Re: Constantine's cross may have been mushroom cloud from meteorimpact
From: Bryon Daly [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: The Fool [EMAIL PROTECTED] That's the thing about empires. They squeeze out competitive forces and it's those competitive forces that keep innovation and progress alive. For example there was one point when china was all set to conquer Europe, they had a massive fleet the likes never seen up to that time, and their ships were decidedly better than the ones of European nations at the time. The fleet was on it's way, rounding the horn of Africa, ready to descend upon Europe like locusts. But then the emperor died. The new emperor thought that having a big fleet was not such a good idea. The fleet was eventually scuttled and china is a third world country today. Likewise once upon a time the Japanese made the best guns, but by the mid eighteen hundreds there were no guns in Japan. Japan lost it's guns because the rulers ever so slowly restricted the making of / repair of guns. First they restricted how many guns could be made per year. Slowly they reduced this number eventually to zero. Then they restricted the repair of guns per year. So by the mid 1800's Japan no longer had any guns. The Idea is very simple and very sound. When you have large empires, popes, etc. they are able to restrict 'taboo' ideas / technology, etc. The other part is that usually no two emperors or popes have the same definition of what is 'taboo', so you get a whittling effect, one whittling this away, another whittling that away. It's not a quick process. So, would you say that it is bad for the US to participate in the ABM treaty, nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and/or nuclear test ban? Will doing so lead to the decline of the US? I'm assuming you'll say no, so my follow up is Why not? How does this differ from the China/Japan cases you mention? We model these things with huge super computers now so I don't know if this principle applies as much in this case. MAD still works against russia and china if not lesser powers. Competition is not nessesarily a good thing, it can lead to very bad consequence w/ respect to war. The U.S. has just the right amount of federal and state powers. The Federal system isn't an empire, and the states end up competeing with each other providing the perfect mix. It becomes harder to whittle away, technologies, idea, books, etc. What about these other controversial/restricted technologies, are restrictions on these acceptable? Depends on who is doing the research. I think the principle will apply here. No technology will be banned by every state, as someone somewhere sees an advantage in developing it. - cloning The U.S. has banned this (human), but some people in other countries are proclaiming work on it. - neutron bombs - frankenfood research The E.U. and other countries has banned a lot this type of stuff, but the U.S. has not. - human genetic experimentation/modification - biowarfare research - human fetal stem cell research U.S. banned but practiced in other countries. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Constantine's cross may have been mushroom cloud from meteorimpact
--- Damon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Or that it was a medieval German that invented the printing press. Jan Coffey wrote: The chinese invented the printing press. That german just copied it. Gutenberg is credited for inventing movable type. There had been other methods for pressing ink images onto paper for centuries before him, including the method brought over from China. With the new concept of movable type, a page press could be assembled in hours instead of days, and it had the added benefit of having all componets of the page being reusable, instead of, for example, a block carving which could only be used for that page. -- Matt ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Constantine's cross may have been mushroom cloud from meteorimpact
Jan Coffey wrote: You can't beleive everything you read, but you also can't allways trust the experts when it comes to a topic like history. Especialy when so many of them disagree. I haven't read Cahill, but I have read Guns Germs and Steel and have heard much praise for it from those on this list that I trust for their scientific expertise. What are your criticisms? Doug ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Constantine's cross may have been mushroom cloud from meteorimpact
--- Damon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Or that it was a medieval German that invented the printing press. The chinese invented the printing press. That german just copied it. = _ Jan William Coffey _ __ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Constantine's cross may have been mushroom cloud from meteorimpact
