The X virtuous men of history or whatever

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 6:44 pm

Talisman wrote:
Got your iron chariot?

ahh, that's what it is. I was trying to remember which one it was. I almost was about to google it until you gave me the answer.

silly god, he can only go to the mountain but the valleys, nah that's where the people with the shiny rims on their iron chariots be at!

Draco_Argentum · Post by **Draco_Argentum** » Wed Oct 08, 2008 9:31 am

Wait, how in the fucking fuck does Judges 19 end like that. Aside from being vile its completely out of left field.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Jul 13, 2009 9:14 am

What's up with Moses' Israelites? Have they lost their minds? They have got to be the stupidest muggles ever in fiction and that's saying a lot.

What's going on here?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Jul 13, 2009 3:24 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:What's up with Moses' Israelites? Have they lost their minds? They have got to be the stupidest muggles ever in fiction and that's saying a lot.

What's going on here?

One: Exodus never happened. Like, at all. The Israelites were not slaves in Egypt, they were nomadic goat herders before they carved out a little section of Palestine. Moses is a fictional character. Not a fictionalized historical person like Solomon, but a whole cloth fictional dude.

Two: The Israelites had a bunch of gods. The cult of YHWH is a nasty and intolerant one that gradually took over. You can see little flashes of it with Solomon's temple to Astarte and the eventual burning of it by intolerant wackos.

Three: Exodus is a later generated piece of propaganda to attempt to retcon the cult of YHWH as having been in soul control the entire time. And it's really poorly written.

-Username17

violence in the media · Mon Jul 13, 2009 5:00 pm

That sounds interesting, do you have any links or recommended reading for that?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Jul 13, 2009 5:39 pm

To be fair, let's start with the counter arguments such as they are:
God Said It!
I believe it!

Right. With that out of the way, the loudest condemnation in the archaeological record of the story of Exodus is merely its silence. There's no evidence at all that any of that shit ever happened. It's just a story. It's not a romaticization of a real event, because not a single corroborating detail has ever been found despite the fact that archaeologists have been searching for biblical crap more exhaustively and fervently than anything else for hundreds of years.

The NY Times did a good piece on that.

Exodus just isn't history. Neither is Genesis. They are no more related to real events than Hans My Hedgehog.

-Username17

Caedrus · Post by **Caedrus** » Mon Jul 13, 2009 6:20 pm

Count_Arioch_the_28th wrote: Is this one of the instances where Christianity isn't supposed to make sense?

There are parts that are supposed to make sense?

FrankTrollman wrote: I believe it!

I like how he misspelled "skeptics" in the title.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Mon Jul 13, 2009 7:49 pm

Count Arioch wrote:I never understood why Judas is portrayed as such a prick.

I think the problem is really the thirty silver pieces. Judas didn't just denounce Jesus - he sold Jesus. It makes it look like his motivation was pure greed rather than any sense of morality/principle/justification that could be brought into the situation.

Bigode wrote:BTW, since Maj once translated my username: is there anyone here who speaks Portuguese?

Unfortunately, I do not. Your user name just happens to be one of five random Portuguese words I know.

Crissa wrote:But he didn't walk across deserts because they were there. And I'd find that far more interesting than religion.

Why would a mountain climber give a crap about a desert?

You're into chicks and horses. Other people aren't. Some people are into religion. You aren't.

PhoneLobster wrote:In the mean time we KNOW that religions are highly oppressive towards artists and artistic traditions and regularly kill artists and destroy priceless works of art and limit what can be created and who gets to see it.

I oppress hundreds of small plants in my garden. I call them weeds. This doesn't mean I don't foster the growth of plants.

Islam, for example... They don't generally do the whole drawing people thing. To that end, an Islamic artist had a really tough time getting a job painting portraits. On the other hand, the prohibition against drawing people turned into their totally gorgeous and badass art of calligraphy.

Draco wrote:Wait, how in the fucking fuck does Judges 19 end like that. Aside from being vile its completely out of left field.

Because in Judges 20 the incident was horrific enough to cause a war. The guy cuts up the body of his dead concubine and sends it to the twelve tribes as sort of an accusation of how horrible her rapists were. Everyone gets all up in arms (literally), and declare war on the asshats who killed her, and God guarantees victory over the rapists.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Jul 13, 2009 7:55 pm

I'm not talking about all of the Israelite behavior of all time (because we would just be here all day), I'm talking about just the shit that happened when they were wandering the desert with Moses.

