I've been watching this discussion go on for some time, and as expected, there is a whole lot of Snobbery going on. You talk about your beans, your storage, home-roasting and all of that bollocks. Most of it are versions of Arabica, and most are grown in the mountains. Firstly, I grew up in the Netherlands, where Douwe Egberts is the coffee-company that sells the most. A german low-price supermarket chain had an anonymous gold-label coffee that was a lot better than the brand-name coffees out there. It just goes to show that labels and brands and bean-snobbery aren't everything.
Back in the day (and I'm still partial to it) I really enjoyed a good strong filter coffee with a dash of milk, no sugar. The machine here makes a large difference in the outcome. If you have a good one that brews under the right pressure and temperature, filter coffee can be lovely. Douwe Egbert devices are indeed superior here. When making filter coffee I like using a somewhat dark roast so you get a hint of bitterness. I always use a lot of coffee to get a strong pot, and before closing the machine, I always add few grains of salt to enhance the flavour. You'd be amazed what a little salt does in that regard. Sometimes I add cardamom for taste.
Over the years I have made coffee with all kinds of brands and roasts. Zoegas, Ily, Lavazza, Jacobs, Douwe Egberts, HAG, Löfbergs Lila, Gevalia, Lindvalls, you name 'm. I've used espresso machines, percolator, the espresso-boiler on the stove, pans and filter-machines. But still my favourite is a finely ground, darkly roasted arabica for Filter with a bit of salt in the filter. Usually the brand is secondary. The only exceptions to this are HAG and Löfbergs Lila. I fucking hate those.
But the one thing that I'm missing in all of these discussions is Arabic coffee-making. I don't mean Turkish coffee. That's for wussies. I mean properly boiled Arabic coffee.
- Put water in small pan - Let water boil - Add large amounts of arabic coffee (cheap ones work fine too) blended with Cardamom - Boil until foam comes up. Stir (off the fire) until foam disappears - Add sugar, 1-2 Spoons per cup - Put back on stove and boil until no more foam forms on the coffee
Pour into a glass and drink it.
This has to be the one and only rival way of making coffee to filter that I fully enjoy every time. If you're ever in the Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem, drink coffee with 'm. They know what they are doing. Few Israeli Jews, amongst whom my father in law, know what they are doing because they are from North Africa or Arabic Countries.
Hear hear! I totally agree with what the author of the above comments is saying.
> the only way we can understand the universe is in spatiotemporal terms regardless of what the universe might actually be 'like'
With regards to that, you needn't go and read Kant (bit heavy-trodden, Kant) himself. It suffices to read Iain M Banks' Excession to get some interesting takes on this principle. It's light reading, it's sci-fi, it's a blast. I'm even pretty sure he wrote it out of his own free will too, if you allow me to cast gas on the fire for a bit.:-D
On a more serious note, some interesting reading material is available from other sources. George Lakeoff is a linguistics scholar who wrote a smashingly interesting book on Mathematics (and therefore by extension Physics) called "Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being". In it, he sets out to prove that mathematics are a construct by our minds to create a model of the world we can live with (extremely over-simplified by me now).
Another amusingly interesting book he wrote (off-topic) is "Metaphors we live by".
I must have phrased myself clumsily here. These advancements in thinking that lead to the legislation we currently have happened in Christian nations, but not because of Christianity. I would argue that they happened in spite of the dominant, organized religion. I was trying to say that I attribute those changes to the secular thinkers, scientists, humanists and philosophers.
You should also remember that our outlook on life is not just dominated by Christian thinking, but rather more (more than most suspect, at any rate) by Hellenistic thinking. Europe, as the name suggests (she is after all the Daughter of a God in Phoenician and Greek mythology), and European thinking are far more stuck to their Hellenistic and Pagan roots than people think. By extension (since the US is based on the same basic cultural principles) the same can be argued for the US.
Therefore I conclude that our principles of democracy and freedom have more to do with Greek thinking than Christianity. The fact that some teachings of Jesus are quite compatible with that did secure a foot-hold for Christianity in these regions.
> so any appeal to "canonical scripture" is necessarily also an appeal to the authority of the Church in that matter.
Damn. I desperately want to argue against this point, but I can't come up with the logic to do so. Well said, sir!;-D
> The Church as a whole is the community of believers
No it isn't. The church is the institutionalization of belief. My mother is definitely Christian, but she doesn't go to churches, doesn't believe in the trinity and the divinity of Jesus. She does believe in his teachings as a prophet/messiah though. Messiah, after all, means God's anointed King and not Son of God. She is a believer, but by no means part of "the church", and I know many people like her.
> Jesus and the Apostles obviously weren't it for the money
Which was exactly what Francis of Assisi and all of his followers argued. And look what happened to them.
> The fact that many (not all) later leaders, when presented with the prospect of extreme political power and wealth, handled it badly, > has more to say about humanity than it does Christianity.