--- Doug Pensinger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jan Coffey wrote: You can't beleive everything you read, but you also can't allways trust the experts when it comes to a topic like history. Especialy when so many of them disagree. I haven't read Cahill, but I have read Guns Germs and Steel and have heard much praise for it from those on this list that I trust for their scientific expertise. What are your criticisms? To tell you the truth I don't remember. I borrowed the book from Damon (a different but supprisingly simmilar one to the one on this list obviously) who urged me to read it. I made it through the first f chapter which if I remember is nothing more than a quick review of probable timelines for humans up to a point that has soem considerable cultural component we can decern. But by a couple of chapters latter it was so inundated with stuff that I dissagreed with in opinion, represented doctrin that I do not subscribe to, or thought were completely fabricated (not by dimond of course). I remember being struck by how he would use truisms or -assumption- to explain one thing or another without supporting the assumption. And I kept dissagreeing with the assumption If I am not mistaken some of it had to do with his assumptions about Native American culture, but maybe that was another of Damon's suggested readings. In any event I started building a graph to represent what he was saying and it got so deep with so many dependent nodes that I contradicted with that I put the book down and tried to forget the experience. That was two years ago, my effort seems to have paid off. The one thing I do remember from the long conversation Dammon and I had on the book was that I thought Diamond should stick to physiology, and me to Computer Science. = _ Jan William Coffey _ __ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Constantine's cross may have been mushroom cloud from meteorimpact
--- Jan Coffey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: For a long time custer was considered by history to have been very brave and a good warior. As it turns out he wasn't. _ Jan William Coffey He wasn't? While he wasn't exactly brilliant in his final campaign, Custer's Civil War record is pretty impressive. You don't make Major General at 23 by accident. He did that after having _13_ horses shot out from under him. I would describe that as very brave under any circumstances. = Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] Freedom is not free http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Constantine's cross may have been mushroom cloud from meteorimpact
--- Jan Coffey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The chinese invented the printing press. That german just copied it. = _ Jan William Coffey The Chinese invented _movable type_, which is a very long way away from Gutenberg's printing press. Nor is there any evidence that Gutenberg copied it - so far as I am aware, there's no way he could even have known about the Chinese invention. He appears to have come up with the idea independently on his own. = Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] Freedom is not free http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Constantine's cross may have been mushroom cloud from meteorimpact
Doug Pensinger wrote: Would it have made much difference? Doug Who doesn't believe it would have. My understanding is that the religion itself has many tenets which inhibit both socialogical and scientific change. Not that Christianity didn't have some of those same characteristics at various times, but... It's fairly easy to abandon Christianity and continue to live in a Christian society, whereas this is harder in a muslim society, combined with the very act of abandoning Christian thinking often provokes mindsets and tangential thinking which can lead to advancements. I don't think it's a coincidence that muslim countries generally seem to have advanced about 300 years of our advances in the last 1300 years or so, and that's being generous in how the time is scaled... Cheers Russell C. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Constantine's cross may have been mushroom cloud from meteorimpact
Damon wrote: Finally, the idea that the Middle Ages were stagnant in any way shows a fundamental lack of understanding of history in general. Read a book. Gosh - that got a reaction! I think it's safe to say that Middle Ages were stagnant IN SOME WAYS, if we compare them to any other period of recorded history. It's not like the period 900-1000 compares to 1900-2000. Isn't that where the term Renaissance comes from? Cheers Russell C. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Constantine's cross may have been mushroom cloud from meteorimpact
Deborah Harrell wrote: --- Ronn!Blankenship [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The Fool wrote: If they are right then if it were not for this chance occurance [meteor impact before emperor Constantine], europe might be mithraist or mulsim and not christian. Would you prefer that? So then we'd wear, carry and set up bulls' horns instead of crosses? ;) Why not? It's not like people don't do that on their Caddys around here anyways :) Or display them in their dens. Julia Hook 'Em Maru ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Constantine's cross may have been mushroom cloud from meteorimpact
That's the thing about empires. They squeeze out competitive forces and it's those competitive forces that keep innovation and progress alive. For example there was one point when china was all set to conquer Europe, they had a massive fleet the likes never seen up to that time, and their ships were decidedly better than the ones of European nations at the time. The fleet was on it's way, rounding the horn of Africa, ready to descend upon Europe like locusts. But then the emperor died. The new emperor thought that having a big fleet was not such a good idea. The fleet was eventually scuttled and china is a third world country today. Likewise once upon a time the Japanese made the best guns, but by the mid eighteen hundreds there were no guns in Japan. Japan lost it's guns because the rulers ever so slowly restricted the making of / repair of guns. First they restricted how many guns could be made per year. Slowly they reduced this number eventually to zero. Then they restricted the repair of guns per year. So by the mid 1800's Japan no