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.
But why in Christian societies specifically? Sheer numbers isn't a convincing answer, since we can find many of the same philosophical antecedents in e.g. medieval Islamic societies. I'd submit that Christian philosophical thought was a necessary basis.
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.
First, I don't think one can easily tease apart Scripture and the Church -- the two developed organically together; the authors (of the New Testament, at least) being Church leaders themselves, and beyond that the Church was singly responsible for establishing the canon, so any appeal to "canonical scripture" is necessarily also an appeal to the authority of the Church in that matter.
Secondly, the criteria for something being fundamental remain the same: it must be a primary principle which serves as groundwork for a system. If something is condoned at a particular time and then abandoned (e.g. the sale of indulgences, or even anything just short of that), that argues strongly against it being fundamental in nature.
That leaves us with the larger question of whether the lust for money is fundamental to the Church -- is it the groundwork for the institution? The Church as a whole is the community of believers, and its leadership the successors to the Apostles. Jesus and the Apostles obviously weren't it for the money, nor were the next few generations of successors, who, particularly during times of special persecution, had to be more concerned about simply staying alive and passing on the teachings of their predecessors. 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.
Re:Here's how it works from another perspective
on
How Image Spam Works
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· Score: 1
Intelligent people can have poor self-esteem and lack assertiveness too, you know.
Out of curiousity, what difference does being a lesbian (over just generally being a woman) add in this case?
Re:Here's how it works from another perspective
on
How Image Spam Works
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· Score: 2, Insightful
It isn't even always an IQ issue -- some people simply have problems "saying no". Imagine an intelligent person with poor sales resistance, for example.
The other problem is that offers of sex or money tend to make people stupid.
The practice of granting indulgences long predates Tetzel (and others -- he was not the only one doing that stuff); you can't take his abuses of the practice as normative. As the Wikipedia article on Indulgences notes, even the text of his "certificates" is theologically dicey. There's a brief but tolerable history of indulgences here, if you're interested. The "modern" understanding of indulgences isn't new at all.
If I were alive then I might be tempted to become a priest in order to enjoy the free meals and easier lifestyle.
You'd be out of luck if you weren't born into the tribe of Levi; on the other hand, if you were, that's pretty much all you had to live on. The Levites didn't get any inheritance in land that the other tribes did, for example. The situation was eventually abused, but the initial arrangement balanced things pretty well.
The motivation was financial for [the early Christian leaders]. When they duped their victim they not only got a financial gain but also had their believers disobey roman laws which led them to be thrown to the lions.
If we're talking lions-era, most of those generations of leaders spent their life couch surfing, hiding in catacombs, or in prison. They knew what they were doing, and they were sincere.
Actually, since it happened with the blessing of the papal court at the time, it can be argued that it *was* [fundamental]. The fact that the Church later changed this practice doesn't make it less so.
Some things are at the Pope's discretion rather than being fundamental to the faith -- whether priests can be married, for instance (it's permitted under some circumstances even now). The criteria for granting indulgences are another such case. The continuing mutability of the criteria for indulgences, as well as their non-essential nature in the practice of the faith, rather strongly suggests that they are not fundamental by definition.
Now, on a different note, I'm ashamed to say you're right about the language issue in the North. I've been reading more about the situation generally as I've been discussing it with people and what I said must sound pretty fatuous particularly when applied to the situation in Scandinavia. And, there, my bit about the church tax was simply wrong; that goes back way further than I had thought (state responsibility for the support of religious institutions goes back even to pagan times, if the Wikipedia article is to be believed).
[The necessity for local translations is] why Martin Luther and Co never got any opposition from the Papal courts, right?
Martin Luther and Co did a pretty good job of documenting their disagreements with Rome, which extended to rather important things like the content of the translations.
[Christianity's] 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....I don't see much difference between Communism, Scientology, Christianity and Islamic faith.
It shouldn't be too surprising that humans in positions of power act similarly regardless of their professed religion or ideology, but it's interesting that only one of those four (three, if we exclude Scientology due to the lack of any Scientologist states) has been the basis for a society which eventually determined that "cushy, semi-civilized bodies of legislation" were required by its own core principles.
If I need to provide evidence that the Eastern Orthodox church did bad things too in order to fully prove my point then I guess I can.
I think anyone with a decent knowledge of history knows that Christians, generally, have done quite a lot of bad things. Your point, though, is that some of those bad things are intrinsic to Christianity, isn't it? That's a point which would require more specific support.