Biggest stupidity of all: Do you have one of those bibles that have a map in it? Take a look at where the 'Promised Land' and Egypt is. This really shouldn't have taken them, even with hundreds of thousands of people, more than a couple of months.

Moses (and thus God) specifically told them not to hoard the manna. They did anyway. They got off lucky that time.

Yahweh personally appears right in front of Sinai (before the Ten Commandments) and personally tells them that the biggest thing that will piss him off is people worshipping other gods. So what do they do? Having not been able to wait for much longer than a month, they beg for Aaron to make them a god who does so for them. This is when Jehova starts laying down the law, killing brothers and shit.

The dumbshit Israelites start whining to YHWH about wanting flesh (meat) and God gives them a ridiculous amount out of spite. This should be more than enough indication to anyone that God does not like whiners.

Then God tells Moses to organize a scouting party to look into Canaan and Joshua/Caleb's crew comes back. The Israelites freak the fuck out and scream at Moses, to the point where it causes a rebellion. God gets so pissed at this that he dooms everyone to wander in the desert for forty years.

Moses, who knows what a stickler God is for his commands, disobeys God and strikes a rock to create water rather than speaking to it. Aaron gets a premature death because of this.

There's a second rebellion, which ends with a lot of deaths. That's all that needs to be said about this.

Aaron and Miriam talk shit about Moses behind his back. Nevermind the fact that Moses was specifically breaking one of Gods' commandments, Aaron especially should've known that Yahweh plays favorites.

There's more than that, but that's all I can remember for right now. Simply put, the Israelites are dumb as dirt and if I was The Big Guy I would've picked some other people as my chosen race. How about the Persians? They seemed to have it going on. Probably too tolerant, though. Then how about the Assyrians?

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Mon Jul 13, 2009 8:01 pm

Lago wrote:Biggest stupidity of all: Do you have one of those bibles that have a map in it? Take a look at where the 'Promised Land' and Egypt is. This really shouldn't have taken them, even with hundreds of thousands of people, more than a couple of months.

Exactly. God led Moses and his peeps around for the equivalent of a couple human generations - so the old guys with the noncompatible polytheistic ways would die off and the younglings wouldn't know any better.

Isolation is one of the best tools of indoctrination. That's one reason why the Mormons moved to Utah.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Jul 13, 2009 8:15 pm

The journey wasn't supposed to take forty years, though; it only became that way after people flipped the fuck out and thought that a God that curbstomped an Egyptian army couldn't kill a couple of metaphorical giants.

Ganbare Gincun · Post by **Ganbare Gincun** » Tue Jul 14, 2009 4:46 am

Maj wrote:I oppress hundreds of small plants in my garden. I call them weeds. This doesn't mean I don't foster the growth of plants.

Islam, for example... They don't generally do the whole drawing people thing. To that end, an Islamic artist had a really tough time getting a job painting portraits. On the other hand, the prohibition against drawing people turned into their totally gorgeous and badass art of calligraphy.

Pulling weeds from your garden isn't really the same thing as executing people because they dared to dabble in artistic ventures not approved by the theocracy. And providing funding to people that engage in artistic ventures approved by the theocratic dictatorship doesn't really balance things out either.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Tue Jul 14, 2009 5:24 am

Ganbare Gincun wrote:
Pulling weeds from your garden isn't really the same thing as executing people because they dared to dabble in artistic ventures not approved by the theocracy. And providing funding to people that engage in artistic ventures approved by the theocratic dictatorship doesn't really balance things out either.

Somebody hasn't pulled weeds for even a half hour. Let those Ragweeds know who be the boss. With the whip if necessary!

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Wed Jul 15, 2009 1:34 am

Ganbare Gincun wrote:Pulling weeds from your garden isn't really the same thing as executing people because they dared to dabble in artistic ventures not approved by the theocracy. And providing funding to people that engage in artistic ventures approved by the theocratic dictatorship doesn't really balance things out either.

Are you objecting to my analogy because human beings are never as meaningless as a plant? Because the process of weeding - whether for plants or people - is exactly what I described.

You choose what to hold valuable, completely and utterly destroy what's not that thing of value, and then nurture that valuable thing.

