The X virtuous men of history or whatever

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Wed Jul 15, 2009 10:47 pm

mean_liar wrote:The art considered the "greatest" is, generally speaking, from the European Renaissance and is very heavy on Classical myth and Judeo-Christian religion.

So... not from a religious dominated era then but from the downfall of one.

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.

Oh I see, you think the Catholic church already runs Hollywood and every movie ever is a biblical parable!

Wait. What?

No. What?

Are you CRAZY?

Science doesn't paint, wonder does.

No. Science very much does paint and it does it better. Not just realism but beauty is a type of science.

Remember that all that great art that came with the renaissance came with a new understanding of science new laws of art were discovered and defined. Things about the proportions of the human body, the nature of light and color, concepts of perspective and space, those same artists that painted the great works of the renaisance were going around dissecting dead bodies to learn the medical science of anatomy that fueled their artistic skills.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 12:22 am

I was referring to Moses, not a mountain climber.

The mountain or desert or sky and triumph of man is exaltation in itself, it needs no religion.

On that point, I will be camping in a place with no plants, no trees, no water, no businesses, and all life there will be in hibernation. Except people. I will be there a week, and be comfortable, healthy, happy, produce my own electricity, and carry my own waste products off when we are done.

That's far more spiritual and advancing than any religion. A city, built from nothing, for a week, filled with energy, art, and freedom, in a place where nothing exists but air and flat ground to support human life. And afterwards, all that will remain are the footsteps upon the ground... Until the next rain in mountain hundreds of miles distant from it.

-Crissa

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 1:26 am

Phone Lobster wrote:Why?

What are you saying here "art needs stories"? So what? Those stories do not need to be ones sponsored by churches.

Actually, this speaks a little of what my previous post tangentially touched on. Art is a human necessity, much like explanations of how the world works and stories.

If you 'censor' religion, you'll still end up with a pile of stories. They'll just be different stories. If you 'censor' one type of art, you'll still end up with piles of art. They'll just be in a different style.

But religion actually exists, and it has contributed immensely to the various styles of art throughout history, as well as to the diversity of artistic forms across cultures.

Catharz wrote: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.

Exactly.

To dismiss someone who creates beautiful masterpieces despite their limitations is not only heartless, but it's rather narrow in its scope of what actually is to be considered art.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 2:51 am

Maj wrote:If you 'censor' religion

Stop right there religion apologist.

Your side is the one that wants to censor things.

Secularism rather specifically is only about stopping religions from censoring and controlling those that do not agree.

If you regard THAT as censoring your religious expression then your religious expression is especially odious in nature.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 3:07 am

PhoneLobster wrote:Secularism rather specifically is only about stopping religions from censoring and controlling those that do not agree.

Non-sequitur. I'm not commenting on the state of a philosophy; quite frankly I don't even care about your anathema for religion. Go ahead - hate it. Why should that bother me?

My point - thanks for missing it - is that when you place restrictions that suck on people, they try to overcome them. And quite frequently, there are some awesome outside-the-box innovations that come about as a result. That doesn't mean that oppression is stellar; it means the human spirit is.

I see it much like meme evolution. In human genetics, people adapt to their climate. Skin color, for example... Pigmentation of the skin controls for creation of Vitamin D in sun-deficient climates, and prevents massive burning in sun-prolific ones. It's adaptation and it's cool because it means that human beings can survive just about anywhere.

The memes of art and stories are the same way, only they're controlled by the environments that people make in addition to the environments that earth provides. And sometimes the environments that people create violate basic human rights, but the memes still persist despite it. Yes, oppression is lame, but human ingenuity seriously rocks the house. And it's OK for you to totally hate Islamic rulers for killing portraitists (did they actually slaughter dissenting artists?), but I'm still going to stand all amazed when looking up at the Taj. Whether you like it or not, it's still art.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 3:21 am

So now you are saying religion is to art what natural selection is to nature.

Ie it randomly kills vast groups of people without some specific trait leaving only those some other random trait to survive and prosper.

This is your infantile and genocidal "humans as weeds to be killed" argument again.

It was disgusting and wrong the first time.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 3:27 am

Pigmentation is not an adaptation, there's no inherent advantage to having lighter skin. But lighter skin peoples don't incur the survival problems in the darker climes.

You have it backwards.