Firstly, I have to repeat the argument you made yourself in a different context. Humanity and Christianity (or any religion) cannot easily be teased apart. It is my belief that mankind constructs the divine to explain the hitherto inexplicable. Therefore, we create God(s) in our own image. I know I'm sounding rather Jungian here, but there you have it.
Secondly, the farmer in me (I *am* a redneck by origin) just feels that if it walks like a duck, acts like a duck and looks like a duck, it must be a duck (also a Hellenistic tic... Square, sound Aristotle-style empirical thinking, as it were). What I mean by that is this: I couldn't give a rat's ass what Jesus original message is purported to be. I couldn't care less if the founding fathers of the Church had good intentions. If the leaders of the Church made a power-whoring, money-grabbing abomination of the Faith during the subsequent centuries, a money-grabbing, power-whoring abomination it remains. It strikes me as a fundamental property, because there's infinitely more recorded behavior that proves it than disproves it.
Speaking of good intentions... The road to hell is paved with them. Looking at the collected letters of Paul, it becomes glaringly obvious that in spite of his perhaps good intentions, he can't help being a bigot, zealot and woman-hater. You yourself mentioned Paul in one of the previous answers, IIRC, and I feel his philosophy is a shining example of the exact opposite of a free, democratic and equalitarian dogma.
Then again, democratic dogma is an oxymoron, isn't it? To cut a long story short: Since I am a believer in Humanism, Science, Freedom and Democracy (I didn't mention Capitalism for good reasons), I cannot take any other stance than to say Organized Religion is Bunk, be it Scientology, Christianity, The Free Market, Communism or anything else.
If you hadn't posted as AC, I would have modded you up insightful all I could.
Silly ass research into minor cosmetic details while the bigger questions (Cancer, AIDS, Multiple Sclerosis and an End to War) seemingly aren't heading anywhere anytime soon just pisses me off and saddens me at the same time.
Hah, that name brings back memories. My 17-year old brother was serving in the army, and he gave me a Sinclair ZX-81 with 1 KB of RAM and a Basic book that had some games in it.
I still don't know what possessed me, but here I was, 7 (fall of 1982) years old, hammering away at the keyboard. I remember most vividly a very simple text based RPG/Adventure game that involved finding and slaying a vampire. By the time I had finished typing the code, the game would only cost me 15 minutes to play because having seen and understood the structure of the code, the game's course and desired outcome was already known.
It was around the same time my dad and I talked every morning over our 27 MC. He was a fork-lift mechanic that served the North, and was always on the road at the crack of dawn in his service van. He had a 27 MC in the car, and I had one in the basement that was connected to a long metal rod with an antenna on top (towered 7 metres above the roof of our house, so it reached an altitude of 7 metres... My house was 8 metres below sea level), and we would talk until he'd drive out of reach.
> only one of those four has been the basis for a society which eventually determined that "cushy, semi-civilized bodies of legislation" were required > by its own core principles
Two things... At some point in time there were so many Christians that it would have been very, very sad if none of them *had* gotten it right, but it has to be said that I attribute the "cushy, semi-civilized bodies of legislation" to progresses in humanistic, philosophic and secular thinking that influenced societies that were largely Christian from the start. This is proven by the fact that most of the nations that adopted that model guarantee freedom of religion and speech in their constitutions.
> rather strongly suggests that they are not fundamental by definition.
Ok, I grant you that one, it can indeed be said that this practice was never part of the core values of Christianity as documented in the canonical Scripture. I do feel however that one needs to split this discussion into two, rather separate, questions:
1) Is it fundamental to the faith itself? 2) Is it fundamental to the doings of the organization of the Faith, ie the Church?
Surely, the Scripture has never indicated this practice is anything but objectionable, but if the Church at large condones, stimulates or even demands it the answer to the second question turns into a yes. One of the things that prove the fundamentally money-lusting attitude of the Church is the way the Church dealt with the Franciscan order and Francis of Assisi.
The main idea of the Franciscans was that the apostles and Jesus Christ himself didn't cling to worldly possessions. In other words, they strove after adhering to a doctrine of the holiness of poverty. The Church, one of the wealthiest and most powerful organizations of the time, saw this doctrine as a liability at its very least. After many controversies since the inception of the order, the Papal court declared the doctrine of poverty a flaw and a heresy in the early fourteenth century, and during the course of the pleasantries a number of leading Franciscans got burned as Heretics by the Inquisition. While Francis of Assisi at some point was seen as an asset by the Papal court, and he was never prosecuted personally, the theory goes this had more to do with his unabated loyalty to the Pope than with his unpopular doctrine of poverty.
Many people have pushed for the extermination of many peoples, even in the Bible... The jews had a crack at the hettites, luddites and philistines, everyone had a crack at the Assyrians (who, in contrast to the jews, are nigh extinct currently), people are still having cracks at the kurds.
Martin Luther & Co aren't exactly the only ones. Ever heard of the Spanish Inquisition? They did a fair job of exterminating jews too. As did the brits with their anglican church, and many others. The fact that they are alive (and heavily kicking, but that's another discussion) today is a tribute to the resilience and character of the Jews if nothing else.
