part of culture, and while it can change it, religion did not exist separately from other part of culture. There are pacifist and warlike Christian, Hindu and Buddhist.
Reading tropes such as You Know What You Did
Here are my thoughts on it, for anyone interested. Religious beliefs are not the problem, the problem is when you start proclaiming it the one true belief to everyone else, or even try and push those beliefs on others. You believe in Jesus, Mohammed, Commander Shepard, good for you, and the latter is a damn fine person to believe in. When it starts getting into Christianity being proven fact or atheism being proven fact or we must ignore the religious concerns in regards to science or abortion or euthanasia is against religion then that's where problems start.
Currently reading up My Rule Fu Is Stronger than Yours
Wandering Jew
Only if you played as a Paragon!*
edited 3rd Apr '13 10:09:46 PM by DeviantBraeburn
Everything is Possible. But some things are more Probable than others. JEBAGEDDON 2016
There were/are religious people who were top-notch scientists. Isaac Newton was (extremely) religious. The Father of Modern Genetics is a monk - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel
Yeah, I don't approve of the Religion VS Science mentality. I've been accused of being an atheist because I like science so much.
Plants are aliens, and fungi are nanomachines.
NOT THE BEES
And of course, the Muslims were doing pretty well during the Dark Ages.
The Final ECW Champion
They partially caused the dark ages in Europe. Though, classically the "dark ages" are between 400 -700 AD that is just because we do not know much about what happen.
If you want economic turmoil and laughable amounts of ignorance you want 661-1100AD
Or to paraphrase Ibn-Khaldoun ->"The Christian could no longer float a plank upon the sea." Yes, it took the Christens almost 500 years to even organize an offensive response against the Muslim armies after they swept through Eastern Rome and Sassinid Persia and the first target was Constantinople, the very city that proposed this response. If that was not a dark age I do not know what is. The entire Janissary class was made up of sterile slaves, that is how badly Christendom took it.
Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack
(sighs)
http://wordinfo.info/unit/2701
“The father’s of the early church equated bodily cleanliness with the luxuries, materialism, paganism and what’s been called ‘the monstrous sensualities’ of Rome,” explains Professor Greene.
Within a few centuries, the public and private sanitation practices of Greece and Rome were forgotten; or, as Greene adds, were “deliberately repressed.”
Europe during the Middle Ages, it’s often been said, went a thousand years without a bath.
Gregory the Great, the first monk to become pope, allowed Sunday baths and even commended them, so long as they didn’t become a “time-wasting luxury.”
Guardians of culture and knowledge during the Dark Ages, Europe’s monasteries also preserved some of Rome’s hydrological technology and cleanliness habits.
Elaborate plumbing laid in 1150 served the Christchurch Monastery at Canterbury, with settling tanks to purify water, and branches that fed the kitchen, the laver, and the washouse.
Greene stated, “People always talk about the good old days, before pesticides and pollution; but in the good old days of Europe and the United States, people lived in filth, with human and animal fecal matter all around. The rivers were filthy. Clothing was infested with vermin.”
I'm so sorry.
Plants are aliens, and fungi are nanomachines.
NOT THE BEES
That tends to get exaggerated, but is true to a degree. Roman bathhouses were used for the dirty as much as the clean, so to speak.
Probably more influential during that time was that for most of Northern Europe, water was f*#king cold, and bathing was a great way to get pneumonia. This was, however, compensated to a degree by washing clothes.
Yeah, but it was still very stupid thing to say. At least the Muslims didn't say that.
Also, because the Church leaders kept on saying it, even during the Renaissance - Europe's leaders didn't take baths. And thus, they had so many fleas and why they had to wear a lot of perfume and powdered wigs.
Ew.
Plants are aliens, and fungi are nanomachines.
http://www.salon.com/2007/11/30/dirt_on_clean/
Christianity turns out to be the only great world religion — great in the sense of widespread and influential — that had no teaching or interest in hygiene. In the early years of the church, the holier you were, the less you wanted to be clean. Cleanliness was kind of a luxury, like food, drink and sex, because cleanliness was comfortable and attractive. The holier you were — and this really applied to monks and hermits and saints — the less you would wash. And the more you smelled, the closer to God people thought you were.
So then did Buddhists and Muslims think Christians were filthy?
Absolutely. And they were right, too.
And didn’t Westerners have a reputation among Asians for being filthy?
Yes. They probably were, relatively speaking, compared to affluent Chinese and to Japanese people of every class. One of the reasons may have been the influence of Christianity. Europe suffered this hiatus in cleanliness for about four or five centuries. When the great plagues came, the Black Death, in the 14th century, the king of France asked the medical faculty at the Sorbonne in Paris, “What is causing this hideous plague that is killing one out of every three Europeans, and what can we do to prevent it?” And the doctor said the people who were at risk for getting the plague had opened their pores in warm or hot water, in the baths, and they were much more susceptible.
So in France and England and most European countries, for about five centuries, people really believed that it was very, very dangerous to get in water, and this only really broke down in the 19th century. There was nothing like this, nothing corresponded to that belief, in Asia or in India, so they had an unbroken tradition of cleanliness. They also had religions, like Islam and Hinduism, that took cleanliness very seriously, which Christianity never did.
Had I lived during those times, I would have converted.
edited 4th Apr '13 12:04:04 AM by probablyinsane
Plants are aliens, and fungi are nanomachines.
Is that cake frosting?
Yes, during the Middle Ages (and beyond) European culture had some bizarre beliefs about bathing. As far as cultural quirks go, it was pretty tame if compared to Chinese feet binding, or the Indian caste systems, or the Japanese Buddhist self-mummification, or so on; but like all cultures other than our current one, Medieval European culture had many aspects that strike us as nonsensical and/or appalling.
