Is this an atheist film?
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sakkamarra — 16 years ago(September 09, 2009 01:41 PM)
What are you a 60+ year old woman?
Your train of thought is insane and I'm filled with not anger but a very sick and uncomfortable feeling in my gut as it sinks in that granny has gotten out of her cage at the old folks home again and is now attempting to flirt with me.
I think your inability to stay on topic and creation of such an incoherent response is evidence enough that you'll continue to evade the prospect of an actual debate and are therefore not intellectually worth it. I will take great pleasure in copying your posts and emailing them to some friends for laughs, and for that, I thank you. -
GoUSN — 16 years ago(September 09, 2009 02:55 PM)
You are very welcome.
But Puddin', please don't send copies of your e-mails and posts to your 60-year old female friends, or anyone in "granny" age range, because they may find your sexist, ageist comments to be offensive.
Yet, you are kind of cute, in a ranting, gloomy, silly sort of way.
/s/ Granny -
overninethousand — 15 years ago(July 31, 2010 02:32 AM)
Hey atheists and secularists: the Church has been the originator, inspiration, and custodian of Western Civilization. If you want to know what happens to a world when "organized religion" is hostile to beauty, try Islam.
Oh wow.
There was a time when Islamic Civilization was the most advanced civilization in the world. It was also time when Western Civilization was "hostile to beauty". For unwashed Europe it was "Dark Ages", for Arabia and Al-Andalus it was not. -
GoUSN — 15 years ago(July 31, 2010 11:28 AM)
First of all, the notion that Islam was the advanced force of anything (save violence) is quaint. Spread by the sword, and a political belief system rather than a genuine religion, it has been the scourge of the West since, oh, 638. There may have been pockets of intellectual robustness, but look around most of the Islamic world today - stuck somewhere in the 7th Century. If once so enlightened, when did the huge steps backward occur? Fact is, there was no step backward since there was no significant advance in the first place. (And please, save the tired examples of the arch and Arabic numerals.)
Second, whatever may have been the case yesterday is manifestly not the case today. Islam, its books, and its most vocal leadership (without counterpoint) preach violence, misogyny, and intolerance. How many mosques are there in Rome, center of Christendom? Dozens. How many Christian churches are there in Mecca? None. Of course, we'll never actually know, because non-Muslims can't even travel there.
Please oh please, do begin your sermon on the moral and social equivalence of all religions.
"But I'm a Democrat. What has happened to my Party?" -
overninethousand — 15 years ago(July 31, 2010 05:10 PM)
And then the truth still is the Dark Ages' smelly European Christian barbarians were "hostile to beauty" of the more advanced Islamic civilization. And this on religious reasons.
Even slaughtering Jews in the process, too. Rock on! -
overninethousand — 15 years ago(August 01, 2010 12:54 AM)
Also Islamic religion is several hundred years younger than the Christian one.
And several hundred years ago the very mainstream Christian clergymen were burning people (including "even" the less mainstream Christians) alive in the city squares full of onlookers. And other such things. -
hesperus59 — 15 years ago(October 15, 2010 02:04 AM)
The parallel with Islam as "the source" of a great civilization is very relevant. Indeed, this is the most popular argument with Islamic fundamentalists: Islam gave us a great civilization, and the only way to have it back is to return to the true spirit of Islam (whatever that is). By the way, you can make a much stronger claim about Islam being the originator of "Islamic civilization" than Christianity being the originator of "Western civilization". Personally, I don't think religion itself has had any role in building civilizations. It's mainly economic, geographical, and political factors sometimes taking religious manifestations. If given full control, organized religion is more likely to stifle progress of any kind, rather than nurture it.
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overninethousand — 15 years ago(October 15, 2010 02:53 AM)
Religious factors were very important in both cases.
Islam united the Arabs and then the Middle East to the one common cause, one identity (soon really two after the Sunni/Shia schism, but anyway) and more or less one culture. Civilizational advance of the Arabs was great (Persians of course had an advanced civilization since the ancient times).
Christianity led to the downfall and fracture of the already united and technologically and culturally advanced (and relatively tolerant, even as at the same as brutal and bloody as everyone else) Roman Empire into dozens of mostly tiny states and kept the Western Europe (except the Iberian Peninsula for a time being, guess why) in the Dark Ages until the Renaissance. That's a very destructive influence.
Buddhism really had not much effect on the East, in comparison.
Anyway, the film clearly presents its deeply-believing Jesuit protagonists as the completely good guys (including the powerful transformation of a godless slaver into a heroic warrior for Christ and against the opressors, and another choosing a peaceful martydom also for JC, it's two kinds of religious fanatics a few could really object to). How could it be perceived by anyone as "an atheist film", I don't know.
http://www.imdb.com/board/11186830/
is "an atheist film". -
GoUSN — 13 years ago(November 09, 2012 04:14 PM)
Where on earth did you learn your history: the U of Revisionism?
Christianity manifestly did not produce the Dark Ages - which instead were induced by invasions of Imperial Rome by tribes from the North. It was the monastery system of Ireland that becamse repository of Western learning and begain evangelizing, eventually to restore "light" to Europe.
Luckily, I attended a Catholic university, unaffected by the outlandish revisionism that has taken hold of most institutions of "higher" learning. Detach Christianity from the western construct, and voile! No western construct. Man, you people are historical illiterates.