You appear to be attempting to disregard my point arguing a technicality instead of attempting to understand it.
"Technicalities" are important because words have definite meanings. It should be clear at this point that we both regard the granting of indulgences for money as it was done in the time leading up the Reformation to be an abuse (as did Martin Luther), but we seem to differ in our understanding of what an indulgence itself is. Compare:
Indulgences were little slips of paper that the catholic church would give you after you paid money to the church and were not acts of piety. These slips of paper would forgive you in the eyes of god for sins you had committed. For every sin that you committed you would be sent into purgatory. In purgatory you would burn for a sufficient amount of time (determined by your loving God) and then sent up to heaven for your eternal salvation.
...An indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions through the action of the Church which, as the minister of redemption, dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and the saints...
To understand this doctrine and practice of the Church, it is necessary to understand that sin has a double consequence. Grave sin deprives us of communion with God and therefore makes us incapable of eternal life, the privation of which is called the "eternal punishment" of sin. On the other hand every sin, even venial, entails an unhealthy attachment to creatures, which must be purified either here on earth, or after death in the state called Purgatory. This purification frees one from what is called the "temporal punishment" of sin. These two punishments must not be conceived of as a kind of vengeance inflicted by God from without, but as following from the very nature of sin. A conversion which proceeds from a fervent charity can attain the complete purification of the sinner in such a way that no punishment would remain.
Indulgences have always been granted for specific pious acts (prayers, etc; the norms for this are presently set out in the Enchiridon of Indulgences); money could only be involved inasmuch as some pious acts could involve it (e.g. almsgiving or donating to a good cause), and inasmuch as those very specific acts (donating to a particular cause) had been approved for the grant of an indulgence (which is no longer possible as the grant of indulgences for any acts involving money was banned after the worst abuses).
It makes more sense to make money off of something that is false than to die for something that is false.
Dying for something one knows to be false is tragic, but dying honestly is far more honorable than knowingly cheating people for money.
You can chose any other religion even if it say not to believe in other gods. The reason is because Scientology does not have a god. Xenu is an alien and you could simply say god made Xenu.
Perhaps, but there are substantial disagreements between Scientology and Christianity in areas like soter
Indulgences were historically a fundamental part of Christianity (western and not eastern). Paying indulgences was a way of avoiding purgatory and going to heaven sooner after you died. It is completely correct to state that paying your way into heaven was historically a fundamental part of Christianity.
It's important to distinguish between paying for indulgences and obtaining indulgences in another fashion (i.e. performing acts of piety, as one can still do today), as what I wrote makes sense only when that distinction is made. Additionally, as they are not a characteristic of Eastern Christianity, one cannot describe them as fundamental to Christianity as a whole. Are they fundamental to Western Christianity specifically? Even that is a very difficult argument to make, as there they are considered neither sufficient nor even necessary for salvation.
[Scientology and Christianity] both had false beliefs, one group made money and another died. The conclusion is that Christianity is better?... It sounds like you providing proof for the exact opposite point that you were trying to make.
It does sound like I successfully made my point that the early Christians weren't in it for the money.
It sounds like Scientologists' leaders know that their false belief system is not worth dying over and is incredibly profitable.
...and you find this admirable?
Scientology [unlike Christianity] does not tell you that other belief systems are wrong because they are different.
Perhaps Scientology entirely rejects reason, but Christianity does not. Mutually exclusive propositions cannot simultaneously be true, and belief systems containing mutually exclusive propositions are necessarily incompatible, though one remains free to acknowledge common ground.
You could have other beliefs and to be a Scientologist you simply have to believe their crazy ideas (don't take certain drugs etc.).
Scientology's positions are a lot more comprehensive than simply avoiding certain drugs.
In that way Scientology is more tolerant and less prone to violence.
I do not think most people who have tried to leave Scientology would describe the organization as "tolerant".
You don't seem to be too informed about the history of Christianity.
Neither are you, apparently.
Paying one's way into heaven was never a fundamental part of Christianity; the closest thing that happened historically was the selling of indulgences (remission of the earthly consequences of sin), a real and grave abuse, but one which emerged late in Christian history and which was subsequently eliminated.