I certainly don't transplant the weeds that I rip out of my garden - I want them dead and even dare go so far as mass executions. I shove all those dead little plant bodies into a garbage bag and haul them off to go get recycled by worms into fancy forms of dirt. And I make sure that all the plants I do want to grow have excellent soil and compost, lots of water and sunlight.

Weeding my garden doesn't mean I don't love plants. It just means I don't love those plants. And weeding out artists doesn't mean I don't like art; it means I don't like that art.

Overlooking this as a major form of art...

...because the dominant religion believed that this kind of art was taboo...

...may not be a human rights violation, but it is a terrible oversight of the talent, ingenuity, and creativity on the part of the artists who did thrive. You're essentially blaming the tomatoes because the gardener killed dandelions to produce them.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Jul 15, 2009 9:32 am

Maj wrote:Are you objecting to my analogy because human beings are never as meaningless as a plant?

No, I'm objecting to your analogy because your analogy is bat shit fucking insane.

Censorship does not create opportunities for art to flourish, it reduces the amount of art. If the calligraphy and crap would not survive in a world where the dominant religion of the area wasn't going out and murdering people who made representational art - this is because the calligraphy would be outcompeted by the representational art. That is, people would like the other art more and patronize it more.

If the censorship of the religion changes the art that is produced, then by definition the religion is changing the art for the worse. That's how censorship works. If people liked the other art more, they'd produce it and consume it in preference to the potentially censored works in the first place. That it takes censors and threats of violence to force producers and consumers to make the switch means that they are getting art that they don't like as much.

Religion is now, and always has been, a negative influence on artistic endeavor. No exceptions.

-Username17

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Wed Jul 15, 2009 12:40 pm

That's bullshit, Frank.

Myth and religion make art powerful with social resonance and provide positive inspiration. I seriously doubt that there would be anywhere near the volume of art if there were no religions or myth.

The Laughing Cavalier is cool and all, but it's not the Sistine Chapel and never will be. Michelangelo isn't famous for the Laurentian Library.

You're also assuming that artistic expression is somehow stopped by limiting its media. Censorship is not a good thing, but it doesn't totally dam up artistic expression.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Wed Jul 15, 2009 1:02 pm

mean_liar wrote:I seriously doubt that there would be anywhere near the volume of art if there were no religions or myth.

Why?

What are you saying here "art needs stories"? So what? Those stories do not need to be ones sponsored by churches. Indeed, I don't know about you, but I find the vast majority of iconographic religious art to be genuinely bland. And the bland shit like icons of saints are the art pieces that most fervently represent this "powerful mythological message" or whatever.

If what you are saying is remotely true then why the FUCK isn't the Catholic church in charge of Hollywood? And if they aren't then surely by your reasoning it would be good for all of us if they took it over as a new propaganda front tomorrow. Yes?

Or perhaps the rise of atheism and secularism that came with the enlightenment has actually seen the largest boom in the arts, mediums of arts, volume of art and quality of art in all of human history?

I say perhaps, when I mean, it definitely has.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Jul 15, 2009 4:24 pm

mean liar: Prove it. People's art is colored and indeed defined and limited by what they believe. Throughout history, the vast majority of people have toiled in ignorance and fear, living in Carl Sagan's demon haunted world. But that doesn't make their stuff any better.

Arthur C. Clarke's fiction isn't any worse because he's a nonbeliever. Ayn Rand's isn't any better. One's beliefs about the way the universe work frankly have no effect on the quality of one's work outside the realm of predictive science fiction.

I've been in the high throne room of the Holy Roman Empire. The art there is terrible. And it's dreadful because it's pre-Renaissance and post-Classical. In short it falls during the 800 years of European history after the Christian censors destroyed all the art schools, forbade all the musical and painting techniques, and generally ushered in the dark ages. And it's before world trade and a weakening Christian consensus brought artistic techniques from elsewhere in the world into parts of Europe. You don't get to hold up he Sistine Chapel as some marvelous gift of the Christians to the world - it comes at the end of them suppressing all art for hundreds of years.

The Christians took away this:

And left us with this:

-Username17

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Wed Jul 15, 2009 5:18 pm

You're blaming the Church for suppressing art when you should be blaming the collapse of the Roman Empire. Europe's non-Greek 2d art contribution prior to Rome was basically nil and only fired up again when the economy allowed patronage enough for artists to create. It wasn't Church suppression that stifled art, and even then you have awesome stuff like illuminated manuscripts.