-Crissa

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 4:12 am

PhoneLobster wrote:So now you are saying religion is to art what natural selection is to nature.

No. I'm saying adversity is, and it doesn't matter if the name of adversity is the Catholic Church, Kim Jong Il, or some personally developed sense of propriety. Religion just happened to be the adversary in this discussion, and since you hate it, any response on my part to what you've said is a waste of time. I'll work towards not making that mistake again.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 4:22 am

You specifically used evolutionary examples as "adversity". Which by definition are either death of individuals or death of their genetic line.

You had also previously referred to Religions propensity to kill and torture artists with a metaphor about killing unwanted plants in your garden to make it grow nice.

But "adversity" hey? "Adversity breeds great art?" First of all that isn't true. As I already mentioned advancements in the science of technical artistic knowledge and social wealth and freedom breed great art.

But even if it were true... are you seriously advocating that in the absence of religion torturing and killing artists, we should go ahead and torture and kill them anyway to breed greater art?

Because IF it were true that religion was "doing a good thing for art and human culture" by killing and oppressing artists, then hey, if it is good then it's the right thing to do...

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 4:25 am

If we have it so as to not suffer disadvantages in darker climes, then it's a fucking adaptation. We have it to absorb what, more vitamin D? Clearly humans suffered by having less, so skin tone lightened.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 4:53 am

There's nothing 'clear' about it. Dark pigmentation people do not have to consume more sunlight or vitamin D than light pigmentation people in darker climes.

Don't be an idiot.

-Crissa

erik · Post by **erik** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 6:07 am

Crissa wrote:Pigmentation is not an adaptation, there's no inherent advantage to having lighter skin.

There must be some sort of advantage as cave dwelling creatures often revert to albinism.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 6:09 am

The energy savings of not creating that pigmentation.

...Which is not an issue for humans.

-Crissa

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 7:44 am

clikml wrote:
Crissa wrote:Pigmentation is not an adaptation, there's no inherent advantage to having lighter skin.
There must be some sort of advantage as cave dwelling creatures often revert to albinism.

Lots of creatures become albinos randomly in every generation. In an area with light, the fact that they look like a fishing lure means that they get eaten with such regularity that they rarely have kids. In the dark it's not a problem.

Making functional pigments is hard and there are a lot of ways it can go wrong. Lots of mutations will take the pigment process down one way or another.

There does not have to be an advantage for a mutation to spread. Humans don't synthesize vitamin C. We don't get anything for that.

-Username17

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 6:07 pm

PhoneLobster wrote:
mean_liar wrote: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.
Oh I see, you think the Catholic church already runs Hollywood and every movie ever is a biblical parable!

Wait. What?

No. What?

Are you CRAZY?

I thought I'd just respond to this since the rest wasn't ripe for ridicule and I feel like I've said my piece on the subject.

You're confusing my use of "myth" to mean Catholicism when I'm really referencing the more general "myth" in a Jungian archetype sense.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 11:36 pm

mean_liar wrote:You're confusing my use of "myth" to mean Catholicism when I'm really referencing the more general "myth" in a Jungian archetype sense.

So in a discussion about religion and art I'm using a religion as an example of religion.

And your example of religion is in fact just "stories", which you know ISN'T A FUCKING RELIGION.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Fri Jul 17, 2009 1:58 am

Crissa wrote:Dark pigmentation people do not have to consume more sunlight or vitamin D than light pigmentation people in darker climes.

Don't be an idiot.

[url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,840985,00.html wrote:Time magazine[/url]]The very existence of the essential vitamin D, or "sunshine vitamin," was not established until the present century, but its imprint upon history goes back a million years or more. According to a theory now elaborated by Brandeis University Biochemist W. Farnsworth Loomis, it is because of the human body's need to take in a certain amount of vitamin D, but not too much, that the human species has developed into three principal racial groups distinguished by skin color and loosely called black, yellow and white.

...

The control of skin color over vitamin D synthesis, says Loomis, explains the distribution of the races of man in prehistoric and early historic times. As far as anthropologists can tell, "human beings" originated in Africa near the equator. Almost certainly, they had black skins. Many anthropologists have argued that dark skin evolved as a protection against sunburn and skin cancer. On the contrary, says Loomis: dark skin came first, and light skin evolved as a protection against a deficiency of vitamin D. Black skin allows only 3% to 36% of ultraviolet rays to pass, while white skin passes 53% to 72%. As early man moved north from the equatorial region, beyond the 40th parallel (roughly, the latitude of Madrid and Naples), Loomis argues, he got into a zone where black skin filters out too much ultraviolet.

