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 Post subject: Re:
PostPosted: Mon Dec 14, 2009 11:21 pm 
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Corolinth wrote:
One wonders where we might be today had Galileo not been tried for heresy.


Interesting question. It is hard to say for sure, but likely we wouldn't be speaking English. It wasn't successful at stiffling much, just shifting it geographically. It isn't an accident that after that time there was an explosion of scientific advancement in Protestant Europe.

And Tayla, That wasn't an "Oath of allegience". It was a an "obey the laws of the land" clause. Whats more, it says "constitutional government" which Hitler did away with anyway, so it didn't even apply to Nazi Germany.


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PostPosted: Mon Dec 14, 2009 11:55 pm 
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Corolinth wrote:

Whenever the scholars ran up against something that interfered with church dogma, the church would historically ban its study. Again, the Catholic church has demonstrated the capacity to learn from this mistake, but in order to learn from a mistake you first have to make said mistake. Unfortunately, they haven't learned that lesson well enough to refrain from trying to interfere with scientific advancement, as evidenced by a previous pope (either John Paul I or II, most likely I) attempting to tell Stephen Hawking that he was not allowed to research what happened during the Big Bang. Today's scientists just don't run the risk of being tortured to death if they ignore the church's decree not to study something.


And yet, in some ways, they have *not* learned from their mistakes. The Pope recently claimed that condoms cannot prevent the spread of HIV. How utterly irresponsible, stupid, and intentionally ignorant was that? And yet, there they go again, putting dogma before reality at the price of other people's well being.

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PostPosted: Tue Dec 15, 2009 1:52 am 
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Monte wrote:
And yet, in some ways, they have *not* learned from their mistakes. The Pope recently claimed that condoms cannot prevent the spread of HIV. How utterly irresponsible, stupid, and intentionally ignorant was that? And yet, there they go again, putting dogma before reality at the price of other people's well being.


Then it is your position that condoms never fail, ever? The Pope was right (taking your word for it that he said it). Yes, they help prevent the spread of HIV. They do not prevent it totally, because they fail sometimes. Not acknowledging that is worse than what the Pope said, because it creates a false sense of security.


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 Post subject: Re: Re:
PostPosted: Tue Dec 15, 2009 8:33 am 
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Talya wrote:
Of course not. And Christ never refered to his followers as a single flock or other grouplike entity.


And somehow that eference to those people at that particular point in time means that Christianity is automatically a single entity in its earthly form forever? I should point out that John the Baptist had his own disciples who arguably might also be considered a separate group of the early church.

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Yes, they did. The other stuff is just your continuing apologism for the blatant.


No, they didn't. There is one major set of incidents where the RC church really had a definite hand in actually making things happen, and that's the Crusades, and even there on at least one incident they condemned and excommunicated the crusaders.

Callign it "apologism" is bullshit. "Apologism" is just a loaded language way of saying "introducing facts that make the issue other than what I'm claiming it is."

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Both were still supported by the church, 100%. Hells, the church had the steddingers excommunicated first, over a tax issue, to pave the way for that crusade. All of those crusades by your own links were still church actions.


No, they weren't. Evidently you didn't read my links that you already claimed I didn't provide. The actions in Occitania were by the King of France (for the 3rd time), not the church, you didn't even bother to cite what action you were talking about in most of the other things you cited, the actions in Portugal and Spain were a response to msulim conquest of those areas in the first place, and as for the Stedingers, the fact that they were church actins does not make them a crusade or evil or anything else. The bishop took the same action, including excommunicationt hat would have happened to any group of rebellious serfs. It was perfectly within the law and norms of the time, and calling it a "crusade" is just you imposing our own moral viewpoints on it.

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Same thing. You're grasping at straws, now. Germany was the same germany, hitler was the same hitler, and their policies were the same policies. That concordat established full support for Hitler. The fact that Hitler planned to betray his friendly allies has no bearing on their support for him.


Ahh, the old grasping at straws line. No, that would be you grasping, just trying to handwave away inconvenient facts.

Their policies were the same policies, and Germany was the same only in the sense of covering the same land and having the same population. The policies of the Weimar Republic were not the same as those of Hitler at all.

The Concordat established no support for Hitler at all. You're just claiming it says something it most clearly does not. It established the legal rights of the church in Germany, regardless of who was in power, hence its validity today.

Sorry, but just claiming "same thing" and "grasping at straws" doesn't change the fact that you're proven wrong by your own link.

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Did you read those? While those were just some of the concordat's articles, it seems very plain even based on those, that in exchange for Hitler leaving the church in germany alone, the clergy in germany would give fealty to the state, regardless of that state's demands (except as limited by the terms of the Concordat.)


No, it doesn't seem plain at all. The concordat is not between the church and Hitler. It's between the Church and Germany, and the fact of the matter is that the Church had no particular obligation to act as a watchdog on German politics. The chruch is not "giving fealty to the state", it's agreeing to support the German Constitution (something Hitler essentially disposed of as soon Hindenburg was gone; he cleverly avoided taking the office of PResident and thereby swearing the oath to the Constitution). The church had neither the right, the ability, nor the obligation to ensure that German politicians were of the correct or acceptable sort.

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Indeed, I fully believe that the prime minister before Churchhill (Neville Chamberlain) would have had England fighting at Germany's side. He ranks right up there with Pius XII for me. Had Churchill been in power four years earlier, Germany might never have started down the road it had begun.


Who exactly would Chamberlain have had Germany fighting alongside against? Chamberlain wanted to avoid war at all costs; he certainly was not going to help Hitler invade the Soviet Union.

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Having your clergy swear fealty to an earthly power at all (let alone Hitler!) strikes you as nothing? Their vows of fealty meant nothing? Were they just following those vows when the majority of them gave encouraging blessings to go out and be patriotic and serve your god and country to young german men conscripted into that army?


No vows of fealty were present. Fealty is a mideval term, and is just loaded language by you in any case. It's an agreement between two people, and the oath the Bishops swore was to the German Constitution; a country of which they were already citizines. There is nothing theologicallly objectionable about clergy being loyal citizens of their home countries.