By the way, I'm not saying the Protestant/Reformist movements *are* good. They have certain viewpoints that I find more alluring than the RC Church, but in general I principally oppose to any kind of organized religion/dogma.
As far as the rest of your comment is concerned, you must have posted it because *you* *are* *not* *a* *slashdotter*. Deal with it. It was far too balanced and objective.:-D
Then why is Iraq currently being crusaded upon (can one even say that?) by the US. Why are many UN countries bringing "peace, democracy and a free market" to Afghanistan? Why did the Nazi's succeed in mounting a Crusade against the Jews, Homosexuals, Gypsies and Handicapped? Why do Hizbollah target civilian areas in Israel? Why did the US go to Vietnam? Why did the USSR invade countries like Czechoslovakia?
All of the above are just modern-day examples of the same things that drove Europeans to go and conquer Jerusalem. You seem to put a naive amount of faith in this civilization thing. Thinking Mankind is pacified is folly.
> L. Ron Hubbard spent many of his last days cruising the Mediterranean in a yacht, waited on by nubile teen girls.
Good for him. It does rather beat getting nailed to a Cross after a jolly flogging in the town square, doesn't it? That must mean that L Ron Hubbard at least was smarter than Jesus and Paul (and Peter, for that matter).
> Christianity offered the hope that truth, justice and love were inseparable.
Bollocks. God is not just a God of love. Surely, he visited Abraham in his camp and ate lamb and drank milk with his people under a palm tree, but at the same time God is known for killing whole people because they were not of the faith. Jesus is not the single defining trait of Christianity. You seem to forget that the Old Testament does play a key role in Christian thinking. God kills Sodom, Gomorrah, Job's family, his livestock. God HARDENED the pharaoh's heart when the Pharao wanted to let the Israelites go, and he did that so he could have an angel kill every single firstborn in Egypt. Not such a nice God, is it?
Another answer to your comment talks about Copernicus. I can chip in with the prosecution of Martin Luther (banned from the RC church for wanting reforms), Galileo Galilei and numerous others. Witch-burning anyone? Lovely... So much truth in that.
> But at least it was never trademarked...
So where's the relevance in that? I'd rather have to deal with a relatively harmless religion that's openly about greed which is trademarked than a religion that claims to be holier than thou while killing millions of people and oppressing the rest of 'm.
By the way, if Christianity is so much about truth and love, why do all these ministers I grew up listening to preach of Damnation, Sin, Hereditary Sin, Fire, Brim-stone and Hell? The Wrath of God and all that? Care to explain?
> Paying one's way into heaven was never a fundamental part of Christianity
Actually, since it happened with the blessing of the papal court at the time, it can be argued that it *was*. The fact that the Church later changed this practice doesn't make it less so. Furthermore, all the taxes that the Church(es) got out of the peasants and the nobility can be seen in the same light.
> Greek (and later Latin; the texts were translated accordingly) was the language everyone spoke,
That is such bloody bollocks. The uneducated masses didn't speak a bloody word of Latin or Greek. I wasn't around in Germany, France, Holland or Scandinavia between 400 and 1500 AC, but I can guarantee that that was not the case. The Germanic/Scandinavian/Frankish tribes that got Christianity rammed down their collective throats cannot be expected to have spoken Latin. They cannot be expected to have been literate either for that matter.
Translations got banned because they took power (and hence money) away from the Church and put it in the laps of the peasantry and the nobility. This power struggle is what defined Europe for the better part of 1500 years. Clergy, Peasantry and Nobility in a perpetuated struggle for Mo Money, using whatever means at their disposal. From 400 AC until today, it has been an excellent life-style choice to be a Christian leader. Much better than being a member of the Peasantry, wouldn't you say?
> anyone who was literate could still read the two languages
"Anyone who was literate" would have been the clergy, and only the clergy. The nobility was illiterate for the most part too. This becomes clear if you look at royal houses like Gustav Vasa who hired foreign advisers to read and write documents for him. And he was the bloody king of Sweden, no less. Scholastic activity was by and large the clergy's pet, and no one else's until well into the 15th century.
> eventually produce them out of necessity as more people became literate in their local tongues.
Which is why Martin Luther and Co never got any opposition from the Papal courts, right? I would argue that the translations got produced because the social climate demanded it, and not because the Church had the benign thought of providing us with the most accurate information.
> consequence of the Reformation movement led by Martin Luther et al.
Are you telling me you honestly believe the Nobility and the Peasants were not taxed by the Church before Martin Luther happened along in the 15th Century? I'm not even going to respond to this one as it is ludicrous.
> as the heads of the national churches and turned them into instruments of the State.
That might be true for the Anglican church, but it certainly isn't for the House of Orange (Holland) and the Vasas of Sweden. Which goes to show that not every head of state countered the Church's power by making it their own.
