Forgive me for making a post here. I meant to stay apart, but could not, seeing the valiant struggle against ignorance that Thought is, almost single-handedly, undertaking... I can't let him do that without at least one more voice at his side, if only an occasional one. I know I'd say I'd left, but I couldn't help replying to you, ZeaLitY, because I think you are trying to view the world and history as far too rosy.
I must put this into context for you. You are enamoured of the ancient Greeks, but I must point out that your view of them is, in fact, an entirely revisionist one. They were nothing so glorious, or so golden, as the Hellenists of the 19th century held them to be. Keats, for example, knew only Pope's Homer which, when it was translated, caused someone to rightly comment 'it's a pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but it's not Homer.' This is very true. It is not Homer. Indeed, had someone like Keats known the true Homer, he might well have been entirely thrown off, because it is not romantic in the same way as we take it to be. Unless you read, well, Lattimore, you're probably not going to get a true impression of Homer (he has his problems, too, but less than anyone else... if you read Lombardo, or Fagles, or most of these others, except maybe Fitzgerald, you're getting too much revision thrown in.) When Athene has Pandauros shoot an arrow off at Menelaos during a truce, are the gods acting rightly? Or how about this, and this is something else entirely: what about Apollon, whose name means 'The Destroyer', commanding Orestes to kills his mother in vengeance for his father? Make no mistake, hamartia means nothing, not like we're taught it. These heroes don't have a tragic flaw, and it's for no problem of their own they suffer: they suffer only because God wills it. The Greeks saw life like that, and to look at it as a matter of just crime and punishment, as tragic flaws, is in fact a mistaken Christian element being overlapped. So democracy was born under a culture that believed that the gods would willy nilly destroy people. 'Pathei mathos'... Zeus has ordained that people must learn through suffering. Only answered by 'Tleton gar Moirai thumon thesan anthropoisin' that the Fates have given to Man an enduring spirit. Nor think that they didn't have their religious wars either! For the number of times that cities would go to war with each other for the sake of a cult statue or something or else. Yet you venerate the Greeks, and understand how much was accomplished under a religious system. More than this, a society that had the rights of women as being non-citizens, and children before the law (changed only by the advent of Christianity... and that Christianity changed his is a historical fact.) A people that showed us how terrible Democracy can get. How?
Let me enlighten you to some of the precepts of the Greek society. In particular, those of the heroic Mycenaean age were, it seems, taken to offering human sacrifice. They, or at least those people they directly descend from, appear to have ritually killed retainers or wives to bury with them. The heroic warriors of the Iliad are, to our modern perception, mass killers. Yes, there is some aspect of loss, and an enjoyment of the beauty of the world, but it is entirely different than what our English eyes and hearts perceive, and it requires a lot of work to remove those preconceptions and actually understand that society, and indeed any ancient society, for what it truly was. Odysseus, the long suffering... how many cities did he attack and rape and kill, hm? Oh, he was a good man, eh? Oh, he was! To the Greeks, he was. Be good to your friends, and wicked to your enemies... that was the measure of a man. 'Twas Christianity that changed that, mark, and that is not opinion, that is history, pure and simple.
To be honest, ZeaLitY, you don't have that ability yet to gauge these things. You do not understand the history of society, and be able to suspend your modern heart and mind (for example, were there 'gays' in ancient Greece? No. To label things like that is entirely modern in premise. Oh, yes, there were such relations, but it was an intrinsic part of their culture which is entirely maligned in trying to overlap with our modern conceptions of the matter.) Now, my words aren't so scholarly in mien as Thought's, but I echo his sentiments. You're throwing out things that are entirely based on your opinion and, indeed, very cursory knowledge of a subject. If you knew more about, say, ancient history, you simply could not hold the opinion you do. After all, the Iliad has the gods condoning, indeed driving forward, the slaughter of the people. Look at this line 'put pains thousandfold upon the Akhaians, hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong souls of Heroes, but gave their bodies to be the delicate feasting of dogs, and all birds, and the WILL OF ZEUS WAS ACCOMPLISHED.' See this? And yet you venerate ancient Greek society which is, in many ways, far far harsher and more violent than anything portrayed in the Bible. Actually, the 'David and Goliath' battle has all the elements of a Homeric single combat... and it's not unlikely that Goliath himself was of Mycenaean descent.
ZeaLitY, Thought has put forward a lot of clear and reasonable points. You are holding to what you say only because you want to, and in part because of your ignorance on the subject. Now, your opinion is your opinion, but I can tell a doctor 'no, it's not like this', but the fact is, since I don't know the first thing about medicine, I'm in no position to make such a claim. That's about what you're doing here.