There's also nothing wrong with clergy blessing patriotic endeavors, conscripted or otherwise. The nature of those endeavors might be called into question in this case, but that would be attempting to handwave away the fact that Hitler, despite the claims that "everyone knew what he was going to do" was actually pretty subtle and didn't just start doing whatever he wanted overnight. He was in power 6 years before invading Poland, 5 before the Anschluss with Austria, and that gave him plenty of time to build his machine up subtly. Hitler was one of many politicians up until he became Furher. There's no reason the Chruch should have beein digging through his particular obscure writings and thinking "Gee, this guy is planning to wipe out the Jews!" He had one hairbrained plan to ship them to Madagascar, maybe you thinkt hat should have clued them in?

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I just can't see that as anything other than 100% complicity in what happened.


Of course you can't.

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And I do what I can to avoid paying as much tax as I can, either through legal or undetectable means. (open "civil disobedience" is a joke. Getting caught doesn't help one disobey the law. I'm not trying to prove a point, I'm just doing my thing.)


And the fact remains that, if caught, you'll pay the price, and none of your dislike of authority will help you one bit. You're doing a great job of pointing out the physical limitations on the ability of the government to enforce the law, but that's not much of an argument against authority in and of itself, just a practical limitation.

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Set forth in the contract I chose to sign. This is not authority, this is simply an honoring of a contract until such time either of us sees fit to terminate it.


Yes, it is. You agreed in that contract to give the employer authority over things like your work schedule. Authority comes in many forms; the fact that your employer didn't drag you to the office in chains doesn't mean they have none.

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Germany did not undergo some major transformation to become Nazi Germany. It was the same country, with the same racist and anti-semetic values openly espoused by its chancellor.


If, in fact, Germany did have the same anti-semitic values in general as its chancellor (not an unreasonable position) then where do you get the idea that the Church was going to be able to change people's minds on that issue? Especially when those priests that spoke out against it would be arrested or intimidated into silence? It isn't like Hitler was going to give anyone the opportunity to do that; if some priests had started speaking out about his planned massacre back in 1933 or 1934 he'd simply have said "What? I'm doing nothing of the sort! You're just lying about what I wrote and said, and getting involved in politics, which you're not allowed to do!" Then he'd mark those priests and down the road when the Gestapo was in full swing, they'd disappear, along with any others that weren't circumspect.

As for it being the "same country", as pointed out, that's only true of its physical properties. The Weimar Republic is no more the same Germany as Nazi Germany than Iraq is ancient Babylon.

Weimar Republic

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Although the constitution of 1919 was never officially repealed, the legal measures taken by the Nazi government in February and March 1933, commonly known as Gleichschaltung ("coordination") meant that the government could legislate contrary to the constitution. The constitution became irrelevant, therefore 1933 is usually seen as the end of the Weimar Republic and the beginning of Hitler's "Third Reich".


In fact, Hitler had just lost the 1932 election to become President to Hindenburg. That event, quite frankly, absolves the Chruch, France, Britain, and anyone else of any charge in negotiating with Hitler. The evidence at the time would have indicated he was stuck as second fiddle and that his popularity was not great enough to make him President. No one can be faulted for not anticipating his circumvention of the Constitution; he'd already tried violent revolution, failed, and evidently renounced extralegal means of taking over and been rehabilitated. The Nazis, althoughh the largest party in the Reichstag after the July 1932 elections, only held 37.2% of the seats, and Hitler refused ministry under von Papen, because he wanted Chancellorship if he couldn't be President.

In fact, all this resulted in new elections yet again and the Nazis lost seats, down to 33.1%. Hitler gained Chancellorship only as part of a coalition with von Papen and the Natinalists, and his party had only 3 of 11 cabinet seats. Hitler was able to gain his powers through the passage of the Enabling Act which rendered the Constitution irrelevant since the Cabinet could do anything it pleased.

While the Center party's support was needed to pass the Act, and that party was heavily Catholic, the bottom line is that in passing it, Hitler also agreed to respect the rights of Catholics and the Church in Germany, and respect previous Concordats with Bavaria, Prussia, and Baden. There was no reason to think Hitler was anything more than just another politician in an unstable government that held elections every few months and that after his moments of prominence he'd be unable to hold his coalition together and someone else would come along, especially since part of the agreement to suppor the act involved a guarnatee that the Constitution would not be changed.

This is also following the Reichstag fire, which had allowed Hindenburg to declare a state of emergency and rule by decree.

In other words, there is nothing about Hitler or German politics in general that should have had the church howling and screaming from the very beginning. The Pope, quite frnkly, has an entire world's worth of Catholics to worry about, and the internal politics of just one nation are really not something he would be spending excessive time monitoring. By the time Hitler really attracted attention, he was fully incontrol of German society, and only external military force could alter anything. Stalin, in fact, pointed out rhetorically" "How many divisions does the pope command?" after being cautioned himself against angering the Church. The only thing the Chruch did was secure some protections for its own flock; protections that turned out to be flimsy at best.

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Last edited by Diamondeye on Tue Dec 15, 2009 9:02 am, edited 1 time in total.

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 Post subject: Re:
PostPosted: Tue Dec 15, 2009 8:42 am 
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Corolinth wrote:
If we equate your hatred of an organization to hatred of the individuals within it, then we can brand you as a bigot and not have to think to hard about what sort of questionable activities that organization has undertaken to earn your ire, and as a result we do not have to attempt to reconcile this with our own moral compass.


And this is the crux of diamondeye's non-argument/fact distortions.

It's become apparent to me that no matter how many times i prove you wrong, DE, you'll keep rehashing the same inaccuracies you've already gone through. You need the last word and will argue a losing position until you are out of oxygen. Everything I've stated is plain and obvious to an objective viewer. TUrn off your bias and blinders and look again, or there is no point to this discussion.

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PostPosted: Tue Dec 15, 2009 8:53 am 
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Corolinth wrote:
There is also an incredible amount of knowledge that was lost during the Dark Ages because of the church.


No, there really wasn't. The Church preserved knowledge as best it could; it did not destroy any excpet possibly through negligence. Who else was doing any preservation?

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To their credit, the Catholic church has demonstrated the capacity to learn from their mistakes. Still, the church did stifle scientific advancement. That is an indisputable fact, and their role as the sole educational facility in large parts of the world does not change that. In fact, having a near monopoly on education within Europe is what allowed them to stifle progress in the first place. One wonders where we might be today had Galileo not been tried for heresy.


