Scholarly Hypatia Was Murdered by a Degenerate Clique of Christian Fundamentalists

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Originally Posted by Red Terror

Hypatia also investigates the heliocentric model of the solar system proposed by Aristarchus of Samos; by having an object dropped from the mast of a moving ship she demonstrates to Orestes that a possible motion of the Earth would not affect the motion, relative to Earth, of a falling object on Earth. However, due to religious objections against heliocentrism, the Christians have now forbidden Hypatia to teach at the school. The Christians and the Jews come into conflict, committing violent acts against each other.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agora_(film)

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Heh heh heh. Right, Red Terror, but that is from a description of THE FILM. My contention is that the film was ahistorical in suggesting that very thing. But I will gladly stand corrected if you can provide evidence that the above story is true, or that Hypatia of Alexandria ever advanced the idea of heliocentrism. If you can't, I call on your integrity to admit that you have given undue credence to the historicity of this movie.

In the meantime, happy hunting! :)

So atheist amateur historian Tim O'Niell wrote a whole post about this topic and the film Agora that many of you might find interesting: link.

Thank you, Drkshadow03. Very much appreciated.

"And, as usual, bigots and anti-theistic zealots will ignore the evidence, the sources and rational analysis and believe Hollywood's appeal to their prejudices. It makes you wonder who the real enemies of reason actually are."

Part of my problem with the Hypatia example is that it happened too long ago. The same with Galileo. We have changed since then.

What is more interesting is what has happened in the past 100 years or our attitudes now towards events that happened long ago.

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Originally Posted by Pompey Bum

Thank you, Drkshadow03. Very much appreciated.

"And, as usual, bigots and anti-theistic zealots will ignore the evidence, the sources and rational analysis and believe Hollywood's appeal to their prejudices. It makes you wonder who the real enemies of reason actually are."

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Sweet trolling, Pompey Bum.

Man is quite insane. He wouldn't know how to create a maggot, and yet he creates Gods by the dozen.

Michel de Montaigne

We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

Richard Dawkins

What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

Christopher Hitchens

Jesus Christ—who, as it turns out, was born of a virgin, cheated death and rose bodily into the heavens—can now be eaten in the form of a cracker. A few Latin words spoken over your favorite Burgundy, and you can drink his blood as well. Is there any doubt that a lone subscriber to these beliefs would be considered mad? The danger of religious faith is that it allows otherwise normal human beings to reap the fruits of madness and consider them holy.

Sam Harris, The End of Faith

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

Do not indoctrinate your children. Teach them how to think for themselves, how to evaluate evidence, and how to disagree with you.

Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that.”

Richard Dawkins

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814

Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp, 30 July, 1816

Priests...dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live.

Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Correa de Serra, April 11, 1820

And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.

Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it [the Apocalypse of St. John], and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to General Alexander Smyth, Jan. 17, 1825


Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The god who presides over the Judeo-Christian belief system bears a disquieting resemblance to those imperfect creations known as human beings. This suggests that either he really did fashion us in his own image or we fashioned him in ours.

Michael Parenti

It should be of particular concern to us that the beliefs of Muslims pose a special problem for nuclear deterrence. There is little possibility of our having a cold war with an Islamist regime armed with long-range nuclear weapons. A cold war requires that the parties be mutually deterred by the threat of death. Notions of martyrdom and jihad run roughshod over the logic that allowed the United States and the Soviet Union to pass half a century perched, more or less stably, on the brink of Armageddon. What will we do if an Islamist regime, which grows dewy-eyed at the mere mention of paradise, ever acquires long-range nuclear weaponry? If history is any guide, we will not be sure about where the offending warheads are or what their state of readiness is, and so we will be unable to rely on targeted, conventional weapons to destroy them. In such a situation, the only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own. Needless to say, this would be an unthinkable crime—as it would kill tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single day—but it may be the only course of action available to us, given what Islamists believe.

Sam Harris, End of Faith

Evolution sceptic: "Professor Haldane, even given the billions of years that you say were available for evolution, I simply cannot believe it is possible to go from a single cell to a complicated human body, with its trillions of cells organized into bones and muscles and nerves, a heart that pumps without ceasing for decades, miles and miles of blood vessels and kidney tubules, and a brain capable of thinking and talking and feeling."

Professor John Burdon Sanderson Haldane: "But madam, you did it yourself. And it only took you nine months.”

Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution

Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.

Benjamin Franklin

I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies.

Benjamin Franklin

In those parts of the world where learning and science have prevailed, miracles have ceased; but in those parts of it as are barbarous and ignorant, miracles are still in vogue.