> desire to avoid this state of affairs -- an established State church -- which motivated the Establishment Clause in the US Constitution.
As can be said for the Dutch constitution when it got drafted.
> how many Christians (particularly the leadership!) could expect to be (and generally were) killed for their religion?
Indeed, they were, because they were a small band of people going up against the Roman empire and the Barbarians from the North. These challenges are not something Scientology (thank God) has to deal with. However, as soon as the Church got a sufficiently large sphere of influence, it did an admirable job of turning sinister itself. The only reason it took Christianity close to a 1000 years before it became nigh all powerful and evil is due to the fact that its initial members weren't protected by any cushy, semi-civilized bodies of legislation. Which is the advantage that we all, including Scientologists, have these days.
> the two religions (if Scientology can be called that) differ greatly in their fundamentals
Yes, but the violence in and around Rome don't. First the Romans hunted the Christians, when the Christian religion took hold after Augustus, the Christians hunted the non-Christians. Then there have been all kinds of skirmishes inside the Christian church between folks who might or might not agree to the Holy Trinity and the Divinity of Jesus Christ before that got decided by papal edict in Babylon around 380 AC.
Either which way, I don't really care how long it takes a religion to get violent, expansive and xenophobic. The thing I care about is that most of them simply do.
Yes, I can argue that. You don't seem to be too informed about the history of Christianity. Back in the day, before banks proper even got invented, it was the biggest money-laundry and extortion operation in the world. You were supposed to pay the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars to get to heaven, while no one was supposed to ever Learn about Christianity except what the clergy would tell you. The biblical texts were in Latin/Greek, and were not to be translated.
Things got a little better thanks to people like Martin Luther (not King, in this context), who pushed for mainstream access to translated Bibles, but the basic premise of mind-control or financial extortion didn't change much. One modern day example that comes to mind is Sweden. In Sweden, the State and Church only got separated in 2000, but still almost all of its citizens pay a 1.25% tax to the church automatically. And that's in a socialist country. It amazes me every time I think about it.
Scientology isn't much worse, it would just appear that it's still in the primitive, expansionist cult-state that Christianity managed to shake in most parts of the world. Way I see it, this is a part of the life-cycle of any religion or dogma.
The funny thing is that Scientology really has all the markings of a religion.
- They have funny/strange/ridiculous names for people / characters - There seems to be extreme violence and even genocide in the history of their plot-driving characters - It seems to be maniacally expansive - The more you pay, the more you get to heaven (RC Church, anyone?) - They employ sinister or creepy methods to make sure certain information doesn't see the light of day - Those who criticize it can rightfully get screwed or worse
Which is rather a feat. L. Ron Hubbard was such a crappy Sci-Fi author that I don't understand how his badly written bollocks ever made the grade for becoming a religion. A video-game of mediocre quality, perhaps. A full-fledged religion? No. Damn. I find the Holy Bible even more credible, and that's saying a lot.
Why don't the cool people like Isaac Asimov or Iain M. Banks get a religion? Hell, I'd join the Foundation or the Culture in a heartbeat.
Personally I wouldn't mind becoming a Torturer Class ROU or even a larger GSV. Being human is severely overrated. Think about it, our bodies are weak and slow. Most animals have specialized skills that make our bodies look like tubs of "I can't believe that's not butter", and our reproduction systems are grossly inefficient. It takes us 10-12 months to learn to grab or walk. It takes us 24 months to utter some kind of language, and it takes us at least 18 years to learn anything remotely "advanced".
If instead I could have infinite resources to do as I please, infinite access to all information that was ever stored and the possibility to have slaved avatars for physical interactions, mind-state backups and the retreat of a meta-reality where you can simulate any life you can care to define, who would want to be a bloody (no pun intended) human? Our current shape is inherently flawed. It limits our life-span, intellectual capabilities and freedom and it makes us dependent on a whole bunch of finite resources. This in turn makes us shorten each other's life-spans significantly.
Speaking of which, I find it sad to see that we strive to "improve" our *physical* selves for aesthetic reasons with Botox, Tattoos, Silicone tits and all of that while we should be chasing structural improvement... Fully functional and healthy babies with a faster development rate, 4-5 century life-spans, increased sensory functions, increased brain functionality, better memory functions, faster reflexes and whatnot.
Slashdot Mirror
Except for simple minded kids such as myself (and, dare I say it, 99% of /.)
I've been watching this discussion go on for some time, and as expected, there is a whole lot of Snobbery going on. You talk about your beans, your storage, home-roasting and all of that bollocks. Most of it are versions of Arabica, and most are grown in the mountains. Firstly, I grew up in the Netherlands, where Douwe Egberts is the coffee-company that sells the most. A german low-price supermarket chain had an anonymous gold-label coffee that was a lot better than the brand-name coffees out there. It just goes to show that labels and brands and bean-snobbery aren't everything.