It is anything but indisputable fact that the Church stifled scientific advancement. Galileo was tried for heresy because he began making pronouncements on theological matters, not because of his scientific ideas. His ideas, furthermore, had serious problems such as the tidal predictions that accounted for only half the tides each day. Part of what had aroused the ire of the Chruch was his insistence in his book on the Two Chief World Systems on giving the Copernican view better tretment despite the fact that the book was supposed to be a balanced view of the two.

The other part was the fact that he'd made theological and scientific pronouncements in a polemic known as The Assayer in which he ridiculed a Jesuit for regarding comets aas physical objects (which they are) rather than a play of light as Galileo believed. It was a book in which he made a fool of himself arguing for mathematical physics against someone who was doing mathematical physics, and being wrong in the process.

The fact of the matter is that we wouldn't be in all that different a position today, since resolving the issue was merely a matter of A) making better telescopes, which met no Church objection and B) showing the Church a better version of the theory than Galileo had, which they would be willing to accept. There's also the little matter that it was already 1632 by this time and there were plenty of places where work could be done without fear of the Inquisition.

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Whenever the scholars ran up against something that interfered with church dogma, the church would historically ban its study. Again, the Catholic church has demonstrated the capacity to learn from this mistake, but in order to learn from a mistake you first have to make said mistake. Unfortunately, they haven't learned that lesson well enough to refrain from trying to interfere with scientific advancement, as evidenced by a previous pope (either John Paul I or II, most likely I) attempting to tell Stephen Hawking that he was not allowed to research what happened during the Big Bang. Today's scientists just don't run the risk of being tortured to death if they ignore the church's decree not to study something.


Again, this is not exactly true. The Galileo affair went on for 22 years, and the chief of the Inquisition had said frankly, that if concrete proof could be shown that Galileo and Copernicus were right and Ptolmey wrong, the Chruch would have to approach certain verses very carefully, with the revelation that it had misunderstood them.

It certainly did not outright ban scientific research the moment its doctrine was questioned; this happened only after the questioner had gone far outside his areas of expertise and into theological matters, had made several obvious and major mistakes in forming his ideas, and had published a book antagonizing a pop that was actually sympathetic to him.

The unwillingness of so many people to look at the details of matters like Galileo and try to pick and choose facts from the matter to use as a beatstick against the RC church or Christianity in general is astounding. One wonders what is so objectionable about treating the matter as it actually happened.

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PostPosted: Tue Dec 15, 2009 9:01 am 
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Talya wrote:
Corolinth wrote:
If we equate your hatred of an organization to hatred of the individuals within it, then we can brand you as a bigot and not have to think to hard about what sort of questionable activities that organization has undertaken to earn your ire, and as a result we do not have to attempt to reconcile this with our own moral compass.


And this is the crux of diamondeye's non-argument/fact distortions.

It's become apparent to me that no matter how many times i prove you wrong, DE, you'll keep rehashing the same inaccuracies you've already gone through. You need the last word and will argue a losing position until you are out of oxygen. Everything I've stated is plain and obvious to an objective viewer. TUrn off your bias and blinders and look again, or there is no point to this discussion.


No, there's no point to this discussion. I haven't been the one to refer to anyone as a bigot; you're just making that up. IT's also quite telling that you talk about me "needing the last word" when you've just made a post with no substantive argument, just ranting for no apparent purpoise other than to get the last word

It's just you saying "Well I'm right cause I say so!" It's just a childish proclaimation of victory because you have no facts on your side, you're in a loosing position, need the last word yourself, and are simply proclaiming your own opinions as "obvious and objective". The fact distortions are yours; I am not the one needing to select a few facts and then claim introducing any other is "Waaaa!! just apologetics!"

Turn off your bias and take off your blinders and look again.

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PostPosted: Tue Dec 15, 2009 10:07 am 
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Diamondeye wrote:

No, there really wasn't. The Church preserved knowledge as best it could; it did not destroy any excpet possibly through negligence. Who else was doing any preservation?


No, the church destroyed far more knowledge than it preserved. Anything that threatened it's dogma was wiped out. And not just science..."Holy Writings" that contradicted church dogma were excluded from bible canon (even if they seemed written by disciples of Jesus, such as Thomas or Mary Magdelene) and hunted down and wiped out. Cultural traditions and religions that were supplanted (usually by violence) with church doctrines were eradicated, to the point where we no longer have a lot of detail on many pre-christian cultures. The church wanted to ensure their satanic religions were never heard from again. But it's science where we were slowed down the most...the others were of historical interest, but nothing more. You even paint Galileo Galilei, as if he somehow did something wrong by proving that the earth revolved around the sun. Then you claim you have no bias.

The church has done nothing beneficial for human society. They are ultimately nothing but parasites.

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It is anything but indisputable fact that the Church stifled scientific advancement. Galileo was tried for heresy because he began making pronouncements on theological matters, not because of his scientific ideas.


No, Galileo was tried for heresy because he stated the Earth revolved around the Sun. Now, to be fair, the church had decided that that was a theological matter, stating a source of Psalm 104:5 ("The Earth...can never be moved.") The church was also wrong. The pope, while allowing him to write both sides of the issue, insisted Galileo not advocate Heliocentrism. That's like asking a scientist to present a balanced argument between a flat earth and a spherical one. Facts are facts, and Galileo had already definitively proven that the Earth revolves around the sun. Much like creationists demanding science not to advocate evolution, the church was stifling advancement.

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The fact of the matter is that we wouldn't be in all that different a position today, since resolving the issue was merely a matter of A) making better telescopes, which met no Church objection and B) showing the Church a better version of the theory than Galileo had, which they would be willing to accept. There's also the little matter that it was already 1632 by this time and there were plenty of places where work could be done without fear of the Inquisition.


You're honestly saying that Galileo is at fault because he hadn't created a complete model yet? Because he didn't take his heresy far enough, he was at fault? If the church disliked the Sun being at the center of the universe rather than the earth, can you imagine how much they'd have disliked the actual truth that while the earth revolves around the Sun, the sun is actually just one of hundreds of billions of stars orbiting in the galaxy, and the galaxy is just one of hundreds of billions moving out from a central point...no, I don't think that would have improved his situation. (All this despite the existing models of an earth at the center of the universe not working either.) Your capacity to make excuses for church actions is nothing short of amazing.

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It's just you saying "Well I'm right cause I say so!" It's just a childish proclaimation of victory because you have no facts on your side, you're in a loosing position, need the last word yourself, and are simply proclaiming your own opinions as "obvious and objective". The fact distortions are yours; I am not the one needing to select a few facts and then claim introducing any other is "Waaaa!! just apologetics!"


