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#1406995
fishtank
It doesn't QUITE work like that my laddo..
And "inhuman inhumanity"? Right...
And you'd be amazed what the greeks sometimes did to their reason fellas.
5/26/2012 9:01:27 AM
#1407015
aaa
Thanks for telling everyone how you don't know a damn thing about history.
5/26/2012 9:59:16 AM
#1407025
Osiris
Christianity really took over after Rome collapsed and then pistol whipped it into submission.
5/26/2012 11:17:02 AM
#1407027
tranz2deep
Total propaganda.
I noted a freudian slip in this one.
"Reason was merged, melted, and mated to the Christian religion so that one cannot accept Christ without excepting reason..."
In short, Reason was (according to this guy) pressed down on, dissolved, and fucked by the Church so that you have to forego reason to accept Christ.
5/26/2012 11:19:38 AM
#1407029
farpadokly
"Merged, melted, and mated to the Christian religion". Not so. One of the first things they did when they became Christian was to shut down the Academy in Athens.
Over the centuries the church became, quite simply, the enemy of reason. That's because its power depended on people being ignorant.
And only your description of Ayn Rand is correct in that other sentence.
5/26/2012 11:28:46 AM
#1407039
checkmate
But did pre-christian reason, as developed by the Greeks, also lead to inhuman anger? Or did God give everybody a stay of execution until Jesus came along?
Reason without Christ? I think Descartes, Kant and Nietzsche did pretty well without causing mass destruction.
5/26/2012 12:39:05 PM
#1407040
nazani14
John obviously knows squat about the Roman empire and their plethora of cults, so no need to read farther.
5/26/2012 12:40:13 PM
#1407045
Old Viking
I don't like to be harsh, but this is virtually senseless.
5/26/2012 1:18:58 PM
#1407100
"Reason was merged, melted and mated to the Christian religion so that one cannot accept Christ without excepting reason,..."
Whoa! Wait a minute. Back up the truck, Bub. Believing in talking snakes, resurrection of the dead and salvation to a heaven through belief in Jesus IS NOT REASONABLE.
"...and cannot accept Reason without accepting Christ."
Patently false as I accept reason and I do not believe the Jesus tales.
"Reason without Christ, if elevated to the sum and final Good of Man, leads to inhuman anger like Marx or inhuman selfishness like Ayn Rand, or inhuman angry selfishness like Dawkins, or inhuman inhumanity like Peter Singer."
You just got finished saying that reason without Christ is inpossible.
I don't think we know whether Marx was angry or not. Mr. Dawkins doesn't seem inhuman or selfish or angry to me. I don't like Ayn Rand at all, but I think "inhuman" is stretching things a bit and I have no idea who Peter Singer is or was.
5/26/2012 4:46:59 PM
#1407101
Xotan
Inhuman torture by the inquisition
Inhumman lying like the fake Donation of Constantine, just to get money and power.
Inhuman post factum crime of protecting paederast priests and lying to do so, into the bargain
Inhuman refusals by church authorities to perform their legal duty and denounce priest paederasts to the proper civil authorities
Inhuman lying of Haggard and Swaggart etc.
I could go on for a long time.
5/26/2012 4:48:05 PM
#1407106
Renon
And here I was thinking it was the ancient Arabs who invented modern mathematics.
5/26/2012 4:54:45 PM
#1407119
Darwin
"Reason was merged, melted and mated to the Christian religion so that one cannot accept Christ without excepting reason, and cannot accept Reason without accepting Christ."
That's so fucking stupid that there's no way it deserves a rational response.
5/26/2012 6:54:33 PM
#1407122
JSS
Reason was merged, melted and mated to the Christian religion
Yes, Christianity has always had a way of merging, melting and mating 'reason' with it's own dogma. Too bad circular arguments (ie: Scripture is true because it says it's true and it's infallible because it's true because it says it's true) aren't exactly sound reasoning.
