> This might help approach the reasons that I find myself unable
> to hold a conversation with Tom. Two points.
>
Carrol, this is getting to be coquetry. If you are unable to hold a conversation, I
hope it doesn't mean we have to have endless meta-conversations about the reasons
why. And you cannot coat-trail like this:
>I deny that anyone ever had such an idea.
This was apropos of whether, as Tom asked 'man [sic: personally I don't see why we
should let women off the hook here] can or wants to dominate the planet'. If you
think no-one ever had such an idea you should say why, because in fact people have
always had that idea. One of the worst would-be dominators was Genghis Khan, whose
hunting forays so cleared and devastated the steppes of central Asia of wildlife
that he was obliged to issue the first known decrees on wildlife preservation.
I don't believe you think that the Faustian dream of Bacon to plunder nature,
dominate it etc, which set out the entire agenda of modern science, never actually
happened. Come on, Carrol! Even the early Christian Church based its theological
principles not so much on the idea that the meek would inherit the earth, as that
the old pagan gods had proved ineffective at dominating natural forces, because
actually they were just human artefacts. Christianity based itself on the idea of
service to an invisible, but all-dominating God 'in whose image we are formed'.
Dominating the elements *for the purposes of humankind* was the essence of the Xian
message, repeatedly countless times by early apologists and divines, for example
Aristides the philosopher, who told the emperor Hadrian in AD 125 that "Great then
is the error into which the Barbarians wandered in worshipping lifeless images which
can do nothing to help them. And I am led to wonder, O King, at their philosophers,
how that even they went astray, and gave the name of gods to images which were made
in honour of the elements; and that their sages did not perceive that the elements
also are dissoluble and perishable. For if a small part of an element is dissolved
or destroyed, the whole of it may be dissolved and destroyed. If then the elements
themselves are dissolved and destroyed and forced to be subject to another that is
more stubborn than they, and if they are not in their nature gods, why, for sooth,
do they call the images which are made in their honour, God? Great, then, is the
error which the philosophers among them have brought upon their followers."
Aristides preferred to believe that "an ever-abiding nature without beginning and
without end, immortal, perfect, and incomprehensible" was the prime mover who
controlled everything that went on. If Marx was right, and humans manufactured God
in their own image, it is easy to see in what sense Xianity was a step forward: it
enabled people to stop being superstitious and helpless in the face of natural
forces, and learn (thru science) the secrets of control. Hence the celebrated inner
connection between religions and natural science.
You can find the same ideas echoing around all major religions and philosophies. So
what do you mean, that noone 'ever had such an idea'?
mark
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