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.Originally Posted by Red Terror
In the meantime, happy hunting!
Last edited by Pompey Bum; 09-08-2016 at 08:53 PM.
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.
"You understand well enough what slavery is, but freedom you have never experienced, so you do not know if it tastes sweet or bitter. If you ever did come to experience it, you would advise us to fight for it not with spears only, but with axes too." - Herodotus
https://consolationofreading.wordpress.com/ - my book blog!
Feed the Hungry!
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.
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
There has never been a single, great revolution in history without civil war. --- Vladimir Lenin
There are decades when nothing happens and then there are weeks when decades happen. --- Vladimir Lenin
I'll take that as a panicked surrender. ;-)
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.
Last edited by YesNo; 09-09-2016 at 11:44 PM.
Thanks for introducing me to this interesting historical figure, Red.
I think that when we stop querelling about our different gods or faiths, we will have advanced considerably in our human evolution.
"I seemed to have sensed also from an early age that some of my experiences as a reader would change me more as a person than would many an event in the world where I sat and read. "
Gerald Murnane, Tamarisk Row
Is irreligious bigotry so common now that it's become invisible?
"So-Crates: The only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing." "That's us, dude!"- Bill and Ted
"This ain't over."- Charles Bronson
Feed the Hungry!
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.
I didn´t quite grasp this idea of "viral meme" Yes/No probably because I don´t go in the social nets.
Last edited by Danik 2016; 09-10-2016 at 10:43 PM.
"I seemed to have sensed also from an early age that some of my experiences as a reader would change me more as a person than would many an event in the world where I sat and read. "
Gerald Murnane, Tamarisk Row
Oh, this one as well.
You know, Danik, I was having a hard time grasping that one myself. ;-)
Last edited by Pompey Bum; 09-11-2016 at 07:25 AM.
I´m sure there will be an explanation, Pompey.
"I seemed to have sensed also from an early age that some of my experiences as a reader would change me more as a person than would many an event in the world where I sat and read. "
Gerald Murnane, Tamarisk Row
...........
Last edited by Pompey Bum; 09-11-2016 at 12:18 AM.
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