longer had any guns. The Idea is very simple and very sound. When you have large empires, popes, etc. they are able to restrict 'taboo' ideas / technology, etc. The other part is that usually no two emperors or popes have the same definition of what is 'taboo', so you get a whittling effect, one whittling this away, another whittling that away. It's not a quick process. But this effect ends when you add in the right amount of competitive forces. Jared Diamond in Guns Germs and Steel goes into this arguement in some depth. He points out that the geography of china and europe were important in the differences between the two cultures. China was and is essentially a single plain betweeen two great rivers with free movement across most of the land. This promoted the developement of a large complex civilization. Technology flourished in this environment but the same features that promoted early civilization and technology also made it prone to stagnation and loss of technology that occurred when the Ming Dynasty turned inward. They controlled the entire country and had no rivals. There was no initial negative effects of this decision but other civilizations were not turning away from technology. In Europe the geography was not conducive to this sort of consolidation. Mountain ranges broke the continent up into small pockets of civilization which competed with each other. A society that gave up technology would be defeated by a society that used and advanced technology. We are of course in danger of making the Ming mistake, the soviet union mistake. When we impede research in things like stem cell research this research is done elsewhere and the the elsewheres reap the benefit. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Constantine's cross may have been mushroom cloud from meteorimpact
That's the thing about empires. They squeeze out competitive forces and it's those competitive forces that keep innovation and progress alive. For example there was one point when china was all set to conquer Europe, they had a massive fleet the likes never seen up to that time, and their ships were decidedly better than the ones of European nations at the time. The fleet was on it's way, rounding the horn of Africa, ready to descend upon Europe like locusts. But then the emperor died. The new emperor thought that having a big fleet was not such a good idea. The fleet was eventually scuttled and china is a third world country today. Likewise once upon a time the Japanese made the best guns, but by the mid eighteen hundreds there were no guns in Japan. Japan lost it's guns because the rulers ever so slowly restricted the making of / repair of guns. First they restricted how many guns could be made per year. Slowly they reduced this number eventually to zero. Then they restricted the repair of guns per year. So by the mid 1800's Japan no longer had any guns. The Idea is very simple and very sound. When you have large empires, popes, etc. they are able to restrict 'taboo' ideas / technology, etc. The other part is that usually no two emperors or popes have the same definition of what is 'taboo', so you get a whittling effect, one whittling this away, another whittling that away. It's not a quick process. But this effect ends when you add in the right amount of competitive forces. Jared Diamond in Guns Germs and Steel goes into this arguement in some depth. He points out that the geography of china and europe were important in the differences between the two cultures. China was and is essentially a single plain betweeen two great rivers with free movement across most of the land. This promoted the developement of a large complex civilization. Technology flourished in this environment but the same features that promoted early civilization and technology also made it prone to stagnation and loss of technology that occurred when the Ming Dynasty turned inward. They controlled the entire country and had no rivals. There was no initial negative effects of this decision but other civilizations were not turning away from technology. In Europe the geography was not conducive to this sort of consolidation. Mountain ranges broke the continent up into small pockets of civilization which competed with each other. A society that gave up technology would be defeated by a society that used and advanced technology. We are of course in danger of making the Ming mistake, the soviet union mistake. When we impede research in things like stem cell research this research is done elsewhere and the the elsewheres reap the benefit. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Constantine's cross may have been mushroom cloud from meteorimpact
Russell Chapman wrote: Doug Pensinger wrote: Would it have made much difference? Doug Who doesn't believe it would have. My understanding is that the religion itself has many tenets which inhibit both socialogical and scientific change. Not that Christianity didn't have some of those same characteristics at various times, but... It's fairly easy to abandon Christianity and continue to live in a Christian society, whereas this is harder in a muslim society, combined with the very act of abandoning Christian thinking often provokes mindsets and tangential thinking which can lead to advancements. I don't think it's a coincidence that muslim countries generally seem to have advanced about 300 years of our advances in the last 1300 years or so, and that's being generous in how the time is scaled... It's a lot easier to abandon Christianity in a largely Christian society than it was 400 years ago. But there's been a lot of discussion about what it is to be a Christian, at least in Europe and in European colonies, since the Reformation, making it gradually easier. (Being able to literally walk away and then to be able to find someplace else to live didn't hurt, when there was still a lot of frontier.) Julia ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Constantine's cross may have been mushroom cloud from meteorimpact