It's also worth pointing out that for much of Church history, Greek (and later Latin; the texts were translated accordingly) was the language everyone spoke, and even after the various Romance languages became differentiated, for a long time it was a reasonable expectation that anyone who was literate could still read the two languages (Latin, at a minimum). Later, as literacy in these local languages became more widespread, there were recurring issues with "creative" translations which did result in many local translations being banned. The Church, an organization more than a millennium old at that point, was (perhaps overly) conservative about producing new, official, translations, but did eventually produce them out of necessity as more people became literate in their local tongues.
The European church taxes which you are rightly appalled by were actually an (unintended!) consequence of the Reformation movement led by Martin Luther et al. -- unmoored from the central organization of the Church, the European monarchs were able to establish themselves as the heads of the national churches and turned them into instruments of the State. While the Church, as the only central institution left after the collapse of the Roman Empire, had become too involved in secular affairs, such a development represented a radical overcompensation which made the situation worse rather than better. Incidentally, it is a desire to avoid this state of affairs -- an established State church -- which motivated the Establishment Clause in the US Constitution.
Lastly, as the two religions (if Scientology can be called that) differ greatly in their fundamentals, I think it would be especially constructive for you examine the first few decades of Christianity and compare them with the first few decades of Scientology. For instance, how many Christians (particularly the leadership!) could expect to be (and generally were) killed for their religion? Money really was the least of their concerns...
As long as the tree is growing, isn't its net carbon intake positive? Almost all of the carbon in its makeup comes from the air, same as any other plant...
If we're just concerned with legally protecting non-human animals (especially those with the most capacity for suffering) from abuse, degradation, and mistreatment, then there are more honest and direct ways to go about that than redefining what it means to be human.
Um, I know you were being facetious, but that's not a bad idea at all, actually. A comprehensive knowledge of those fields isn't normally worth it for most things, but basic literacy in all the areas you mention is actually very helpful at times.
Fencepost error: twelve regenerations separating thirteen incarnations. He actually gets three more. Still, they will be cutting it pretty thin soon...
Maybe it's just me, but I think I'd rather see developers with more time and money to spend on things like refining gameplay, than having them blow it all on graphics.
Changing the version number to 1.0 won't make it finished, though. We have this conversation in Inkscape every so often, and the consensus has been that it's just more honest this way.
That said, we do have a set of minimum requirements for a 1.0 release, so we're not just putting it off indefinitely.
Yeah, that's fine. But Wikipedia isn't a primary source and shouldn't be treated as one, same as any paper encylopedia.
Re:Sorry, but this is nonsense.
on
Lisp and Ruby
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· Score: 1
Ow, and there I go CamelCasing "Smalltalk". Bad habit these days.
Re:Sorry, but this is nonsense.
on
Lisp and Ruby
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· Score: 1
Actually, what it means is that we're toying with the idea of implementing a Lisp dialect using the Rubinius runtime. Ruby obviously isn't Lisp, even though the first iterations of it really were just a Scheme dialect (before SmallTalk-isms took over).
As far as performance issues go, please don't conflate the interpreter with the language. The stable matz interpreter is slow, but YARV (its direct bytecode-based successor), Rubinius, and JRuby look like they'll have considerable performance advantages when they're complete (which is not too far away).
So far as pragmatic issues go, if you're thinking about Java, I'd definitely give JRuby a look too. Packages up nicely as a JAR, so you can use it anywhere you can use Java, and it's got direct access to all the Java libraries. The only pragmatic issue that won't address is if all your developers only know Java and aren't skilled enough to learn anything else without extensive retraining.
"Unredeemably dangerous" is just a small subset of "useless". I strongly suspect that a lot of entirely useless sequences will be found, a few novel and interesting ones that aren't particularly harmful and possibly even useful, and not much else.
Slashdot Mirror
It's the only thing I can think of.
But why in Christian societies specifically? Sheer numbers isn't a convincing answer, since we can find many of the same philosophical antecedents in e.g. medieval Islamic societies. I'd submit that Christian philosophical thought was a necessary basis.
First, I don't think one can easily tease apart Scripture and the Church -- the two developed organically together; the authors (of the New Testament, at least) being Church leaders themselves, and beyond that the Church was singly responsible for establishing the canon, so any appeal to "canonical scripture" is necessarily also an appeal to the authority of the Church in that matter.
Secondly, the criteria for something being fundamental remain the same: it must be a primary principle which serves as groundwork for a system. If something is condoned at a particular time and then abandoned (e.g. the sale of indulgences, or even anything just short of that), that argues strongly against it being fundamental in nature.