Back in the day (and I'm still partial to it) I really enjoyed a good strong filter coffee with a dash of milk, no sugar. The machine here makes a large difference in the outcome. If you have a good one that brews under the right pressure and temperature, filter coffee can be lovely. Douwe Egbert devices are indeed superior here. When making filter coffee I like using a somewhat dark roast so you get a hint of bitterness. I always use a lot of coffee to get a strong pot, and before closing the machine, I always add few grains of salt to enhance the flavour. You'd be amazed what a little salt does in that regard. Sometimes I add cardamom for taste.
Over the years I have made coffee with all kinds of brands and roasts. Zoegas, Ily, Lavazza, Jacobs, Douwe Egberts, HAG, Löfbergs Lila, Gevalia, Lindvalls, you name 'm. I've used espresso machines, percolator, the espresso-boiler on the stove, pans and filter-machines. But still my favourite is a finely ground, darkly roasted arabica for Filter with a bit of salt in the filter. Usually the brand is secondary. The only exceptions to this are HAG and Löfbergs Lila. I fucking hate those.
But the one thing that I'm missing in all of these discussions is Arabic coffee-making. I don't mean Turkish coffee. That's for wussies. I mean properly boiled Arabic coffee.
- Put water in small pan
- Let water boil
- Add large amounts of arabic coffee (cheap ones work fine too) blended with Cardamom
- Boil until foam comes up. Stir (off the fire) until foam disappears
- Add sugar, 1-2 Spoons per cup
- Put back on stove and boil until no more foam forms on the coffee
Pour into a glass and drink it.
This has to be the one and only rival way of making coffee to filter that I fully enjoy every time. If you're ever in the Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem, drink coffee with 'm. They know what they are doing. Few Israeli Jews, amongst whom my father in law, know what they are doing because they are from North Africa or Arabic Countries.
70 year old dad. No offense.
Does that mean Lawyers would make Superior Coders and Software Developers?
Hear hear! I totally agree with what the author of the above comments is saying.
:-D
> the only way we can understand the universe is in spatiotemporal terms regardless of what the universe might actually be 'like'
With regards to that, you needn't go and read Kant (bit heavy-trodden, Kant) himself. It suffices to read Iain M Banks' Excession to get some interesting takes on this principle. It's light reading, it's sci-fi, it's a blast. I'm even pretty sure he wrote it out of his own free will too, if you allow me to cast gas on the fire for a bit.
On a more serious note, some interesting reading material is available from other sources. George Lakeoff is a linguistics scholar who wrote a smashingly interesting book on Mathematics (and therefore by extension Physics) called "Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being". In it, he sets out to prove that mathematics are a construct by our minds to create a model of the world we can live with (extremely over-simplified by me now).
Another amusingly interesting book he wrote (off-topic) is "Metaphors we live by".
Because it's funny?
> But why in Christian societies specifically
;-D
I must have phrased myself clumsily here. These advancements in thinking that lead to the legislation we currently have happened in Christian nations, but not because of Christianity. I would argue that they happened in spite of the dominant, organized religion. I was trying to say that I attribute those changes to the secular thinkers, scientists, humanists and philosophers.
You should also remember that our outlook on life is not just dominated by Christian thinking, but rather more (more than most suspect, at any rate) by Hellenistic thinking. Europe, as the name suggests (she is after all the Daughter of a God in Phoenician and Greek mythology), and European thinking are far more stuck to their Hellenistic and Pagan roots than people think. By extension (since the US is based on the same basic cultural principles) the same can be argued for the US.
Therefore I conclude that our principles of democracy and freedom have more to do with Greek thinking than Christianity. The fact that some teachings of Jesus are quite compatible with that did secure a foot-hold for Christianity in these regions.
> so any appeal to "canonical scripture" is necessarily also an appeal to the authority of the Church in that matter.
Damn. I desperately want to argue against this point, but I can't come up with the logic to do so. Well said, sir!
> The Church as a whole is the community of believers
No it isn't. The church is the institutionalization of belief. My mother is definitely Christian, but she doesn't go to churches, doesn't believe in the trinity and the divinity of Jesus. She does believe in his teachings as a prophet/messiah though. Messiah, after all, means God's anointed King and not Son of God. She is a believer, but by no means part of "the church", and I know many people like her.
> Jesus and the Apostles obviously weren't it for the money
Which was exactly what Francis of Assisi and all of his followers argued. And look what happened to them.
> The fact that many (not all) later leaders, when presented with the prospect of extreme political power and wealth, handled it badly,
> has more to say about humanity than it does Christianity.
Firstly, I have to repeat the argument you made yourself in a different context. Humanity and Christianity (or any religion) cannot easily be teased apart. It is my belief that mankind constructs the divine to explain the hitherto inexplicable. Therefore, we create God(s) in our own image. I know I'm sounding rather Jungian here, but there you have it.