No, I've proven my point, over and over again. Every time I do you backtrack and take a new revisionist position. You can't support your arguments with a single fact, yet I present only fact which you just brush aside, claiming your position is proven and everybody who disagrees with you is wrong.

Reminds me of someone else, actually.

Let me give you one last example

Diamondeye wrote:
No, they weren't. Evidently you didn't read my links that you already claimed I didn't provide. The actions in Occitania were by the King of France (for the 3rd time), not the church, you didn't even bother to cite what action you were talking about in most of the other things you cited, the actions in Portugal and Spain were a response to msulim conquest of those areas in the first place, and as for the Stedingers, the fact that they were church actins does not make them a crusade or evil or anything else. The bishop took the same action, including excommunicationt hat would have happened to any group of rebellious serfs. It was perfectly within the law and norms of the time, and calling it a "crusade" is just you imposing our own moral viewpoints on it.


First of all, they are historically called crusades. Those aren't my words. Secondly, the fact that the King of France organized it doesn't matter since he did so with the blessing and support of the church in France. I did not deny that the actions in portugal and spain were against muslims. I listed actions against muslims as well as christians. Just because it was against muslims, doesn't make it acceptable, nor does the argument "Well, they conquered that area first, decades to centuries earlier. We're in the right!" (But mommy, she hit me first! Tu quoque.) Excommunicating rebellioius serfs was normal for the time excuses it? THAT MAKES IT WORSE. And it was called a crusade, both by history and by the perpetrators, with the full blessing of the church. And we weren't talking about the crusades specifically, but rather Xequecal's comment about the tendency of the medieval church to encourage war on the known world, wherever it could expand its power, and the general bloodguilt of the church.

I suppose you would try to justify the Inquisition, if brought up, too.

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I'm just skimming this thread, but I feel the need to point out that unity is not the same thing as uniformity.

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PostPosted: Tue Dec 15, 2009 11:03 am 
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Talya wrote:

Wrong. I'd say "millions"...


Hearing all of this come from someone who has espoused the philosophy of "might makes right" repeatedly is, frankly, laughable.

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PostPosted: Tue Dec 15, 2009 11:15 am 
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Vindicarre wrote:
Hearing all of this come from someone who has espoused the philosophy of "might makes right" repeatedly is, frankly, laughable.


I never stated "Might makes right" as a moral axion, I stated it as a realism. Since humans invent the concepts of morality --of right and wrong-- and the strongest (be it through political, social, or military power) get to define the morality for the populace at large by enshrining it in law or religion or whatever, in a very literal way "Might makes right." This is not a statement that in my view the strong can do no wrong. I have my own moral views, but my views are not necessarily the prevailing ones of society at large. There was a time when Slavery was "right," when killing the infidel was considered a good thing. (Still is, for some people.) Everyone has their own morality. But the only ones that make any difference real difference are the moralities of those who hold power of some kind. I suppose if you want your opinions to count, start a club/society/cult, gain political power, or write a best-selling novel espousing it. Just because Hitler had the power to do what he did doesn't make me approve of him, but in every way that mattered, he was "right" -- right up until the point where he started to lose the war and we with the power to do so declared him wrong. I'm grateful he didn't win, but if he did, it's very possible our prevailing morality would be very different today.

By more Machiavellian standards, the Church has done most things very "right." It has held onto its power structure longer than any human organization ever created, although it has waned in the latter part of the last century and beyond. However, Niccolò Machiavelli didn't write the prevailing morality of our society today (nor did he even agree himself with The Prince), and certainly didn't write anything resembling my morality.

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PostPosted: Tue Dec 15, 2009 11:22 am 
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Talya wrote:
And this is the crux of diamondeye's non-argument/fact distortions.

It's become apparent to me that no matter how many times i prove you wrong, DE, you'll keep rehashing the same inaccuracies you've already gone through. You need the last word and will argue a losing position until you are out of oxygen. Everything I've stated is plain and obvious to an objective viewer. TUrn off your bias and blinders and look again, or there is no point to this discussion.


:shock:

The irony is astounding.


It's become apparent to me that no matter how many times DE proves you wrong, Talya, you'll keep rehashing the same inaccuracies you've already gone through. You need the last word and will argue a losing position until you are out of oxygen. Everything DE has stated is plain and obvious to an objective viewer. TUrn off your bias and blinders and look again, or there is no point to this discussion.


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PostPosted: Tue Dec 15, 2009 11:25 am 
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Aegnor wrote:
It's become apparent to me that no matter how many times DE proves you wrong, Talya, you'll keep rehashing the same inaccuracies you've already gone through. You need the last word and will argue a losing position until you are out of oxygen. Everything DE has stated is plain and obvious to an objective viewer. TUrn off your bias and blinders and look again, or there is no point to this discussion.


Oh, look, fun. You can parrot my post back to me with the name changed. Your talented! Except I posted facts and links and logic, while Diamondeye just posted his unsupported revisionist history and weak justifications, his only links further supporting my argument. I'm not seeing the irony.

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PostPosted: Tue Dec 15, 2009 11:32 am 
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DE effectively destroyed your arguments. And your responses have essentially amounted to "Nuh uh!".


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Aegnor wrote:
DE effectively destroyed your arguments. And your responses have essentially amounted to "Nuh uh!".



Heh. Funny, you have that backwards. Of course, you're also (ineffectively) trying to argue with Corolinth about the church's role in stifling science and progress, too. I think you have the same inability to look critically at the church that DE does. He attempted to justify the crusades, the violent spread of the faith...and you agree with that?

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Taly you got pwned. And you've always stated that your moral position is reality - several times you've stated that might makes right is what you go by. Now you just don't like what someone else's might did. This is exactly why might makes right is a poor moral framework - because it isn't moral at all it is amoral. It seems the thing you fear most is having a moral framework at all.

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PostPosted: Tue Dec 15, 2009 12:16 pm 
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Elmarnieh wrote:
Taly you got pwned. And you've always stated that your moral position is reality - several times you've stated that might makes right is what you go by. Now you just don't like what someone else's might did. This is exactly why might makes right is a poor moral framework - because it isn't moral at all it is amoral. It seems the thing you fear most is having a moral framework at all.