That leaves us with the larger question of whether the lust for money is fundamental to the Church -- is it the groundwork for the institution? The Church as a whole is the community of believers, and its leadership the successors to the Apostles. Jesus and the Apostles obviously weren't it for the money, nor were the next few generations of successors, who, particularly during times of special persecution, had to be more concerned about simply staying alive and passing on the teachings of their predecessors. 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.
Intelligent people can have poor self-esteem and lack assertiveness too, you know.
Out of curiousity, what difference does being a lesbian (over just generally being a woman) add in this case?
It isn't even always an IQ issue -- some people simply have problems "saying no". Imagine an intelligent person with poor sales resistance, for example.
The other problem is that offers of sex or money tend to make people stupid.
How did they do it?
The practice of granting indulgences long predates Tetzel (and others -- he was not the only one doing that stuff); you can't take his abuses of the practice as normative. As the Wikipedia article on Indulgences notes, even the text of his "certificates" is theologically dicey. There's a brief but tolerable history of indulgences here, if you're interested. The "modern" understanding of indulgences isn't new at all.
You'd be out of luck if you weren't born into the tribe of Levi; on the other hand, if you were, that's pretty much all you had to live on. The Levites didn't get any inheritance in land that the other tribes did, for example. The situation was eventually abused, but the initial arrangement balanced things pretty well.
If we're talking lions-era, most of those generations of leaders spent their life couch surfing, hiding in catacombs, or in prison. They knew what they were doing, and they were sincere.
Some things are at the Pope's discretion rather than being fundamental to the faith -- whether priests can be married, for instance (it's permitted under some circumstances even now). The criteria for granting indulgences are another such case. The continuing mutability of the criteria for indulgences, as well as their non-essential nature in the practice of the faith, rather strongly suggests that they are not fundamental by definition.
Now, on a different note, I'm ashamed to say you're right about the language issue in the North. I've been reading more about the situation generally as I've been discussing it with people and what I said must sound pretty fatuous particularly when applied to the situation in Scandinavia. And, there, my bit about the church tax was simply wrong; that goes back way further than I had thought (state responsibility for the support of religious institutions goes back even to pagan times, if the Wikipedia article is to be believed).
Martin Luther and Co did a pretty good job of documenting their disagreements with Rome, which extended to rather important things like the content of the translations.
It shouldn't be too surprising that humans in positions of power act similarly regardless of their professed religion or ideology, but it's interesting that only one of those four (three, if we exclude Scientology due to the lack of any Scientologist states) has been the basis for a society which eventually determined that "cushy, semi-civilized bodies of legislation" were required by its own core principles.
I think anyone with a decent knowledge of history knows that Christians, generally, have done quite a lot of bad things. Your point, though, is that some of those bad things are intrinsic to Christianity, isn't it? That's a point which would require more specific support.
"Technicalities" are important because words have definite meanings. It should be clear at this point that we both regard the granting of indulgences for money as it was done in the time leading up the Reformation to be an abuse (as did Martin Luther), but we seem to differ in our understanding of what an indulgence itself is. Compare:
...with the real definition (CCC 1471-1472):
Indulgences have always been granted for specific pious acts (prayers, etc; the norms for this are presently set out in the Enchiridon of Indulgences); money could only be involved inasmuch as some pious acts could involve it (e.g. almsgiving or donating to a good cause), and inasmuch as those very specific acts (donating to a particular cause) had been approved for the grant of an indulgence (which is no longer possible as the grant of indulgences for any acts involving money was banned after the worst abuses).
Dying for something one knows to be false is tragic, but dying honestly is far more honorable than knowingly cheating people for money.
Perhaps, but there are substantial disagreements between Scientology and Christianity in areas like soter
It's important to distinguish between paying for indulgences and obtaining indulgences in another fashion (i.e. performing acts of piety, as one can still do today), as what I wrote makes sense only when that distinction is made. Additionally, as they are not a characteristic of Eastern Christianity, one cannot describe them as fundamental to Christianity as a whole. Are they fundamental to Western Christianity specifically? Even that is a very difficult argument to make, as there they are considered neither sufficient nor even necessary for salvation.
It does sound like I successfully made my point that the early Christians weren't in it for the money.
...and you find this admirable?