Ethan Allen, Reason the Only Oracle of Man, pamphlet, 1784

As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?

John Adams, letter to FA Van der Kamp, December 27, 1816

I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved -- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!

John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, from George Seldes

"As the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims] ... it is declared ... that no pretext arising from religious opinion shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries....
"The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation."

Treaty of Tripoli (1797), carried unanimously by the Senate and signed into law by John Adams (the original language is by Joel Barlow, US Consul)

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded project.

James Madison

During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.

James Madison

The Spaniards in Mexico and Peru used to baptize Indian infants and then immediately dash their brains out: by this means they secured that these infants went to Heaven. No orthodox Christian can find any logical reason for condemning their action, although all nowadays do so. In countless ways the doctrine of personal immortality in its Christian form has had disastrous effects upon morals ...

Bertrand Russell

I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

Stephen Roberts

I'll take that as a panicked surrender. ;-)

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Originally Posted by Red Terror

I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

Stephen Roberts

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So many spells. Too little time.

It is the people who think they have found that privileged frame of reference, that higher ground, where they think they no longer worship any gods who are the most bedeviled.

Thanks for introducing me to this interesting historical figure, Red.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

So many spells. Too little time.

It is the people who think they have found that privileged frame of reference, that higher ground, where they think they no longer worship any gods who are the most bedeviled.

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I think that when we stop querelling about our different gods or faiths, we will have advanced considerably in our human evolution.

Is irreligious bigotry so common now that it's become invisible?

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Originally Posted by Danik 2016

I think that when we stop querelling about our different gods or faiths, we will have advanced considerably in our human evolution.

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People will always want to express and justify their views. It helps clarify their position for themselves, but I tend to agree with this. If people don't think someone else is going to hell for having a different opinion or that they are suffering from some "viral meme" and just accept the differing opinion as different, that looks to me like a form of social improvement.

People who have positive near death experiences hold all sorts of opinions ranging from atheist to fundamentalist whatever. So I am not worried about hell.

Having a viral meme suggests that holding a different opinion or behaving differently could help someone live a healthier or happier life. That might be true. One could do research on such questions. A book I read by Will Johnson, "The Posture of Meditation", makes me suspect that just aligning oneself with gravity can clarify one's mind. It has worked for me, but I don't think it should be something everyone is forced to do.

Oh gee, looks like I left the heat shield down for a sec. My bad. :)

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Originally Posted by YesNo

And I don't even want to get started about atheists. They gross me out the most.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

If you are an atheist, I need an explanation justifying the genocide of the Khmer Rouge--for a start. I don't accept arguments that the Khmer Rouge did not kill "in the name of" atheism so atheism is excused from the dehumanization it has caused throughout history. Those are atheist dogmas, not mine. I am not aligned with your religion.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

Then the atheists try a counter missionary move and say, "Oh! We dislike bigotry! We are so good and superior and rational and scientific!" But when you challenge them about genocide they whine just like the OP and say stuff like, "We are so superior we don't have to justify ourselves to anyone!"

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Originally Posted by YesNo

People will always want to express and justify their views. It helps clarify their position for themselves, but I tend to agree with this. If people don't think someone else is going to hell for having a different opinion or that they are suffering from some "viral meme" and just accept the differing opinion as different, that looks to me like a form of social improvement.

People who have positive near death experiences hold all sorts of opinions ranging from atheist to fundamentalist whatever. So I am not worried about hell.

Having a viral meme suggests that holding a different opinion or behaving differently could help someone live a healthier or happier life. That might be true. One could do research on such questions. A book I read by Will Johnson, "The Posture of Meditation", makes me suspect that just aligning oneself with gravity can clarify one's mind. It has worked for me, but I don't think it should be something everyone is forced to do.

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I didn´t quite grasp this idea of "viral meme" Yes/No probably because I don´t go in the social nets.

Oh, this one as well.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

However, there is one general religious form that I think should be abandoned because its idolatry is self-destructively dehumanistic. That religious form is atheism...Atheism is the most violent religion out there both in the physical damage it has caused to other human beings (Khmer Rouge, Maoism, Naziism) and in the bedeviling trance state in which it leaves its adherents.

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Originally Posted by Danik 2016

I didn´t quite grasp this idea of "viral meme" Yes/No probably because I don´t go in the social nets.

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You know, Danik, I was having a hard time grasping that one myself. ;-)

I´m sure there will be an explanation, Pompey.

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