I find it a little ironic that you're throwing around the concept of historical revisionism when your own beloved Romantic poets are of that era that are most greatly culpable for revisionism regarding antiquity. There is a lot of worth in what they did, and we can see it in the context of their culture and the beauty they brought to be (inaccurate as it may be, Pope's Iliad can still be a beautiful example of English poetry), but they were revisionsist through and through, at worst using antiquity to further nationalistic goals, and at best romantics who were ignorant about the ancient world.
Simply, ZeaLitY, you're an excellent artist, and very passionate in your argument, but neither theology or history are your fields, and you really don't have the ability to argue them: you have too much passion, and too little knowledge, and far too much opinion, to address it properly. To the point that when scholarly accepted evidence is put before you you are unwilling to accept it because it contravenes what you believe. That is rather problematic, see? Thought says 'historically, this and this is so.' If it goes against what you believe, you say 'let me dig this and this up', which is entirely non-sequitor. Yes, there are instances of this, but either Thought or I can pull up examples of where Democracy has caused problems (from the start, the destruction of Melos; or the radical Democrats of Athens and their terrors); or Philhellenism, which you ascribe to, being used in very twisted nationalistic ways, most especially by the Nazi party (they, after all, considered themselves the successors to the ancient Aryan, ancient Greek, identity, and were wanting to rebuild their cities after Greek designs, for that it was the pinnacle of human achievement to their eyes...); the point is, these things can be dug up. And that you keep saying you'll dig up so-called examples is harping on the wrong point. No, it should not be obvious... indeed, if it IS obvious, it is so only because the person is reading into the evidence what they want to... reading the evidence so that it supports their hypothesis (ie. that religion is bad) rather than letting the evidence speak truth. Indeed, that very few scholars of history (such as Thought) would share your view on the matter shows an inherent tendancy in this topic to only see what you want to.
Now if you want me to get technical, yes, there is a bit of a discrepancy between Old Testament and New... why do you think they are held distinct? You are conflating the two very unfairly. Not to mention that Thought is entirely right in his premises, and it's something you have failed time and again to answer: if religion is held culpable, so must our myriad other institutions. If you fail to address this, or claim it to be taking it too far, you're just purposefully evading what is at the core of the issue in favour of your own opinion. You needn't do this. Indeed, the stances you are taking are most often philisophically invalid, and really have very little to stand on. Philisophically speaking there are very strong arguments in favour of God (say, Cosmological, or Ontological, or Teleological, and Kant's Moral), and historically speaking - and not via revision, because any scholar will know that the stance I have, or Thought, is not the revisionist one, but the tried and true one that the majority via peer review hold to be true, and most of what you have considered is the 'revisionist' stance - it is not evil, or at any rate no more evil than our other institutions.
As I've said, Thought has things entirely right when he's asking how you can single out religion, when other institutions cause the same problems. If you want to think as a scientist ZeaLitY, you cannot but consider this. And for a second put aside your biases and prejudices, really think about this. A scientist cannot go into an experiment and assuming an outcome claim something to be valid after only one iteration. That's what you're doing. See, if you throw human and religion together, and at times get something bad, you might say 'well, there's a bad mix here; religion is at fault.' But that's bad science, no better than mixing arsenic and sugar, and on ingesting these come to the conclusion that 'sugar is poisonous.' But when you mix arsenic with salt; and with pepper; you get get the same poisonous mix. But you're so fond of humanity, so fond of the arsenic, that you're entirely ignoring the results of those experiments, though the evidence is clear and self evident. Mix humanity and democracy, you also get some bad; humanity with any institution, and you get wars and death. Now, look at this as a scientist, look at this rationally, and don't let yourself be blinded by prejudice for a moment. If you see a+b=c, and d+b=c, and e+b=c, which is more likely to be the cause of the outcome 'c'? 'a'? Or 'b'? You are essentially saying 'a'. That is entirely unreasonable. Yes, 'a' might have a hand in causing 'c', but then so does 'd', and 'e'. But what is most responsible is the common, unchanging element 'b'. And in our social context, that is 'humanity'. You are loath to consider humanity for at fault because you love it so, but how scientific is it to not believe the evidence because it doesn't suit your beliefs? At least I can vindicate myself when I think like that because not everything I believe I do by reason, because I have some things that are faith-based. If you're going to make the claim that everything you believe is pure and clear reason, then you cannot do anything but this, you absolutely must hold humanity, and not religion, at fault for what happens. It is the only scientific conclusion.
You can complain all you want about that conclusion, but that is how it has to be. Thought has shown a lot of clear and self-evident examples about how history goes through this.