He encountered rickets. The darkest-skinned young male hunters were so crippled that they could not keep up; the darkest-skinned females died in childbirth because of pelvic deformities. Those who happened to be lighter skinned, of both sexes, survived.

[url=http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/07/3/text_pop/l_073_04.html wrote:PBS Evolution - The Biology of Skin Color: Black and White[/url]]Until the 1980s, researchers could only estimate how much ultraviolet radiation reaches Earth's surface. But in 1978, NASA launched the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer. Three years ago, Jablonski and Chaplin took the spectrometer's global ultraviolet measurements and compared them with published data on skin color in indigenous populations from more than 50 countries. To their delight, there was an unmistakable correlation: The weaker the ultraviolet light, the fairer the skin. Jablonski went on to show that people living above 50 degrees latitude have the highest risk of vitamin D deficiency. "This was one of the last barriers in the history of human settlement," Jablonski says. "Only after humans learned fishing, and therefore had access to food rich in vitamin D, could they settle these regions."

Humans have spent most of their history moving around. To do that, they've had to adapt their tools, clothes, housing, and eating habits to each new climate and landscape. But Jablonski's work indicates that our adaptations go much further. People in the tropics have developed dark skin to block out the sun and protect their body's folate reserves. People far from the equator have developed fair skin to drink in the sun and produce adequate amounts of vitamin D during the long winter months.

Jablonski hopes that her research will alert people to the importance of vitamin D and folate in their diet. It's already known, for example, that dark-skinned people who move to cloudy climes can develop conditions such as rickets from vitamin D deficiencies. More important, Jablonski hopes her work will begin to change the way people think about skin color. "We can take a topic that has caused so much disagreement, so much suffering, and so much misunderstanding," she says, "and completely disarm it."

[url=http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2009/06/why_black_peopl_1.php wrote:Dr. Consuelo Hopkins Wilkins; Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis[/url]]Melanin protects the skin against ultraviolet light. But by blocking the sun’s rays, melanin affects the skin’s ability to activate pre-vitamin D. So the darker the skin, the less vitamin D you produce. In the scientific literature, the difference is striking.

[url=http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/vitamind.asp wrote:National Institutes of Health - Dietary Supplement Fact Sheet: Vitamin D[/url]]People with dark skin

Greater amounts of the pigment melanin result in darker skin and reduce the skin's ability to produce vitamin D from exposure to sunlight.

[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanin wrote:Wikipedia: Melanin[/url]]With humans, exposure to sunlight stimulates the skin to produce vitamin D. Because high levels of cutaneous melanin act as a natural sun screen, dark skin can be a risk factor for vitamin D deficiency in regions of the Earth known as cool temperate zones; i.e. above 36 degrees latitude in the Northern hemisphere and below 36 degrees in the Southern hemisphere. As a result of this, health authorities in Canada and the USA have issued recommendations for people with darker complexions (including people of southern European descent) to consume between 1000-2000 IU (International Units) of vitamin D, daily, through Autumn to Spring.

...

The most recent scientific evidence indicates that all humans evolved in Africa, then populated the rest of the world through successive radiations. It is most likely that the first people had relatively large numbers of eumelanin producing melanocytes and, accordingly, darker skin (as displayed by the indigenous people of Africa, today). As some of these original peoples migrated and settled in areas of Asia and Europe, the selective pressure for eumelanin production decreased in climates where radiation from the sun was less intense. Thus variations in genes involved in melanin production began to appear in the population, resulting in lighter hair and skin in humans residing at northern latitudes. Studies have been carried out to determine whether these changes were due to genetic drift or positive selection, perhaps driven by requirement for vitamin D. Of the two common gene variants known to be associated with pale human skin, Mc1r does not appear to have undergone positive selection, while SLC24A5 has.

