On 12/22/2015 4:31 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Wed, Dec 23, 2015 at 1:07 AM, John Clark <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:On Tue, Dec 22, 2015 at 4:18 PM, Telmo Menezes <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>wrote: > In realty, 16th century Spaniards couldn't give a rat's ass about human rights. True without the slightest doubt. > It's just that the Aztecs were worshiping the wrong deity Also true. > they could have respected the historical and anthropological value of Aztec temples, instead of burning everything down to extract the gold They could have, but to respect something it must be respectable and I guess the Spaniards didn't find human sacrifice to be respectable.You value the telescope because you have scientific curiosity. In fact you place scientific curiosity as a high value. I agree with you. I also understand that you are curious about stars and like physics. I am also curious about stars. Don't you see that people who are curious about ancient cultures have a similar drive? Just in a different field on inquiry?
Their religion is not "a different field of inquiry". Like all religions, it's field, or swamp, of faith. If they ever conducted any experiments to determine the characteristics of Mauna they would discover there was no such being.
Why is preventing one type of scientific endeavor ok (destroying Aztec temples)
? What makes you think they were destroyed as a scientific endeavor? There are many that survive and many that predate the Aztecs. There are plenty of Aztec temples. I've walked up the steps where they threw down the bodies of slaves after they cut out their heart.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mesoamerican_pyramids
but objecting to the telescope not ok? You could even argue that the former is graver because the data was destroyed forever, while the telescope can always be built.
Or you could argue that the actual characteristics of stars and their planets are more important than a century of mythic history recorded by a savage tribe in Mexico.
> there was no Nazi culture.Don't be silly, they had customs and social institutions so of course there was a Nazi culture, a malignant culture but a culture nevertheless. What the Nazi's lacked wasn't culture but civilization. Well ok, in the same sense that Scientology has a culture I guess. > What I am saying is that you cannot bomb a population into reason But you should be able to say a population is acting moronically if that population is acting moronically.Of course you should. But if you want your telescope, it might be more productive to try to empathize.
Or elect less ignorant and superstitious legislators.
Perhaps there's a way to make everyone happy. There is also legitimate scientific curiosity to be had about the belief system of those people, how they see the world, etc. It's a piece of the puzzle towards understanding our own species.
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