Makes one wonder which aspects of our contemporary cultures will make our descendants go "just what were they thinking?".
edited 4th Apr '13 2:55:48 AM by Carciofus
But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.
The point of the discussion was that Early Christians issued some pretty fucked orders about cleanliness. Of course it's going to look tame if you compare it to THOSE cultural practices.
For self-mummification, it's more fair to compare to self-flagellation. Or over here, how a "few" Filipinos practice ritual crucifixion.
Chinese foot-binding - since it's about making women look pretty - eating arsenic for skin-whitening purposes or demanding that women must bleed on the wedding night (or else!)
And Europe had its own caste system during the Middle Ages. And, of course, slavery.
Plants are aliens, and fungi are nanomachines.
Is that cake frosting?
Slavery was less common in the middle ages than in Ancient Rome, and became less and less common during that period. Serfdom was common, of course, but it was a different matter: a serf had very specific duties and rights, and his own life was not his lord's to take or leave. There were abuses, obviously; but all things considered, I'd very much rather be a medieval serf than a common slave in Ancient Rome (I know, in Rome some serf rose to positions of great prestige and comfort. But they were specially trained slaves, not random schlubs sent to raise crops).
My point is that, yes, Medieval Europe was not some sort of magical fairyland. But it was not the most awful place ever either.
edited 4th Apr '13 3:33:12 AM by Carciofus
But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I'm just saying that you wanna make the cleanliness bit look quirky, use more appropriate comparisons else we end up arguing on which cultures were bigger oppressors.
Also, the "cleanliness is unspiritual" bit becomes a lot less quirky when we consider that even Medieval doctors didn't wash up before doing their thing.
There's jokes about how a Crusader was doing okay when a Islamic doctor treated them, but then got amputated when Christian doctor showed up (without even washing up first.)
European medicine took so long to re-associate with cleanliness that I've read horror stories about how medical students would poke a pregnant woman in labor with dirty hands.
Plants are aliens, and fungi are nanomachines.
Is that cake frosting?
Except that the whole matter of cleanliness was raised during a discussion about the perceived faults of the Middle Ages.
I am not terribly interested in ranking ancient cultures from best to worst either; but I think that the Middle Ages often get an undeservedly harsh reputation.
Yes, the middle ages were not heaven on earth. Still, their cultural and artistic merits are undeniable. Just consider medieval architecture, for example; or Scholasticism, or the medieval improvements on metallurgy, and so on.
edited 4th Apr '13 3:46:49 AM by Carciofus
But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.
V
Of course, the Black Death changed everything in relation to Surfdom.
No, I just brought it up as an example of how Early Christianity contributed to Middle Age woes.
You may not think it's a big deal, but I do, especially since I think that early Christian leaders made that "cleanliness is unspiritual" rule partly as a Take That! to Jews and Pagan Romans.
It also doesn't help that during the Spanish Inquisition, they actually used "daily bathing" as evidence that someone was Islamic.
edited 4th Apr '13 3:51:09 AM by probablyinsane
Plants are aliens, and fungi are nanomachines.
Uh... every culture takes standpoints just to be different from the neighbours. <_< Often dangerous ones, often silly ones, and often useless ones. And, often, all that has taken religious or ideological overtones at the same time. Woot.
Whatever. Quit picking on one or two.
Each. And. Every. Culture. At. All. Times. Ever. No. Exceptions.
And, atheists and secularists are not immune to this idiocy, either: in- and out-grouping is something people do. <_<
edited 4th Apr '13 4:06:02 AM by Euodiachloris
Absolutely no relation to NLK
I don't have the link ATM, but I recall a recent Cracked article saying that people in the early middle ages did bathe quite a lot, before that trend began.
Dopants: He meant what he said and he said what he meant, a Ninety is faithful 100%.
Oh Lord, I'm not belittling Europe or any cultures, I'm complaining about something Early Christian Leaders did which had wide-spreading consequences.
Can we please not make this a culture thing?
And yeah, the no bathing thing didn't start immediately just cause Early Christian Leaders preached that cleanliness was unclean, but they kept doing and peer-pressuring their congregations that it really did become a (very) long-lasting trend.
Also, I'm upset because cleanliness is a BIG DEAL, and I hate the idea of cleanliness (or non-cleanliness) being used as a religious marker (or whatever).
Plants are aliens, and fungi are nanomachines.
Um, guys? Medieval monasteries had bathhouses. And stone bowls for washing hands before dinner. And monks were specifically allowed a change of clothes so that their clothes should be washed.
Having a bath was part of the ceremony for knighthood as well; baths were connected with the purification of baptism.
The saints not washing thing is part of the mortification of the flesh - it's clearly good to take a bath, so not doing so is self-denial. It may also possibly be connected to the idea of incorruptible flesh - you often get the story that a saints body didn't decay normally but smelt nice, so possibly the idea was that the unwashed saint still smelt of roses?
I have seen some historians argue that the whole 'smelly' thing arose during the rapid urbanisation (and consequent lack of access to clean water) of the Eighteenth Century, and was then moved backwards into the Middle Ages by the Victorians.
It ain't over 'till the ring hits the lava.
http://www.dur.ac.uk/resources/ias/insights/Archibald14Novpm.pdf
Cause some of them were being hypocrites.
And then when the Black Death happened, water was blamed for opening up pores, which killed off bathing (and practically personal hygiene) in Western Europe.
Plants are aliens, and fungi are nanomachines.
It helps to read the entire article and not just quotemine the abstract.
edited 4th Apr '13 6:40:13 AM by Bluesqueak
It ain't over 'till the ring hits the lava.
Christianity is extremely difficult sometimes, but I would say it works out well.