This is a direct misrepresentation of everything I've said in this regard (and is tangental to the rest of the discussion, anyway.) I have repeatedly said I have my own morality, as does everyone else, apart from whatever the prevailing morality that "Might" has made "Right." I've also said our individual morals really don't make any difference. This thread is actually a rather good illustration of that point. My disgust with the church (which is based on Church actions compared to our current prevailing morality) hasn't caused them to be disbanded or lose their membership. The church has the "might" to even convince its followers that black is white and light is dark (see this thread), since its actions cannot be justified even by its own stated morality, they instead change history so those actions seem more acceptable. The church, after all, can do no wrong.

You want to imply that not believing in the existence of objective morality implies one has no morality at all. That's not the case. It just means one recognizes that not everyone has the same morals, and there is no definitive morality through which to judge the others by. However, through "might," one can certainly force people to accept one's own morality as that "objective" standard. For a while, anyway.

Anyway, you've gotta be pretty desperate to keep bringing unrelated tangental discussions into this one in an attempt to sidetrack the main point. DE did the same by arguing over whether the church actions various crusades should really be considered crusades, despite the church supporting them and them historically being called crusades. It's obfuscation over semantics, nothing more.

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Whose desperate - I think that was my first post in this thread so I've got no stake to be desperate about. I'm just pointing out you're conflicting with multiple statements you've made regarding your own morality over the years.

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PostPosted: Tue Dec 15, 2009 12:29 pm 
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Talya wrote:
No, the church destroyed far more knowledge than it preserved. Anything that threatened it's dogma was wiped out.


This is, quite frankly, sheer nonsense since the vast majority of the knowledge available had nothing to do with church dogma at all, and even when it did, the church typically didn't destroy it, although they sometimes hid it. They usually couldn't destroy it; there was no way to know where copies might be with no modern libraries or communications.

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And not just science..."Holy Writings" that contradicted church dogma were excluded from bible canon (even if they seemed written by disciples of Jesus, such as Thomas or Mary Magdelene) and hunted down and wiped out.


No, they weren't hunted down and wiped out, which is why they were known today, and as for those Gospels, just because they had those names attached did not mean they belonged in canon or were written by the names attached. In any case, it's hardly a valid cricticism of the Church to decide which writings were canonical and which were not. Jesus gave no guidance on the subject, but He did give authority to decide such things to the Church.

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Cultural traditions and religions that were supplanted (usually by violence) with church doctrines were eradicated, to the point where we no longer have a lot of detail on many pre-christian cultures.


Ok, we no longer have a lot of detail. That's got a lot to do with the sheer amount of time, not to mention this nasty entity that was pretty damn aggressive towards other cultures around the same time - it was called the Roman Empire, and it wasn't Christian at all until late in its life cycle.

You're just making vague allusions to the fact that Christian doctrine supplanted paganism in a lot of places and implying that this was done by extensive violence when in fact the violence was generally just the usual wars and some of the participants happened to be Christian.

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The church wanted to ensure their satanic religions were never heard from again.


What the church wanted isn't relevant; there's nothing wrong with wanting opposing ideas to be discarded and yours adopted. I'd be perfectly happy if no one ever heard from communists again.

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But it's science where we were slowed down the most...the others were of historical interest, but nothing more. You even paint Galileo Galilei, as if he somehow did something wrong by proving that the earth revolved around the sun. Then you claim you have no bias.


Wow, you really can strawman can't you? I said no such thing. First of all, Galileo didn't prove it; although he came very close. However, a theory that includes such major discrepancies as not accounting for easily observed tidal behavior is definitely not proof. Proof happened just a little bit later when other people made needed corrections.

What I did say Galileo was wrong about were comets (which he was) and that he intruded himself onto theological matters, and that he was an ******* about it, and brought a lot of his problems on himself.

This didn't appreciably slow down science, nor did anything else the church did since all the science in this areas was dependant on telescopes being invented and I don't think you'll be able to find any church objection to optics as a science.

In other words, while the Church was certainly not fair or well-advised to do what it did to Galileo, the fact remains that the matter was anything but suppression of science for conflicting with dogma. The church had said "We'll re-look at the dogma if you resolve problems X, Y, and Z, and while you're at it, leave the theology to us". Galileo evidently was as concerned with his own prominence and attacking people who proved him wrong on issues like comets as he was with science, and so his affair is hardly the travesty of justice that the Protestant propaganda since the affair would have us believe (Yeah, I'm biased all right! I'm a protestant, cricticising protestants for anticatholic distortion of an issue! That's bias for you!)

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The church has done nothing beneficial for human society. They are ultimately nothing but parasites.


This is sheer nonsense. Churches of all kinds have done charitable work throughout history. Then of course there has been actual scientific advancement within the Church, but I guess Gregor Mendel was just a parasite, eh?

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No, Galileo was tried for heresy because he stated the Earth revolved around the Sun. Now, to be fair, the church had decided that that was a theological matter, stating a source of Psalm 104:5 ("The Earth...can never be moved.") The church was also wrong. The pope, while allowing him to write both sides of the issue, insisted Galileo not advocate Heliocentrism. That's like asking a scientist to present a balanced argument between a flat earth and a spherical one. Facts are facts, and Galileo had already definitively proven that the Earth revolves around the sun. Much like creationists demanding science not to advocate evolution, the church was stifling advancement.


No, it wasn't because Galileo had not proven this. His theories were too full of problems he hadn't been able to rsolve yet. He advocated circular planetray orbits, and it was already known that if heliocentrism were correct, they must be elliptical, and there was the tidal problem.

The church had not decided that the helicentrism question was theological; it had decided it wasn't going to revise its doctrine until Galileo could fix his issues. Galileo had shown evidence, but it was insufficient. Claiming he had definitively proven anything with his theory is like claiming HIGCC is "definitiviely proven."

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You're honestly saying that Galileo is at fault because he hadn't created a complete model yet? Because he didn't take his heresy far enough, he was at fault? If the church disliked the Sun being at the center of the universe rather than the earth, can you imagine how much they'd have disliked the actual truth that while the earth revolves around the Sun, the sun is actually just one of hundreds of billions of stars orbiting in the galaxy, and the galaxy is just one of hundreds of billions moving out from a central point...no, I don't think that would have improved his situation. (All this despite the existing models of an earth at the center of the universe not working either.) Your capacity to make excuses for church actions is nothing short of amazing.