Damon wrote: Finally, the idea that the Middle Ages were stagnant in any way shows a fundamental lack of understanding of history in general. Read a book. Any suggestions? Doug ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Constantine's cross may have been mushroom cloud from meteorimpact
Russell Chapman wrote: My understanding is that the religion itself has many tenets which inhibit both socialogical and scientific change. Not that Christianity didn't have some of those same characteristics at various times, but... It's fairly easy to abandon Christianity and continue to live in a Christian society, whereas this is harder in a muslim society, combined with the very act of abandoning Christian thinking often provokes mindsets and tangential thinking which can lead to advancements. I don't think it's a coincidence that muslim countries generally seem to have advanced about 300 years of our advances in the last 1300 years or so, and that's being generous in how the time is scaled... But would it have remained that way had it been embraced by a Roman Emperor in its infancy? My guess is that it would have been tweaked here and there to accommodate the culture that had adopted it and in the end it would pretty much resemble what we have today. But it's only a guess. As an aside, Christian fundys might not be as radical as their Muslim counterparts, but what _popular_ religion is closer to fanatic Muslims than Christian Fundamentalists? I think they have a good deal in common. Doug ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Constantine's cross may have been mushroom cloud from meteorimpact
--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: That's the thing about empires. They squeeze out competitive forces and it's those competitive forces that keep innovation and progress alive. For example there was one point when china was all set to conquer Europe, they had a massive fleet the likes never seen up to that time, and their ships were decidedly better than the ones of European nations at the time. The fleet was on it's way, rounding the horn of Africa, ready to descend upon Europe like locusts. But then the emperor died. The new emperor thought that having a big fleet was not such a good idea. The fleet was eventually scuttled and china is a third world country today. Likewise once upon a time the Japanese made the best guns, but by the mid eighteen hundreds there were no guns in Japan. Japan lost it's guns because the rulers ever so slowly restricted the making of / repair of guns. First they restricted how many guns could be made per year. Slowly they reduced this number eventually to zero. Then they restricted the repair of guns per year. So by the mid 1800's Japan no longer had any guns. The Idea is very simple and very sound. When you have large empires, popes, etc. they are able to restrict 'taboo' ideas / technology, etc. The other part is that usually no two emperors or popes have the same definition of what is 'taboo', so you get a whittling effect, one whittling this away, another whittling that away. It's not a quick process. But this effect ends when you add in the right amount of competitive forces. Jared Diamond in Guns Germs and Steel goes into this arguement in some depth. He points out that the geography of china and europe were important in the differences between the two cultures. China was and is essentially a single plain betweeen two great rivers with free movement across most of the land. This promoted the developement of a large complex civilization. Technology flourished in this environment but the same features that promoted early civilization and technology also made it prone to stagnation and loss of technology that occurred when the Ming Dynasty turned inward. They controlled the entire country and had no rivals. There was no initial negative effects of this decision but other civilizations were not turning away from technology. In Europe the geography was not conducive to this sort of consolidation. Mountain ranges broke the continent up into small pockets of civilization which competed with each other. A society that gave up technology would be defeated by a society that used and advanced technology. We are of course in danger of making the Ming mistake, the soviet union mistake. When we impede research in things like stem cell research this research is done elsewhere and the the elsewheres reap the benefit. Very interesting, however, Diamond is mostly full of it. he makes to many generalizations and references truisms that sometimes are not. Jan p.s. Call the kettle black if you like, but I didn't write books on the subject. = _ Jan William Coffey _ __ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Constantine's cross may have been mushroom cloud from meteorimpact
--- Doug Pensinger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Damon wrote: Finally, the idea that the Middle Ages were stagnant in any way shows a fundamental lack of understanding of history in general. Read a book. Any suggestions? Doug Not his again. They certainly were in many ways. Why don't you read a book like How the Irish Saved civilization. = _ Jan William Coffey _ __ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Constantine's cross may have been mushroom cloud from meteorimpact