Now, if you want, you can bring up your so-called 'evidence' internal to various holy books. It is flawed that you're looking only at one, but since it's the one I'm most familiar with, I'll only say that Thought has made the most reasonable arguments against those comments that one could think of. Nonetheless, if you're wanting to comment on them, seriously comment, you have to do a heck of a lot more research than merely throwing out some links or posts, letting other people speak for you than rather thinking for yourself. It's bad scholarship, ZeaLitY. The thing is, most of those people quoting and all don't have the first clue about theology and sound about as silly as a layman trying to tell a doctor how to perform surgery. There is logical systematics in theology, too, though you might not realise it, and if you see a disjunct between the Old and New Testaments, you might be somewhat justified. Philosophers and Theologians understand this and work with this (I tend to be more Philosopher than Theologian, by the way), and there is reconciliation. Yes, mass acts of destruction can seem to us out of accord with an omni-God such as we believe in. But there are a thousand other facets to this, and heck, I can't even begin to get into the philosophical variances. To make this sharp dichotomy between 'this says this, and this says this, therefore there is hypocrisy' is as simpleminded as saying 'wait, electrons are supposed to orbit in levels around the nucleus, but now we're being told they can be probabalistically anywhere?!.' To the layman, it seems like contradiction. There are a lot of things like that. Just consider for a moment that you're not so smart and clever in this field as you think you are. Use an example of something you know professionally really, really well, and imagine trying to explain the finer points to someone absolutely ignorant of it. You'll probably be told you're being contrary more than once, because to someone that doesn't really know it, things can seem like that. Now put yourself in the opposite position. Regarding religion you are really a layman, and in terms of history likewise next to, say, Thought, and to me as well (at least in terms of ancient history and literature.) Can you not suppose that what seems contrary and hypocritical to you is only a deficiency in your knowledge?
So throw out all the supposed 'this is fact' and all the quotes you like. You're just padding your ignorance with fancy epithets. No scholar in the fields would agree with you, or at least not the general secular scholarship, and in part that's evidenced by Thought and his claims. My agnostic/atheistic philosophy prof would also argue against your assertions, on philosophical grounds (and when I've mentioned these things, he's agreed with me, by the way.) Most of those people schooled in these matters would tend to disagree with you. Why is that? Because what you're saying is not born out of knowledge, which tends more to be on the side of Thought and me, but of opinion sans true study. Now of course we've got these radicals. We've got the idiots boycotting Heath Ledger's funeral because he was in Brokeback Mountain. But is it good science to make a claim based on outlier data? if you have a graph with all the different positions charted, is it good science to make a claim based on the outliers? No, in fact, usually you draw trend curves ignorings those. Yet your statements are often made using those very outliers as the standard. That is very unscientific. And by scientific I mean it especially in the Latin sense, that is, having knowledge.
Once again, sorry for my return after I'd strongly maintained flight in disgust, but I could not leave Thought to argue the scholarly stances all alone.
PS
By the way, so atheists being persecuted in the past gives atheists the right to persecute the religious now? Still going at the old eye for an eye, eh? Oh, no, I forget... you're more enlightened, eh? Where have I heard THAT one before. Heh. No, WE have the truth, that gives us the right to beat you down. Hmmm... pot calling the kettle black, methinks. That's actually what a lot of this sounds like, you know.
PPS
Now, I suppose you're of this opinion because you see the effects of religion within your society (and I say 'your' because I guess it's not so prevalent in Canada as in the US.) Okay, true enough, there are some drawbacks. For example, I am definitely not in favour of a theocracy. The mingling of relgion and politics is not good. These sorts of things I can understand. I can also see how you might be aggrieved at various groups which take things far too far (and which, I will say very dogmatically, are not theologically right anyway.) However, you are not justified in making the blanket claim that you make. Indeed, you cannot even say 'religion has been responsible for wars', no philosophically. The fact that I have not yet caused any wars because of my religion, or killed anyone, or even had it hold me back in academic fashion, shows that there is nothing that says it MUST be so. And if religion+person doesn't always equal 'bad', then we run into a logical deficiency. There has to be something else at work, otherwise it would always be true. Either 'religion' has varying degrees that causes things to end well or bad, or else person does. But if religion has that variance, then you must make a proper distinction between 'good' religion and 'bad', and as such cannot make a general claim as you do. If 'person' is at fault, then again you have various native strengths and weaknesses within the person that influence the outcome. And since when we apply 'person' in combination with, say 'democracy', we also sometimes get bad results, we see that, without doubt, 'person' is a variable element that has good and bad elements. This could be fleshed out a bit more, but I'm trying to make a sort of logical set here.