As with peoples who migrated northward, those with light skin who migrate toward the equator acclimatize to the much stronger solar radiation. Most people's skin darkens when exposed to UV light, giving them more protection when it is needed. This is the physiological purpose of sun tanning. Dark-skinned people, who produce more skin-protecting eumelanin, have a greater protection against sunburn and the development of melanoma, a potentially deadly form of skin cancer, as well as other health problems related to exposure to strong solar radiation, including the photodegradation of certain vitamins such as riboflavins, carotenoids, tocopherol, and folate.

Melanin in the eyes, in the iris and choroid, helps protect them from ultraviolet and high-frequency visible light; people with gray, blue, and green eyes are more at risk for sun-related eye problems. Further, the ocular lens yellows with age, providing added protection. However, the lens also becomes more rigid with age, losing most of its accommodation—the ability to change shape to focus from far to near—a detriment due probably to protein crosslinking caused by UV exposure.

[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D wrote:Wikipedia: Vitamin D[/url]]A critical determinant of vitamin D3 production in the skin is the presence and concentration of melanin. Melanin functions as a light filter in the skin, and therefore the concentration of melanin in the skin is related to the ability of UVB light to penetrate the epidermal strata and reach the 7-dehydrocholesterol-containing stratum basale and stratum spinosum. Under normal circumstances, ample quantities of 7-dehydrocholesterol (about 25-50 µg/cm² of skin) are available in the stratum spinosum and stratum basale of the skin to meet the body's vitamin D requirements, and melanin content does not alter the amount of vitamin D that can be produced. Thus, individuals with higher skin melanin content will simply require more time in sunlight to produce the same amount of vitamin D as individuals with lower melanin content. As noted below, the amount of time an individual requires to produce a given amount of Vitamin D may also depend upon the person's distance from the equator and on the season of the year.

Shut up, Crissa.

erik · Post by **erik** » Fri Jul 17, 2009 4:28 am

FrankTrollman wrote: There does not have to be an advantage for a mutation to spread. Humans don't synthesize vitamin C. We don't get anything for that.

Fair 'nuff. I suppose it could be studied to discern whether there is a significant apparent advantage for being albino in a lightless environment, dunno if such a study has actually been done. I imagined that the speciation happened quickly enough that some advantage was implied, but perhaps I've either misjudged how quickly a benign mutation can spread (including spontaneous development), or I've misjudged how many generations some cave dwelling critters have remained isolated in their environments. Probably a bit of both.

There is something to be said for detriments being boons. I bet I could make up some B.S. for why it would have been a good thing to not be able to naturally produce Vitamin C.

I could imagine that our lack of ability to synthesize Vitamin C could force us to become reliant upon finding sources of Vitamin C and cultivating them as crops. The cultivating tribes could be forced to adopt organizations which would wind up being more beneficial for survival and natural selection than the free-wheeling Vitamin C producing yokels enjoyed.

That's the fun with speculative evolutionary development- you can bullshit anything as being an advantage if you work at it. Hell, sometimes you may wind up even being right. =-D

I recall reading recently that Steven Hawking may well be the genius theoretician that he is in no small part due to his disability. He has been forced to find ways to attack problems and communicate using more pithy methods due to his hindrances in communication and movement. If he hadn't been afflicted with ALS then he'd likely still be a genius, but perhaps not a world class genius with unique insights.

[edit: a bit more...]

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

In my an archaeology class long ago, I recall there being a relationship that showed finer craftsmanship of arrow-heads and spear-heads coincided nicely with upswings in religious involvement.

Correlation of course doesn't prove causation, but it seems the simplest answer. Sometimes art and ingenuity can be preserved through superstition and tradition.

Perhaps the world would be better off without religion throughout history, but it's just as possible that assholes and ideologues would find their own reasons to cause equilvalent atrocities.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Fri Jul 17, 2009 4:46 am

Humans can't produce vitamin C, because we evolved from primates that ate a lot of fruit and therefore didn't need to produce it. They got the advantage of less energy expenditure.

erik · Post by **erik** » Fri Jul 17, 2009 5:05 am

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_c

Vitamin C in evolution wrote:Some primates, remote ancestors of humans, underwent a genetic mutation about 40-45 million years ago and haven't been able to make “vitamin C” since. Therefore living humans need nowadays to get all “vitamin C” from food. Some scientists think that the loss of human ability to make “vitamin C” may have caused Homo sapiens' rapid evolution into modern man.[48][49][50]

Damn, it appears "some scientists" got to my Vitamin C deprivation as a catalyst for human development before I did. =-(

Not as depressing as when I learned that Richard Dawkins had already discovered memes when I had for years thought that was something clever I came up with in 2nd grade.