What's astonishing is your capacity to strawman my argument. Yes, Galileo was at fault for publishing a model, but not because it was incomplete, because it was wrong. His model included wrong tidal predictions and wrong orbital predictions. The church didn't "dislike" his model at all, and they wouldn't have liked what we've discovered since any less. What they were was unwilling to change theological interpretations to fit a hypothesis that was inadequately supported.

Galileo affair

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Galileo began his telescopic observations in the later part of 1609, and by March of 1610 was able to publish a small book, The Starry Messenger (Sidereus Nuncius), relating some discoveries that had not been dreamed of in the philosophy of the time: mountains on the Moon, lesser moons in orbit around Jupiter, and the resolution of what had been thought cloudy masses in the sky (nebulae) into collections of stars too faint to see individually without a telescope. Other observations followed, including the phases of Venus and the existence of sunspots.

None of these findings, that were difficult at first for other astronomers to verify, proved that the Earth moved, or directly contradicted Christian doctrine. However, they caused difficulties for theologians and for natural philosophers (the name given to scientists at the time, before the modern scientific method was developed), as they contradicted the scientific and philosophical ideas of the time, which were based on those of Aristotle and Ptolemy, whose teachings were closely associated with the Catholic Church of the time (despite their work being pagan writings). In particular, the geocentric model was contradicted by the phases of Venus, which indicated it was both inside and outside the theorized "celestial sphere" of the sun, and the observation of moons orbiting Jupiter instead of the Earth.

Jesuit astronomers, experts both in Church teachings, science, and in natural philosophy, were at first skeptical and hostile to the new ideas, however, within a year or two the availability of good telescopes enabled them to repeat the observations. In 1611 Galileo visited the Collegium Romanum in Rome, where the Jesuit astronomers by that time had repeated his observations.


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Bellarmine found no problem with heliocentrism so long as it was treated as a purely hypothetical calculating device and not as a physically real phenomenon, but he did not regard it as permissible to advocate the latter unless it could be conclusively proved. This put Galileo in a difficult position, because he believed that the available evidence strongly favoured heliocentrism, and he wished to be able to publish his arguments, but he did not have the necessary conclusive proof.


Do you get that? Is that in sufficiently clear English for you? GALILEO DID NOT HAVE PROOF.

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Moreover, while the topic was not inherently a matter of faith, the statements about it in Scripture were so by virtue of who said them—namely, the Holy Spirit. He [Cardinal Ballarmine] conceded that if there were conclusive proof, "then one would have to proceed with great care in explaining the Scriptures that appear contrary; and say rather that we do not understand them than that what is demonstrated is false."


The head of the Inquisition itself explcitly said that if Galileo could prove his ideas, then Scripture would need to be reinterpreted because it had been clearly misunderstood. The fact of the matter, however, is that nothing was proven. Period. This claim that Galileo had conclusively proved hsi theory is utter bullshit fabrication.

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No, I've proven my point, over and over again. Every time I do you backtrack and take a new revisionist position. You can't support your arguments with a single fact, yet I present only fact which you just brush aside, claiming your position is proven and everybody who disagrees with you is wrong.

Reminds me of someone else, actually.


The sheer hilarity of you posting this after your ranting, screaming, temper-tantrum posting and your "proven" arguments that are based on facts you've evidently just made up and hoped no one would check is hilarious.

All you're doing at this point is revising the history of the thread. It's quite plain that you're simply hoping to score points by claiming to have proven things, or that I'm somehow revising things, or that I'm "brushing things aside" by addressing ALL of your points in detail, including links that show where you're simply making up history to suit your view. This despite the fact that you've chosen to rant and scream rather than actualy make or address a point at all in at least 50% of your responses here.

Really, I hate to break it to you, but most people here are just as intelligent as you are and are not going to be fooled by such desperation.

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First of all, they are historically called crusades. Those aren't my words.


By whom exactly?

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Secondly, the fact that the King of France organized it doesn't matter since he did so with the blessing and support of the church in France.


Yes it does matter, since them "blessing it and supporting it" doesn't make it a church action, a religious one, or give them any real responsibility for it. Occitania wasn't even a nation, just a region with a conglomeration of feudal lords, and territorial conquest was accepted and normal for the day.

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I did not deny that the actions in portugal and spain were against muslims. I listed actions against muslims as well as christians.


I know you didn't, and I didn't say that. I said they were against muslims that had attacked those areas in the first place.

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Just because it was against muslims, doesn't make it acceptable, nor does the argument "Well, they conquered that area first, decades to centuries earlier. We're in the right!" (But mommy, she hit me first! Tu quoque.)


It's very much acceptable. Territorial conquest is only acceptable in modern terms; at the time it was quite normal. As for the Tu quoque, that's equally absurd. Someone can come into your territory, take it over, dismantle your churches, and make your people second-class citizens, but if you kick them out you're equally wrong? I guess the Allies were just as wrong as the Germans and the Chinese just as wrong as the Japanese. :roll:

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Excommunicating rebellioius serfs was normal for the time excuses it? THAT MAKES IT WORSE.


No it doesn't. "Worse" according to who? You? Ok, Taly's personal morality is offended. That's nice.

It is nice to note, however, that "objective morality is nonsense" goes by the wayside in favor of moral outrage when you can cricticize the church.

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And it was called a crusade, both by history and by the perpetrators, with the full blessing of the church.


Who called it a crusade? You've shown nowhere that the church called the action a crusade, and even if they did, so what? You're just saying "Crusades are bad cause I say so!"

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And we weren't talking about the crusades specifically, but rather Xequecal's comment about the tendency of the medieval church to encourage war on the known world, wherever it could expand its power, and the general bloodguilt of the church.


Actually it was his comment that the early church did those things (which they didn't), something you've brushed aside repeatedly. Then there's the fact that the chruch never "encouraged war on the known world" at all; it sanctioned specific wars at specific times for specific reasons. In view of the tendancy of that "known world" to be populated by violent barbarians that attacked pretty much everything in sight and Muslims who spread their own faith by the sword from its founding, pretty much any of that is at least partly a matter of survival.

In any case, there is no such thing as bloodguilt. It's a nonsense concept.

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I suppose you would try to justify the Inquisition, if brought up, too.