--- Damon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Finally, the idea that the Middle Ages were stagnant in any way shows a fundamental lack of understanding of history in general. Read a book. Any suggestions? If you know nothing about the middle ages and want a good, concise, readable introduction, I'd recommend Hollister's _Medieval Europe_. Very entertaining and even humorous at times. For a thorough but readable introduction to feudalism read Carl Stephenson's _Medieval Feudalism_ to see why I go off on this topic periodically. Finally, to support my argument in these last few posts, read _The Twelfth Century Rennaisance_ by Hollister (currently OOP) or any of the other books dealing with the subject by Benson (_Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century_), Haskins ( _The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century_), or Swanson (_The Twelfth-Century Renaissance_). I'd also reccommend picking up Hollister's sourcebook companion for _Medieval Europe_ but it may currently be OOP. Can you offer any good talks or documentaries? Reviews even? I don't have time to spend on this topic to read something. I also don't quite understand your viewpoint. Are you saying that catholocism didn't stifle scientific advancement in the middle ages? = _ Jan William Coffey _ __ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Constantine's cross may have been mushroom cloud from meteorimpact
From: Damon [EMAIL PROTECTED] That's all very nice but you failed to directly address what I was referring to: you linked the Dark Ages with the rise of the Papacy. This shows a lack of research on your part, or even an acknowledgement of medieval history. The Dark Ages was a VERY specific period referred to by English historians describing the time between the withdraw of the Roman field army from Britain and the emergence of the Germanic kingdoms. The dark part refers to the fact that for this period extremely little written information is available (or so far discovered) and (at the time) only a little archaeological evidence. Pop historians (or just pop culture in general) applied the term to encompass the entire Early Middle Ages (approx 500 to 1100 AD) or in some cases the entire Middle Ages as a pejorative. But according to its actual definition, the Dark Ages never existed. I was referring to the more popular definition of dark ages. But my general definition of dark ages is about 500ad to the end of the crusades / renaissance. There is also the greek dark ages. Secondly, you link the idea that the rise in the Papacy and the dark ages is fundamentally linked somehow. Of course, if you actually researched early ecclesiastical history (post 500 to around 1000) you would realize that the power of the Catholic church during this period was tenuous at best, and survived only because of the sponsorship of some of the most powerful states of the Early Middle Ages: namely the Franks and to a certain (though different) extent the Eastern Roman Empire. Neither the Scandinavians, Slavs, Magyars, nor the Muslims cared one whit about the Catholic church, and in their own separate, individual ways, were threatening to destroy it. Finally, the idea that the Middle Ages were stagnant in any way shows a fundamental lack of understanding of history in general. Read a book. Are you saying that there was no loss of technologies from about the time of Constantine to the renaissance? Are you saying their was no loss of mathematics? Are you saying their was no loss of religion? Sure there was some progress made during that time, but there was a lot was lost for a thousand years. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Constantine's cross may have been mushroom cloud from meteorimpact
--- Damon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Not his again. They certainly were in many ways. Why don't you read a book like How the Irish Saved civilization. Just FYI this book has been criticized by professional historians pretty thoroughly. Its pop history. Not all profesional historians agree on that. In fact I beleive it is only a few very loud catholics who have a problem with that book. Since they are not impartial, I don't trust their opinons. I saw a doc on it a year or two ago and it got me to spend the time reading the book. I know a lot of historians think that Diamond is way off the mark as well. History is one of those feilds where polotics and opinion mean a lot more than fact anyway. There are some things you can know, and others that depend on who wrote the history. I have first hand experience with this where many historians have written that Native Americans had no writing and no history, and that just was not the case. For a long time custer was considered by history to have been very brave and a good warior. As it turns out he wasn't. You can't beleive everything you read, but you also can't allways trust the experts when it comes to a topic like history. Especialy when so many of them disagree. = _ Jan William Coffey _ __ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Constantine's cross may have been mushroom cloud from meteorimpact