Perhaps Scientology entirely rejects reason, but Christianity does not. Mutually exclusive propositions cannot simultaneously be true, and belief systems containing mutually exclusive propositions are necessarily incompatible, though one remains free to acknowledge common ground.
Scientology's positions are a lot more comprehensive than simply avoiding certain drugs.
I do not think most people who have tried to leave Scientology would describe the organization as "tolerant".
You do realize that the Crusades are separated from the beginning of Christianity by more than 1000 years, right?
Neither are you, apparently.
Paying one's way into heaven was never a fundamental part of Christianity; the closest thing that happened historically was the selling of indulgences (remission of the earthly consequences of sin), a real and grave abuse, but one which emerged late in Christian history and which was subsequently eliminated.
It's also worth pointing out that for much of Church history, Greek (and later Latin; the texts were translated accordingly) was the language everyone spoke, and even after the various Romance languages became differentiated, for a long time it was a reasonable expectation that anyone who was literate could still read the two languages (Latin, at a minimum). Later, as literacy in these local languages became more widespread, there were recurring issues with "creative" translations which did result in many local translations being banned. The Church, an organization more than a millennium old at that point, was (perhaps overly) conservative about producing new, official, translations, but did eventually produce them out of necessity as more people became literate in their local tongues.
The European church taxes which you are rightly appalled by were actually an (unintended!) consequence of the Reformation movement led by Martin Luther et al. -- unmoored from the central organization of the Church, the European monarchs were able to establish themselves as the heads of the national churches and turned them into instruments of the State. While the Church, as the only central institution left after the collapse of the Roman Empire, had become too involved in secular affairs, such a development represented a radical overcompensation which made the situation worse rather than better. Incidentally, it is a desire to avoid this state of affairs -- an established State church -- which motivated the Establishment Clause in the US Constitution.
Lastly, as the two religions (if Scientology can be called that) differ greatly in their fundamentals, I think it would be especially constructive for you examine the first few decades of Christianity and compare them with the first few decades of Scientology. For instance, how many Christians (particularly the leadership!) could expect to be (and generally were) killed for their religion? Money really was the least of their concerns...
As long as the tree is growing, isn't its net carbon intake positive? Almost all of the carbon in its makeup comes from the air, same as any other plant...
If we're just concerned with legally protecting non-human animals (especially those with the most capacity for suffering) from abuse, degradation, and mistreatment, then there are more honest and direct ways to go about that than redefining what it means to be human.
Being biologically human isn't a good definition?
Well-put; thank you.
Wait, so you mean it's possible under PPC?
Um, I know you were being facetious, but that's not a bad idea at all, actually. A comprehensive knowledge of those fields isn't normally worth it for most things, but basic literacy in all the areas you mention is actually very helpful at times.
Fencepost error: twelve regenerations separating thirteen incarnations. He actually gets three more. Still, they will be cutting it pretty thin soon...
Maybe it's just me, but I think I'd rather see developers with more time and money to spend on things like refining gameplay, than having them blow it all on graphics.
Changing the version number to 1.0 won't make it finished, though. We have this conversation in Inkscape every so often, and the consensus has been that it's just more honest this way.
That said, we do have a set of minimum requirements for a 1.0 release, so we're not just putting it off indefinitely.
Yeah, that's fine. But Wikipedia isn't a primary source and shouldn't be treated as one, same as any paper encylopedia.
Ow, and there I go CamelCasing "Smalltalk". Bad habit these days.
Actually, what it means is that we're toying with the idea of implementing a Lisp dialect using the Rubinius runtime. Ruby obviously isn't Lisp, even though the first iterations of it really were just a Scheme dialect (before SmallTalk-isms took over).
As far as performance issues go, please don't conflate the interpreter with the language. The stable matz interpreter is slow, but YARV (its direct bytecode-based successor), Rubinius, and JRuby look like they'll have considerable performance advantages when they're complete (which is not too far away).
So far as pragmatic issues go, if you're thinking about Java, I'd definitely give JRuby a look too. Packages up nicely as a JAR, so you can use it anywhere you can use Java, and it's got direct access to all the Java libraries. The only pragmatic issue that won't address is if all your developers only know Java and aren't skilled enough to learn anything else without extensive retraining.
"Unredeemably dangerous" is just a small subset of "useless". I strongly suspect that a lot of entirely useless sequences will be found, a few novel and interesting ones that aren't particularly harmful and possibly even useful, and not much else.