Secondly, the farmer in me (I *am* a redneck by origin) just feels that if it walks like a duck, acts like a duck and looks like a duck, it must be a duck (also a Hellenistic tic... Square, sound Aristotle-style empirical thinking, as it were). What I mean by that is this: I couldn't give a rat's ass what Jesus original message is purported to be. I couldn't care less if the founding fathers of the Church had good intentions. If the leaders of the Church made a power-whoring, money-grabbing abomination of the Faith during the subsequent centuries, a money-grabbing, power-whoring abomination it remains. It strikes me as a fundamental property, because there's infinitely more recorded behavior that proves it than disproves it.
Speaking of good intentions... The road to hell is paved with them. Looking at the collected letters of Paul, it becomes glaringly obvious that in spite of his perhaps good intentions, he can't help being a bigot, zealot and woman-hater. You yourself mentioned Paul in one of the previous answers, IIRC, and I feel his philosophy is a shining example of the exact opposite of a free, democratic and equalitarian dogma.
Then again, democratic dogma is an oxymoron, isn't it? To cut a long story short: Since I am a believer in Humanism, Science, Freedom and Democracy (I didn't mention Capitalism for good reasons), I cannot take any other stance than to say Organized Religion is Bunk, be it Scientology, Christianity, The Free Market, Communism or anything else.
If you hadn't posted as AC, I would have modded you up insightful all I could.
Silly ass research into minor cosmetic details while the bigger questions (Cancer, AIDS, Multiple Sclerosis and an End to War) seemingly aren't heading anywhere anytime soon just pisses me off and saddens me at the same time.
Eastern European Women never lose hair anywhere, you insensitive clod!
> Indeed, your statement was 100% factually accurate ;-)
/.?
I'm flabbergasted, positively flabbergasted. Would that be the first and only time this ever happened on
The fact that you felt you needed to explain who or what Nicolas Sarkozy is, is just really sad.
The fact that you were probably right is just infinitely sad.
Hah, that name brings back memories. My 17-year old brother was serving in the army, and he gave me a Sinclair ZX-81 with 1 KB of RAM and a Basic book that had some games in it.
I still don't know what possessed me, but here I was, 7 (fall of 1982) years old, hammering away at the keyboard. I remember most vividly a very simple text based RPG/Adventure game that involved finding and slaying a vampire. By the time I had finished typing the code, the game would only cost me 15 minutes to play because having seen and understood the structure of the code, the game's course and desired outcome was already known.
It was around the same time my dad and I talked every morning over our 27 MC. He was a fork-lift mechanic that served the North, and was always on the road at the crack of dawn in his service van. He had a 27 MC in the car, and I had one in the basement that was connected to a long metal rod with an antenna on top (towered 7 metres above the roof of our house, so it reached an altitude of 7 metres... My house was 8 metres below sea level), and we would talk until he'd drive out of reach.
I miss those days.
I didn't know Gates had testosterone at all, you insensitive Clod!
> only one of those four has been the basis for a society which eventually determined that "cushy, semi-civilized bodies of legislation" were required
> by its own core principles
Two things... At some point in time there were so many Christians that it would have been very, very sad if none of them *had* gotten it right, but it has to be said that I attribute the "cushy, semi-civilized bodies of legislation" to progresses in humanistic, philosophic and secular thinking that influenced societies that were largely Christian from the start. This is proven by the fact that most of the nations that adopted that model guarantee freedom of religion and speech in their constitutions.
> rather strongly suggests that they are not fundamental by definition.
Ok, I grant you that one, it can indeed be said that this practice was never part of the core values of Christianity as documented in the canonical Scripture. I do feel however that one needs to split this discussion into two, rather separate, questions:
1) Is it fundamental to the faith itself?
2) Is it fundamental to the doings of the organization of the Faith, ie the Church?
Surely, the Scripture has never indicated this practice is anything but objectionable, but if the Church at large condones, stimulates or even demands it the answer to the second question turns into a yes. One of the things that prove the fundamentally money-lusting attitude of the Church is the way the Church dealt with the Franciscan order and Francis of Assisi.
The main idea of the Franciscans was that the apostles and Jesus Christ himself didn't cling to worldly possessions. In other words, they strove after adhering to a doctrine of the holiness of poverty. The Church, one of the wealthiest and most powerful organizations of the time, saw this doctrine as a liability at its very least. After many controversies since the inception of the order, the Papal court declared the doctrine of poverty a flaw and a heresy in the early fourteenth century, and during the course of the pleasantries a number of leading Franciscans got burned as Heretics by the Inquisition. While Francis of Assisi at some point was seen as an asset by the Papal court, and he was never prosecuted personally, the theory goes this had more to do with his unabated loyalty to the Pope than with his unpopular doctrine of poverty.
And you spotted it! Bastard!
Hey, in a good discussion one is allowed some freedom to maneuver, right?
Many people have pushed for the extermination of many peoples, even in the Bible... The jews had a crack at the hettites, luddites and philistines, everyone had a crack at the Assyrians (who, in contrast to the jews, are nigh extinct currently), people are still having cracks at the kurds.