Ganbare Gincun · Post by **Ganbare Gincun** » Fri Jul 17, 2009 6:06 am

CatharzGodfoot wrote: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.

If the Taoist in question lives under a theocratic regime where he/she will be murdered for blasphemy for writing poetry, then I would say that the dominant religion in the area has a very severe impact on the both the quality and the quantity of their artistic output. Dead people generally don't create new works of art (the exception being Tupac Shakur, of course). This kind of religious censorship has a lot less to do with people's "ideological frameworks" and more to do with "clerics running around and cutting off people's heads for the crime of writing poetry".

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Fri Jul 17, 2009 6:58 am

Maj, if you read the entire articles, you find out that while dark people suffer from more vitamin d deficiency than light people...

...You would also find out that they could not actually pin these rates upon the differences in melanin, as diet was a larger factor. Ethnic foods from bright climes includes less milk or fatty fish which is included in diets from darker climes.

Basically, everyone fucking wears clothes and live in houses, so it doesn't fucking matter. White people burn, so wear clothes or avoid sun in brighter climes; and everyone wears more clothes in darker climes.

So everyone needs to fucking eat their vitamin D.

Shut up.

-Crissa

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Fri Jul 17, 2009 8:10 am

clikml wrote:In my an archaeology class long ago, I recall there being a relationship that showed finer craftsmanship of arrow-heads and spear-heads coincided nicely with upswings in religious involvement.

A) I have never heard of anything of the sort. Ever.

B) You are viewing two separate symptoms of the same wealth and technological advancement. If the material you are looking at is old enough that all you can look at is arrow heads then the information on religious upswings will be in the form of statues, temples etc... And all the items you are talking about are manufactured goods and structures.

Perhaps the world would be better off without religion throughout history, but it's just as possible that assholes and ideologues would find their own reasons to cause equilvalent atrocities.

You are falling into one of the typical boring hum drum equivalency of evil arguments.

And that is unacceptable. When some guy is running around shooting people at the mall the cops don't say "well sure we could catch him, but then maybe someone else would just run around shooting people at the mall, or doing something equally evil, eventually".

It's also silly because people regularly present the "something else evil would be there instead" argument as a defense of religion. Which I find remarkable because the starting point of that line of defense is an open admission that religion is a force for evil in the world.

erik · Post by **erik** » Fri Jul 17, 2009 1:39 pm

I'll hafta see my World Archaeology notes. I'm sure it's still around despite being a class I took about 10 years ago because that was one of my most fun classes ever and had some re-readable material. I'm certain the details you want won't be listed there, but it may point me in the right direction for where to look up references for the spear head info.

It was a large lecture class and most of us were too dumbstruck to ask questions as we were oohing and ahhing at the guy making a knife/cutting tool just like prehistoric versions while using just some flint and a couple rocks. I do recall that the visiting professor didn't even go so far as to trot out correlation being causation, just that it was an interesting correlation.

As for equivalency of evil... I'm not gonna try to make such a salacious claim as that religion hasn't largely been a force for evil in the world. I reckoning that a world without religion isn't likely to be roses and cherries by default. I am of the belief that by and large, humans and human society can be tremendous douchebags, and even when we try to do good it often doesn't work out that well.

Religion and ideologies are tools by which a few persons can co-opt many more people into joining them- sometimes to do good, sometimes to do harm. Given that the people who seek that kind of power are rarely fit to wield it, it doesn't surprise me that religion winds up doing so much harm. I'm just saying it's not all harm, and sometimes adversity winds up producing marvelous things that otherwise would not have happened.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Fri Jul 17, 2009 1:54 pm

How the hell can you argue the "evil will always exist" angle in the same damn post as you argue the "religion is good because adversity is good for you".

I mean they sure, they are both stupid arguments on their own. Not fighting evil just because other evil is out there is stupid.

And human society certainly has never been so Utopian that we actively need to go that far to seek a challenge for the whole adversity angle. Not to mention being oppressed and killed really isn't a great "learning experience" we should all be jumping to attempt anyway.

But together? That makes no fucking sense at all. If adversity is good for you AND adversity would still exist without religion... then why the hell have religion? WTF?