Which one? The Spoanish Inquisition was the Spanish crown using the church in Spain as its own tool. As for the regular Inquisition, the church certianly had the right to regulate the doctrine of its membership. We find the idea of allowing them secular power over such members today, but it was the accepted norm for the time. Ill-advised and hardly to be returned to, but "justified" would be relative to our own standards. It was justifiable by theirs; it isn't by ours.

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PostPosted: Tue Dec 15, 2009 12:34 pm 
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Talya wrote:
Vindicarre wrote:
Hearing all of this come from someone who has espoused the philosophy of "might makes right" repeatedly is, frankly, laughable.


I never stated "Might makes right" as a moral axion, I stated it as a realism.

If you had, it would no longer be laughable, just sad.

Since you view it as a "realism", and, (again, in your determinist view) Christianity had to exist, and its adherants had to act as they did, they had to be right.

Why even spend countless words over numerous pages ***** about it? Because you have to? :lol:

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PostPosted: Tue Dec 15, 2009 12:36 pm 
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Talya wrote:
This is a direct misrepresentation of everything I've said in this regard (and is tangental to the rest of the discussion, anyway.) I have repeatedly said I have my own morality, as does everyone else, apart from whatever the prevailing morality that "Might" has made "Right." I've also said our individual morals really don't make any difference. This thread is actually a rather good illustration of that point. My disgust with the church (which is based on Church actions compared to our current prevailing morality) hasn't caused them to be disbanded or lose their membership. The church has the "might" to even convince its followers that black is white and light is dark (see this thread), since its actions cannot be justified even by its own stated morality, they instead change history so those actions seem more acceptable. The church, after all, can do no wrong.


Except that the church doesn't have to be perfect according to its own stated morality; in fact that's rather the pooint of its existance. No one can live up to it. No need for changing history exists, nor has that been done. The history changing has been done by people who claim things like "Galileo had definitive proof!"

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You want to imply that not believing in the existence of objective morality implies one has no morality at all. That's not the case. It just means one recognizes that not everyone has the same morals, and there is no definitive morality through which to judge the others by. However, through "might," one can certainly force people to accept one's own morality as that "objective" standard. For a while, anyway.


No, what's being pointed out is that you're either A) contradicting yourself by expressing moral outrage at what the church has done or B) expressing it in terms of your personal morals (which you haven't made clear) and expecting anyone to give a **** after repeated posts where you express derision for morality in general.

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Anyway, you've gotta be pretty desperate to keep bringing unrelated tangental discussions into this one in an attempt to sidetrack the main point. DE did the same by arguing over whether the church actions various crusades should really be considered crusades, despite the church supporting them and them historically being called crusades. It's obfuscation over semantics, nothing more.


No, the depseration is yours. You're inventing facts, and you've made several posts now which are just victory proclaimations and now that 2 other people are pointing out your nonsense, one of who doesn't often agree with me, you're just lumping them in as "desperate" for not agreeing with you. That's desperate. IT's right up there with calling an agreement with the Weimar Republic "support for Hitler", or creating new versions of the Galileo affair.

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Elmarnieh wrote:
I'm just pointing out you're conflicting with multiple statements you've made regarding your own morality over the years.


No, you are (at best) misremembering those "statements." I remember you had a signature quote of me for years, "Might makes right." You left out all the context, of course. For one it won't fit in a signature, but more importantly it doesn't make as good a sound bite when you ignored all the preamble that led up to the sentence "in a very real way, 'Might makes right.'"

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If everybody "misremembers" your stance on that issue, does that make them all incorrect, or does that mean you didn't convey your actual beliefs very well?

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PostPosted: Tue Dec 15, 2009 2:42 pm 
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Diamondeye wrote:
Except that the church doesn't have to be perfect according to its own stated morality; in fact that's rather the pooint of its existance. No one can live up to it. No need for changing history exists, nor has that been done.


There's a pretty wide gulf between occasionally missing the mark, and blatant disregard for the teachings of Christ that the church, by its behavior, has been guilty of over the last 1600 years. When one looks with an objective view, the church's actions since inception are despicable by the very standards it claims to espouse.

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The history changing has been done by people who claim things like "Galileo had definitive proof!"


Uh, he did? He didn't prove his heliocentric model at all, because it was wrong. He DID prove rather conclusively that the earth orbited the sun. While the rest of his model failed to make much sense, he did show that the earth orbiting the sun was the only model yet created that actually fit the observed patterns of celestial bodies. I suppose one can argue that that isn't definitive proof, someone else could have come up with another model, but the fact is his model fit, whereas the church doctrine did not.

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No, what's being pointed out is that you're either A) contradicting yourself by expressing moral outrage at what the church has done or B) expressing it in terms of your personal morals (which you haven't made clear) and expecting anyone to give a **** after repeated posts where you express derision for morality in general.


That is non-sequitur. What, i'm not allowed to be morally outraged just because morals are relative? There is nothing contradictory about that.

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No, the depseration is yours. You're inventing facts,


No, i have shown you facts.

-The church caused scientific stagnation and to this day attempts to interfere with research that it feels treads on its dogma. (Galileo, Hawking are two obvious examples)
-The Vatican itself had a treaty that represented a virtual alliance between Hitler and the Catholic Church in Germany, signed and approved at the highest levels. (The Concordat.)
-The church was directly or indirectly responsible for the persecution and murder of millions of people for various reasons. (Crusades, Inquisitions, church-sanctioned military actions, forced conversions on threat of torture/death, etc.)

Those are all that matter. You've tried to justify these, or obfuscate them, or deny them, but those three things are incontrovertable and undeniable. You keep coming up with flimsy excuses that don't hold water to justify or argue those points, or blatantly provide misinformation about them, but you haven't really said anything that truly contradicts any of those facts. You just make irrelevant excuses like "Germany wasn't officially called Nazi Germany at the time!" or "Galileo's theory wasn't entirely accurate so he was wrong to contradict church doctrine!" or "They had it coming!" or "That's just how they did things back then." None of those matter. You're quick to use your "No True Scotsman" fallacy by claiming that the perpetrators were not really the church, instead being "The King of France" (ignoring that the King of France both had the encouragement and blessing of the church, and also played a part in representing the church in France, as most monarchs do...just as the monarch of England is an official representative of the Church of England, complete with title.) Not a church action my ***.

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If everybody "misremembers" your stance on that issue, does that make them all incorrect, or does that mean you didn't convey your actual beliefs very well?


It's two or three people, and they remember only what's convenient for them to remember. It's easy to put words in people's mouths when the evidence that would prove you wrong was lost long ago.