Oh, and 'inhuman inhumanity'? Let's grow up a little bit.
5/26/2012 7:28:03 PM
#1407124
checkmate
one cannot accept Christ without excepting reason, and cannot accept Reason without accepting Christ.
So I guess Sputnik 1 was built without reasoning and the (atheist) Soviets just kinda got lucky.
And all those (atheist) Soviet chess Grandmasters and World Champions and the present World Champion Viswanathan Anand, a Hindu, don't use reasoning in playing chess. They just guess about their moves.
Either that, or they're all closet Christians.
5/26/2012 7:33:07 PM
#1407140
Tatsukun
Yes, pi is 3. Keep working on your "reason" there moron. LOL Freak
5/26/2012 10:52:26 PM
#1407159
Canadiest
@Extraintrovert
Yeah, I've seen that argument before, it fails to have many examples to support it while there are many more to show the churchs agenda to stifle knowledge and study.
Or:"they weren't willing to share it with anyone who wasn't a clergyman, but keeping the masses ignorant is a staple of many religions."
Dark Ages
5/27/2012 5:48:23 AM
#1407189
rw23
+1 for trashing Ayn Rand
-100 for trashing history and common sense
5/27/2012 7:10:43 AM
#1407193
Ebon
You've never actually read Marx, Dawkins or Singer, have you? You got Rand exactly right but I suspect that was by accident as I doubt you've read her either.
5/27/2012 7:12:57 AM
#1407215
SpukiKitty
If the Greeks & Romans had Reason first, then you can't give the Church credit for inventing it because the GREEKS & ROMANS HAD IT FIRST!
Well, actually, Reason existed long before Greece & Rome.
You, on the other hand, Mr. Wright, wouldn't know REASON IF IT HIT YOU IN THE FACE WITH A FISH!!!
5/27/2012 7:44:50 AM
#1407218
louislois
"... Reason was merged, melted and mated to the Christian religion so that one cannot accept Christ without excepting reason,"
Oh what a delicious typo!
5/27/2012 7:48:31 AM
#1407219
WWWWolf
> Reason was merged, melted and mated to the Christian religion
Dude, you got scammed. You bought your brand of Reason from the shady back-alley merchants in Greece, did you? The real Greek philosophers would have pointed out that they don't have a monopoly on reason.
Just because it says on the tin "100% TOTALLY LEGIT REASON, ACCEPT NO CHEAP KNOCKOFFS", it doesn't mean it's the real article.
5/27/2012 8:06:29 AM
#1407280
SpukiKittyFundie Churches are the Santo Gold of Reason.
(For those not in the U.S. in the Mid-1980's, Santo Gold was this INCREDIBLY BIZARRE & cheesy infomercial cranked out by a con-artist named Bob Harris who called himself 'Santo Victor Rigatuso'. It was some weirdness involving chinzy jewelry & a really crappy sci-fi/horror/comedy/wrestling flick.)
5/27/2012 12:52:29 PM
#1407285
Karana
The entire concept of making a human avatar to sacrifice yourself to yourself to make a loophole for rules you made is the antithesis of logic and reason.
5/27/2012 1:25:58 PM
#1407368
Pup
Given that the majority of Christian "reasoning" throws logic out the window and relies solely on blind faith and special reasoning, I'd say you're talking out your arse.
5/28/2012 3:10:19 AM
#1407369
David B.
"and when those Romans became Christians, Reason was merged, melted and mated to the Christian religion..."
But fortunately several Enlightenment thinkers were able to distill reason out of this fetid mix and restore it to humanity in it's undiluted, untainted form.
"... so that one cannot accept Christ without excepting reason, and cannot accept Reason without accepting Christ."
Except there are countless examples contradicting your first point, and you yourself have just given two examples against the second.
Is this "Christian reason" then? Mere bald assertion disguised with sophistry and wordplay?
5/28/2012 3:24:15 AM
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