Damon, Is your last name D*##0^? You sound like DD word for word. --- Damon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Can you offer any good talks or documentaries? Reviews even? I don't have time to spend on this topic to read something. I also don't quite understand your viewpoint. Are you saying that catholocism didn't stifle scientific advancement in the middle ages? No, what the Fool contended was that the rise of the Papacy and Catholicism has directly responsible for the dark ages. My contention is that this is impossible because a) the Dark Ages did not exist, at least by the pop history definitition, b) the power of the catholic church was tenuous at best during the Early MA, and it was not until much later (the High MA) that the power of the church grew, precisely at the same time Europe was experiencing a literary, technological, economic, and social Renaissance of I think that if we got into specifics that we would disagree, but in generalizations this fits. Also, I think you are streatching the timelines and not giving enough credit to the catholic church. its own (which was, in fact, the second such development since the end of Roman authority in the West). Some time ago I speculated about the impact of classical learning on the development of science in Western civilization. Specifically, I wondered whether Greek learning was as much a hindrance as a help to this development. Along with Greek methodology you also had the baggage of the more daft ideas they had. Word for word daft ideas when refering to the greeks. D*##0^ was very convincing in our 8 hour conversation. Are you the same guy? = _ Jan William Coffey _ __ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Constantine's cross may have been mushroom cloud from meteorimpact
--- Ronn!Blankenship [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The Fool wrote: If they are right then if it were not for this chance occurance [meteor impact before emperor Constantine], europe might be mithraist or mulsim and not christian. Would you prefer that? So then we'd wear, carry and set up bulls' horns instead of crosses? ;) http://www.ukans.edu/history/index/europe/ancient_rome/E/Gazetteer/Periods/Roman/Topics/Religion/Mithraism/David_Fingrut**.html Mithras, God of the Morning, our trumpets waken the Wall! Rome is above the Nations, but Thou art over all! Rudyard Kipling, British author and poet; 'A Song to Mithras' Cow-Eyed Hera Maru ;) __ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Constantine's cross may have been mushroom cloud from meteorimpact
Ronn!Blankenship wrote: At 10:34 PM 6/23/03 -0500, The Fool wrote: If they are right then if it were not for this chance occurance, europe might be mithraist or mulsim and not christian. Would you prefer that? Would it have made much difference? Doug Who doesn't believe it would have. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Constantine's cross may have been mushroom cloud from meteorimpact
From: Damon [EMAIL PROTECTED] The rise of the dark ages along with the rise the popes and 'universal' (catholic) belief, are hardly coincident. It was only when the absolute authority of the popes began to disintegrate into hundreds of competeing factions that europe began it's upward path again. If you are after facts then why don't you go and study both the origin and the idea of the Dark Ages as well as Early Medieval ecclesiastical history. Your above statement shows just how incorrect and biased you really are. That's the thing about empires. They squeeze out competitive forces and it's those competitive forces that keep innovation and progress alive. For example there was one point when china was all set to conquer Europe, they had a massive fleet the likes never seen up to that time, and their ships were decidedly better than the ones of European nations at the time. The fleet was on it's way, rounding the horn of Africa, ready to descend upon Europe like locusts. But then the emperor died. The new emperor thought that having a big fleet was not such a good idea. The fleet was eventually scuttled and china is a third world country today. Likewise once upon a time the Japanese made the best guns, but by the mid eighteen hundreds there were no guns in Japan. Japan lost it's guns because the rulers ever so slowly restricted the making of / repair of guns. First they restricted how many guns could be made per year. Slowly they reduced this number eventually to zero. Then they restricted the repair of guns per year. So by the mid 1800's Japan no longer had any guns. The Idea is very simple and very sound. When you have large empires, popes, etc. they are able to restrict 'taboo' ideas / technology, etc. The other part is that usually no two emperors or popes have the same definition of what is 'taboo', so you get a whittling effect, one whittling this away, another whittling that away. It's not a quick process. But this effect ends when you add in the right amount of competitive forces. When you have an array of competing ideas / technologies, from different communities, selection sets in and those who tend to limit and restrict thoughts / technologies are selected against, while those who don't restrict things are selected for. The same process happened in Europe with the rising up of the emperors of Rome and even worse the popes. Rome burned libraries under the emperors, but it was worse when the popes also gained power. At the council of nice the emperor Constantine was able to make taboo a great many things, and to set a great many thing orthodox. Out went a lot of competing ideas about the divinity of christ, in it's place they set christ as divine as an orthodox tenet and restricted the idea that christ wasn't divine. They also set in stone the 3 = 1 doctrine, and restricted the 3 = 3 doctrines. Arianism became anathema and heresy. And I think you know what I think of republicans who want to restrict thoughts, ideas, science, evolution, and return us to the authoritarian power of the religious leaders. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