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PostPosted: Tue Dec 15, 2009 3:27 pm 
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Talya wrote:
There's a pretty wide gulf between occasionally missing the mark, and blatant disregard for the teachings of Christ that the church, by its behavior, has been guilty of over the last 1600 years. When one looks with an objective view, the church's actions since inception are despicable by the very standards it claims to espouse.


Aside from the false dilemma, "the church" has constituted different individuals in that time period, and in any case yo're just begging the question. They have not missed the mark all that badly. Finally, human beings in general miss the mark on a daily basis.

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Uh, he did? He didn't prove his heliocentric model at all, because it was wrong. He DID prove rather conclusively that the earth orbited the sun. While the rest of his model failed to make much sense, he did show that the earth orbiting the sun was the only model yet created that actually fit the observed patterns of celestial bodies. I suppose one can argue that that isn't definitive proof, someone else could have come up with another model, but the fact is his model fit, whereas the church doctrine did not.


Wow. Aside from the backpeddling from what you said above, AND the fact that he didn't conclusivly prove that at all, as the wiki link demonstrated, the fact is that "heliocentric model" and "earth going around the sun" mean the same **** thing in this context! You're just dancing all over the place.

No, the fact that the universe is not centered on the Sun doesn't matter because no one was yet concerned with the rest of the universe in developing either model. Nor does "Galileo's basic idea was right while the church was wrong" matter because that was the issue in question and the one that Galileo could not definitively answer. You can't use what was later determined to be right to say anything about Galileo. From the link below regarding Compernicus:

Quote:
The thinking that the heliocentric view was also not true in a strict sense was achieved in steps. That the Sun was not the center of the universe, but one of innumerable stars, was strongly advocated by the mystic Giordano Bruno. Over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries, the status of the Sun as merely one star among many became increasingly obvious. By the 20th century, even before the discovery that there are many galaxies, it was no longer an issue.


The fact was that Galileo could not even prove the earth orbited the sun. He wasn't trying to prove that the center of the universe was anywhere outside the solar system, nor was the church opposing any such argument; that matter was beyond the physical capabilites of science of the time to explore, so don't bother nitpicking the literal meaning of Heliocentric versus what it meant in the context of the argument.

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That is non-sequitur. What, i'm not allowed to be morally outraged just because morals are relative? There is nothing contradictory about that.


You really aren't bothering to read, just making up something convenient to argue against, aren't you? No one said you can't be morally outraged. The problem is that you're A) not qualifying this as your opinon at all but presenting it as a moral argument to convince others and B) the fact that you keep referring to having "proven your points" which you haven't, which you've relied on fabricated claims to do, and which don't mean **** anyhow if they're just your opinion. Like I said: we get it. You don't like the church or religion. This is all just spleen-venting.

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No, i have shown you facts.

-The church caused scientific stagnation and to this day attempts to interfere with research that it feels treads on its dogma. (Galileo, Hawking are two obvious examples)


This was shown to be false in Galileo's case, repeatedly, and you're just using wall-of-ignorance tactics at this point. As for Hawking, I ahve no idea what you're talking about but I don't recall ever hearing of him being suppressed in any way.

Let's look at Copernicus:

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The first information about the heliocentric views of Nicolaus Copernicus were circulated in manuscript. Although only in manuscript, Copernicus' ideas were well known among astronomers and others. His ideas appeared to contradict the bible. In the King James Bible Chronicles 16:30 state that "the world also shall be stable, that it be not moved." Psalm 104:5 says, "[the Lord] Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever." Ecclesiastes 1:5 states that "The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose."

Nonetheless, in 1533, Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter delivered in Rome a series of lectures outlining Copernicus' theory. The lectures were heard with interest by Pope Clement VII and several Catholic cardinals. On 1 November 1536, Archbishop of Capua Nicholas Schönberg wrote a letter to Copernicus from Rome encouraging him to publish a full version of his theory.


Yeah, they jumped right on suppressing that.

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-The Vatican itself had a treaty that represented a virtual alliance between Hitler and the Catholic Church in Germany, signed and approved at the highest levels. (The Concordat.)


Blatant falsehood, as demonstrated fromt he link you provided. It was anything but an alliance, and it had nothing to do with Hitler other than that he happened to be Chancellor at the time.

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-The church was directly or indirectly responsible for the persecution and murder of millions of people for various reasons. (Crusades, Inquisitions, church-sanctioned military actions, forced conversions on threat of torture/death, etc.)


Again, patent falsehood both numerically

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Those are all that matter. You've tried to justify these, or obfuscate them, or deny them, but those three things are incontrovertable and undeniable. You keep coming up with flimsy excuses that don't hold water to justify or argue those points, or blatantly provide misinformation about them, but you haven't really said anything that truly contradicts any of those facts. You just make irrelevant excuses like "Germany wasn't officially called Nazi Germany at the time!" or "Galileo's theory wasn't entirely accurate so he was wrong to contradict church doctrine!" or "They had it coming!" or "That's just how they did things back then." None of those matter. You're quick to use your "No True Scotsman" fallacy by claiming that the perpetrators were not really the church, instead being "The King of France" (ignoring that the King of France both had the encouragement and blessing of the church, and also played a part in representing the church in France, as most monarchs do...just as the monarch of England is an official representative of the Church of England, complete with title.) Not a church action my ***.


No, this is jsut you claiming for yourself the authority to override the historical facts and context surrounding each of these in order to paint them in as unfavorable a light as possible. It's nothing but another victory proclaimation and a series of additional strawmen.

Keep ranting. Keep having the temper tantrum. Go on, keep making posts claiming to have "proven your points" and blah blah blah. All you're doing is flushing your credibility down the toilet. The fact of the matter is that when it comes down to the facts you've been utterly crushed and your only defense when it's pointed out you're incorrect is to say "But that's just a flimsy excuse!"

Yes, we all know that pointing out contradictory information is a "flimsy excuse". :roll: All you've done is dive head-first into the tactics of the "certain other poster" you mentioned earlier, evidently hoping that if you accused me of them first, others here wouldn't notice.


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It's two or three people, and they remember only what's convenient for them to remember. It's easy to put words in people's mouths when the evidence that would prove you wrong was lost long ago.


No, everyone remembers your posting history quite well. You're simply making up whatever's convenient right now.

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."


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