Ultimately the only real brake on art production is economic, not social. While Europe was shitting itself and wallowing in feudalism and basically brokeass, the Byzantines were still cranking out stuff along with the Chinese (Ming, Yuan, Song). You basically needed some sort of power structure that allowed someone to sit around and paint all day: that means either patronage or monks, who created the vast majority of the artwork until modern times.

The enlightenment brought about usury and money and that created art It didn't arise out of a rejection of God and myth, it came out of capitalism and trade and letters of credit.

And PhoneLobster, I doubt very much if you were to compile a "top ten" of world art that some religion or myth wasn't behind the majority of them. The fact is and remains that myth and human fascination with myth is probably the most profound source of imagination and creation. That you don't think so is your opinion but I doubt its universally held.

I assume its just your ignorance that leads you to state that the atheism and secularism of the enlightenment led to the greatest art in the world. The art considered the "greatest" is, generally speaking, from the European Renaissance and is very heavy on Classical myth and Judeo-Christian religion.

And to somehow think that Hollywood doesn't traffic in repackaging myth over and over and over and over again is also just ignorance. You can seriously go through just about every major movie ever made and tie it back to some ancient myth or another. There are very few stories that don't recycle the same myths and tropes over and over again, and people love them today just as much as they always did.

Science doesn't paint, wonder does.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Jul 15, 2009 5:37 pm

mean liar wrote: You're blaming the Church for suppressing art when you should be blaming the collapse of the Roman Empire.

Wait. What?

The Christians are the ones who burned everything and suppressed all the books at the end of the Roman Empire. Are you seriously saying that I shouldn't blame the people burning books for the fact that the books got burned?

What is that even supposed to mean?

-Username17

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Wed Jul 15, 2009 5:59 pm

Yes, Justinian II was emperor of Europe from 450 until forever.

Also, books are all art and painting and sculpture in addition to books, because they're awesome that way.

So... what? What are you trying to posit here?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Jul 15, 2009 6:15 pm

The purges of Justinian destroyed all the knowledge. All the architecture, all the sculptors, all the painters, all the writings that they could find. Those things were done by the apprenticeship system back then, if you break the chain of master and student for a single generation the art is lost forever.

Religious censorship doesn't just destroy artistic pieces, it keeps traditions and skills from being passed down and built upon. It's a really, really bad thing.

-Username17

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Wed Jul 15, 2009 6:36 pm

And you don't think its unnecessary hyperbole to say that this act contributed to your contention that "Religion is now, and always has been, a negative influence on artistic endeavor. No exceptions."?

Like, church patronage of the arts doesn't count. Eastern Taoist poetry and painting doesn't count. Indian illustrations of the Bhagavad Gita don't count. The Sistine Chapel doesn't count. Classical sculpture doesn't count, at least the ones involving mythological tales. The minarets of the Taj Mahal are gone.

It's okay to admit you're wrong.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Jul 15, 2009 9:11 pm

No. I genuinely do not think that it is unnecessary or hyperbolic to point out that religion holds back the arts. More religious societies produce less art. Universally.

Taoism does not create poets, it comes down on poets that would or could produce poetry it does not approve of. Islam does not create beautiful music, it comes down on musicians who produce music t does not approve of.

It's not a positive thing. It's a negative thing. That some beautiful art escapes the harsh scythe of religious persecution does not mean that religion has a positive - or even neutral - effect on the arts. Religion is anti-art, just as religion is anti-science. Sometimes its effects are smaller (such as in Sufi areas) and sometimes its effects are larger (such as in Wahhabi areas), but the sign of the effect is always the same. And it's always negative.

Religious people do not achieve things in the arts and sciences becaus of their religion. Sometimes they are allowed to achieve things in these areas in spite of religion.

-Username17

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Wed Jul 15, 2009 10:31 pm

Frank, I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but a Taoist poet does not produce inferior work because Taoism restricts her beliefs any more than an Atheist poet produces inferior work because Atheism restricts her beliefs. People always work within their own ideological frameworks, and those frameworks are inherently restrictive. This is true whether the ideology is Christianity or Communism.