Martin Luther & Co aren't exactly the only ones. Ever heard of the Spanish Inquisition? They did a fair job of exterminating jews too. As did the brits with their anglican church, and many others. The fact that they are alive (and heavily kicking, but that's another discussion) today is a tribute to the resilience and character of the Jews if nothing else.
By the way, I'm not saying the Protestant/Reformist movements *are* good. They have certain viewpoints that I find more alluring than the RC Church, but in general I principally oppose to any kind of organized religion/dogma.
> I was comparing the Church founders to the Scientology founders
Both seem to be dead, and neither of them ever seemed to have killed anyone for the sake of their religious message.
> I don't think the pre-Constantine church did much persecuting,
Ok, so you seem to absolve the Church because 20% of their existence was rather harmless?
Don't get me wrong. I'm not defending the CoS. It's just that I get sad when I see people defend the RCC or any of it's spawn.
> overlord
:-D
Damn. There's a map I've been missing in DoD2.
As far as the rest of your comment is concerned, you must have posted it because *you* *are* *not* *a* *slashdotter*. Deal with it. It was far too balanced and objective.
> Crusades? Yeah i think not.
Then why is Iraq currently being crusaded upon (can one even say that?) by the US. Why are many UN countries bringing "peace, democracy and a free market" to Afghanistan? Why did the Nazi's succeed in mounting a Crusade against the Jews, Homosexuals, Gypsies and Handicapped? Why do Hizbollah target civilian areas in Israel? Why did the US go to Vietnam? Why did the USSR invade countries like Czechoslovakia?
All of the above are just modern-day examples of the same things that drove Europeans to go and conquer Jerusalem. You seem to put a naive amount of faith in this civilization thing. Thinking Mankind is pacified is folly.
> L. Ron Hubbard spent many of his last days cruising the Mediterranean in a yacht, waited on by nubile teen girls.
Good for him. It does rather beat getting nailed to a Cross after a jolly flogging in the town square, doesn't it? That must mean that L Ron Hubbard at least was smarter than Jesus and Paul (and Peter, for that matter).
> Christianity offered the hope that truth, justice and love were inseparable.
Bollocks. God is not just a God of love. Surely, he visited Abraham in his camp and ate lamb and drank milk with his people under a palm tree, but at the same time God is known for killing whole people because they were not of the faith. Jesus is not the single defining trait of Christianity. You seem to forget that the Old Testament does play a key role in Christian thinking. God kills Sodom, Gomorrah, Job's family, his livestock. God HARDENED the pharaoh's heart when the Pharao wanted to let the Israelites go, and he did that so he could have an angel kill every single firstborn in Egypt. Not such a nice God, is it?
Another answer to your comment talks about Copernicus. I can chip in with the prosecution of Martin Luther (banned from the RC church for wanting reforms), Galileo Galilei and numerous others. Witch-burning anyone? Lovely... So much truth in that.
> But at least it was never trademarked...
So where's the relevance in that? I'd rather have to deal with a relatively harmless religion that's openly about greed which is trademarked than a religion that claims to be holier than thou while killing millions of people and oppressing the rest of 'm.
By the way, if Christianity is so much about truth and love, why do all these ministers I grew up listening to preach of Damnation, Sin, Hereditary Sin, Fire, Brim-stone and Hell? The Wrath of God and all that? Care to explain?
> Paying one's way into heaven was never a fundamental part of Christianity
Actually, since it happened with the blessing of the papal court at the time, it can be argued that it *was*. The fact that the Church later changed this practice doesn't make it less so. Furthermore, all the taxes that the Church(es) got out of the peasants and the nobility can be seen in the same light.
> Greek (and later Latin; the texts were translated accordingly) was the language everyone spoke,
That is such bloody bollocks. The uneducated masses didn't speak a bloody word of Latin or Greek. I wasn't around in Germany, France, Holland or Scandinavia between 400 and 1500 AC, but I can guarantee that that was not the case. The Germanic/Scandinavian/Frankish tribes that got Christianity rammed down their collective throats cannot be expected to have spoken Latin. They cannot be expected to have been literate either for that matter.
Translations got banned because they took power (and hence money) away from the Church and put it in the laps of the peasantry and the nobility. This power struggle is what defined Europe for the better part of 1500 years. Clergy, Peasantry and Nobility in a perpetuated struggle for Mo Money, using whatever means at their disposal. From 400 AC until today, it has been an excellent life-style choice to be a Christian leader. Much better than being a member of the Peasantry, wouldn't you say?
> anyone who was literate could still read the two languages
"Anyone who was literate" would have been the clergy, and only the clergy. The nobility was illiterate for the most part too. This becomes clear if you look at royal houses like Gustav Vasa who hired foreign advisers to read and write documents for him. And he was the bloody king of Sweden, no less. Scholastic activity was by and large the clergy's pet, and no one else's until well into the 15th century.
> eventually produce them out of necessity as more people became literate in their local tongues.
