Yes, the Church sponsored works that promoted its goals-all great businesses have done the same throughout history. I still say that, if there wasn’t religion to inspire Man to do great things, other inspirations would have arose to fill in the gaps. IMHO of course-I can’t prove it one way, and you can’t prove it the other, but I still have faith in what I can see, and I see people accomplishing great things out of love of their fellow human beings, out of the need to reach just a bit further they did the day before, out of pride, out of a sense of self-worth, and so many more reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with religion. If I see a religious person do a kind deed, I just assume that it was done because that person was kind, not because of any religious tenet that person holds.
Well, exactly. Unless Der Trihs is claiming that *one particular * religion is in control, then it’s a case of the vast majority of religious people of any faith with some kind of power against the minority of athiests and (some) agnostics with power.
For the last time, I never said anything about curing the world’s ills-are you accidently posting in the wrong thread or something?
I agree with you on that last point, and posted as much earlier. But art is different from kindness. Artists who found inspiration in religion may not have found inspiration from another source, or may not have been inspired to as great a height. I don’t think it’s a matter of some other influence filling the void left by religion: those non-religious influences exsisted in the world with religion, and inspired their share of art. Removing religion from the equation would not increase that share, at least not to a level fully equal with the amount of art produced by a world with religion.
And yes, the Chuch promoted art for its own ends, but my point was that, without the Church in that specific time period, there would have been no organization to sponsor art at all. Or, for that matter, promote learning, education, and the preservation of the sciences, at least as far as Europe is concerned.
Listen to you! You have faith in something you can’t prove? If you saw something being done, you’d parse it in accordance with what you believe even though you couldn’t verify it?
Let’s see, where have I heard this before? Oh yes, when talking with the fundamentalist Christians all the time. They think that faith is important too, Czarcasm, especially since there’s no way to prove what they believe either.
All your talk about your precious little world where everything is verified by science, and the minute you get riled up, you turn right into the irrational “I just know it’s true” type of person you’ve spoken against in this thread.
Now do you see why I don’t think your world is ever going to exist? Can you see why I don’t mind religion that much even though I’m an atheist? Can you see why Sarahfeena and I doubt you know what you’re talking about when you say that all this world needs is science and how everyone can get along just fine without religion?
It’s not that you’re expressing your beliefs in this thread, Czarcasm. It’s just that I see your beliefs fly right out the window the moment they become a bit inconvenient when you say things like this.
Actually, Der Trihs is claiming that a particular religion is in control. See said poster’s comment about “evil religion.”
Maybe the Church was the only entity able to promote the arts because they had the lion’s share of the wealth and power. If the money and power had stayed in the hands of the people, we might have had even more works of greater diversity-but since we’ll never know, we can only blindly speculate, and personal prejudices will always influence our speculation. Such is the nature of man.
Alright.
So, is the President of the U.S. Muslim, or are the leaders of Iran Christian?
I suspect that, in that particular era, it would have ended up in the hands of kings and princes who were more interested in bashing each other’s heads in and stealing each other’s land than in developing the use of perspective or rediscovering the principle of the Golden Mean. But as you say, we can never know, which makes your original contention that the world would have been no poorer for the lack of religion rather toothless.
Naw, I’m just giving the benefit of the doubt to a fellow human being. Silly weakness of mine, isn’t it?
My “faith”, as you will no doubt persist in calling it, is based on observation of my fellow humans, and is subject to change as new evidence comes in.
FYI, you might find it interesting that “faith” and “blind faith” do not share the same definition.
Again, where are you getting these supposed quotes of mine?
I am sorry that my personal beliefs bother you. Perhaps more tolerance is in order.
Less “translating” and more actual quoting might be helpful in furthing this discussion.
IMHO, of course.
And I am totally willing to agree to such, if you will agree that your contention that the Church was the best way to sponsor great works is equally toothless.
Good one! Actually, if you consider members of Iran’s parliament to be Iran’s leaders, then perhaps three of their leaders are Christians. See Article 64(2) of Iran’s Constitution.
Sorry, can’t do that. At least I have evidence that the Church did, in fact, inspire the bulk of Europe’s artistic endeavors for several centuries, during which there were no other organizations sponsoring artists. If the Church had never exsisted, neither would those specific works of art. Wether they would have been replaced by other works of art, as you contend, is entirely speculative.
Of course the Church inspired the bulk of Europe’s artistic endeavors-they had the money and the power to do so. Religion in and of itself had nothing to do with it. If another powerful group had that concentration of wealth and power, you would say the same exact thing about them. No one else did, because no one else could. They weren’t the best source of funding, they were just the only one.
I think I read that as four, although a multireligious parliament still holds the point. If we’re comparing like for like, The U.S. Congress has Jewish and many forms of Christian members*, while the Supreme Leader and President of Iran are both Muslim.
*And, apparently, a Scientologist member. :dubious:
Fair enough. One more post before my bedtime.
In the spirit of Good Cop/Bad Cop:
Not at all, as long as you treat all human beings equally unless they prove themselves to be untrustworthy. Which you don’t:
Uh-oh. Looks like Mr. Theist kind of crapped out on the whole benefit of the doubt thing.
Well, apparently Czarcasm happens to live in the section of the world where not only the theist adults but the theist children have observably troubled psyches, because . . .
Hmmm. The horror. The poor kids. Never mind that there’s nothing empirical whatsoever behind this statement. Never mind that Czarcasm is not a trained psychologist. Never mind that this is all bullshit made up on the spot. He just sort of happens to have observed it. We know this, because Czarcasm believes in a world of science where no one would ever pull something like this just because he believed in it.
Errr . . . maybe from here:
You know, Czarcasm, this whole “world of science without religion” is your Disneyland ride, not mine, but somehow “world of science” conjurs up a world where everything is based on science, therefore based on empirical evidence with no room for statements like “I just have faith in people”. Am I right? Did I leave out any details here?
In addition, because it was based on science, you’d have to allow plenty of room for the fact that your observations were wrong, which would mean going into the experiment prepared to prove yourself wrong in the interests of rigorous scientific honesty.
I mean, being an atheist myself, I certainly wouldn’t mind living in a world of science without religion, assuming it would work (It wouldn’t, btw), as long as it wasn’t all science. I mean, I would hope it had cable, maybe with free adult channels . . .
Hang on, hang on, I was daydreaming there for a bit. The point is that it’s hard for you to make the claim that I’ve misunderstood you here. OK, maybe you don’t claim to solve all the world’s ills with this world of yours, but you seem to think that it would be a better world than we have now. Otherwise, why would you even postulate the scientific world to begin with?
It does no good for you to talk about how much you believe in your fellow man and how you have faith in him, even though you can’t verify that faith with empirical proof less than one page after you tear down the majority of people who do happen to believe in God, because they pass God stuff on to their kids and others without any way to verify said god’s existence with empirical proof. Kind of confusing and weird, ya’ know?
You challenged me as to where I found in your posts that you think the world would be profoundly rational without religion. You are right, you did not explicitly say that. My point, however, is this: If you believe a world without religion is preferable to world with it, my question is, why? Seems to me that you must think there would be some improvement to the world if there was no religion. I assumed that you meant that there would be more rationality, and less “fantasy.” If this is not what you meant, I apologize for the assumption. Why don’t you tell us what you DO mean?What will this magical land of no religion be like?
The second part of my post was my own opinion. I believe that faith & science complement each other, and the lack of either’s influence on the other would be less than ideal.
I’ve not denied that. We know that the church funded significant amounts of artwork. That’s a fact. If the church had not exsisted, some other organization might have funded artists on the same scale. That’s pure speculation.
My argument: based on recorded fact. Your argument: based on supposition and presumption. My argument = stronger.
Linty Fresh, I’ll try to make this as simple as possible-I believe that the world would have the same amount of good and bad without religion in it as it does with religion in it. If this is true, does adding religion to the mix improve things overall, or further complicate things?
Your argument can only show that the Church was the largest(and usually only) benefactor. Stating therefore that because of this it was the best possible benefactor is pure speculation on your part.