Which is why Martin Luther and Co never got any opposition from the Papal courts, right? I would argue that the translations got produced because the social climate demanded it, and not because the Church had the benign thought of providing us with the most accurate information.
> consequence of the Reformation movement led by Martin Luther et al.
Are you telling me you honestly believe the Nobility and the Peasants were not taxed by the Church before Martin Luther happened along in the 15th Century? I'm not even going to respond to this one as it is ludicrous.
> as the heads of the national churches and turned them into instruments of the State.
That might be true for the Anglican church, but it certainly isn't for the House of Orange (Holland) and the Vasas of Sweden. Which goes to show that not every head of state countered the Church's power by making it their own.
> desire to avoid this state of affairs -- an established State church -- which motivated the Establishment Clause in the US Constitution.
As can be said for the Dutch constitution when it got drafted.
> how many Christians (particularly the leadership!) could expect to be (and generally were) killed for their religion?
Indeed, they were, because they were a small band of people going up against the Roman empire and the Barbarians from the North. These challenges are not something Scientology (thank God) has to deal with. However, as soon as the Church got a sufficiently large sphere of influence, it did an admirable job of turning sinister itself. The only reason it took Christianity close to a 1000 years before it became nigh all powerful and evil is due to the fact that its initial members weren't protected by any cushy, semi-civilized bodies of legislation. Which is the advantage that we all, including Scientologists, have these days.
> the two religions (if Scientology can be called that) differ greatly in their fundamentals
Can you explain to me how the
Yes, but the violence in and around Rome don't. First the Romans hunted the Christians, when the Christian religion took hold after Augustus, the Christians hunted the non-Christians. Then there have been all kinds of skirmishes inside the Christian church between folks who might or might not agree to the Holy Trinity and the Divinity of Jesus Christ before that got decided by papal edict in Babylon around 380 AC.
Either which way, I don't really care how long it takes a religion to get violent, expansive and xenophobic. The thing I care about is that most of them simply do.
Yes, I can argue that. You don't seem to be too informed about the history of Christianity. Back in the day, before banks proper even got invented, it was the biggest money-laundry and extortion operation in the world. You were supposed to pay the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars to get to heaven, while no one was supposed to ever Learn about Christianity except what the clergy would tell you. The biblical texts were in Latin/Greek, and were not to be translated.
Things got a little better thanks to people like Martin Luther (not King, in this context), who pushed for mainstream access to translated Bibles, but the basic premise of mind-control or financial extortion didn't change much. One modern day example that comes to mind is Sweden. In Sweden, the State and Church only got separated in 2000, but still almost all of its citizens pay a 1.25% tax to the church automatically. And that's in a socialist country. It amazes me every time I think about it.
Scientology isn't much worse, it would just appear that it's still in the primitive, expansionist cult-state that Christianity managed to shake in most parts of the world. Way I see it, this is a part of the life-cycle of any religion or dogma.
The funny thing is that Scientology really has all the markings of a religion.
- They have funny/strange/ridiculous names for people / characters
- There seems to be extreme violence and even genocide in the history of their plot-driving characters
- It seems to be maniacally expansive
- The more you pay, the more you get to heaven (RC Church, anyone?)
- They employ sinister or creepy methods to make sure certain information doesn't see the light of day
- Those who criticize it can rightfully get screwed or worse
Which is rather a feat. L. Ron Hubbard was such a crappy Sci-Fi author that I don't understand how his badly written bollocks ever made the grade for becoming a religion. A video-game of mediocre quality, perhaps. A full-fledged religion? No. Damn. I find the Holy Bible even more credible, and that's saying a lot.
Why don't the cool people like Isaac Asimov or Iain M. Banks get a religion? Hell, I'd join the Foundation or the Culture in a heartbeat.
Personally I wouldn't mind becoming a Torturer Class ROU or even a larger GSV. Being human is severely overrated. Think about it, our bodies are weak and slow. Most animals have specialized skills that make our bodies look like tubs of "I can't believe that's not butter", and our reproduction systems are grossly inefficient. It takes us 10-12 months to learn to grab or walk. It takes us 24 months to utter some kind of language, and it takes us at least 18 years to learn anything remotely "advanced".
If instead I could have infinite resources to do as I please, infinite access to all information that was ever stored and the possibility to have slaved avatars for physical interactions, mind-state backups and the retreat of a meta-reality where you can simulate any life you can care to define, who would want to be a bloody (no pun intended) human? Our current shape is inherently flawed. It limits our life-span, intellectual capabilities and freedom and it makes us dependent on a whole bunch of finite resources. This in turn makes us shorten each other's life-spans significantly.
Speaking of which, I find it sad to see that we strive to "improve" our *physical* selves for aesthetic reasons with Botox, Tattoos, Silicone tits and all of that while we should be chasing structural improvement... Fully functional and healthy babies with a faster development rate, 4-5 century life-spans, increased sensory functions, increased brain functionality, better memory functions, faster reflexes and whatnot.