The "Dark Ages" and Human Kindness

​ Aloys Fl @G P-me well, let’s not forget Christianity brought us the Dark Ages, and if it wasn’t for Muslims preserving pagan knowledge we probably still wouldn’t know what zero is. And I’m not saying that she is a relative. I’m saying that we inherit most of our impulses to be kind from prehistoric social situations. That’s my whole point. Do you think Buddhists aren’t nice to old ladies? :) Or consider the Confucian reverence for elders. The old lady on the bus is a stupid example. Proves the reverse.

@Aloys Fl youtube Your reference to the Dark Ages is untenable, since it is based on anachronistic, preconceived, and normally prejudicial assumptions. It was more like A Great System Reboot building the foundations of a non-Roman Christian society . The Muslims played their part, having used Christians to translate the classics in the first place, and having delivered up at Toledo because the Christians stopped their military conquests and Reconqista´d Spain because of Muslim collapse, along with their being devastated by the Mongols due to the centralized state of Muslim political power and disconnect of the religion from scholarship. Yes, Christian-derived Scientific Philosophy allows us to illuminate the nature of our impulses since Judeo-Christianity, now globalized, gave us sufficient theistic orientation to validate those "kind impulses." Those "kind impulses" were a wee bit smothered in ancient Greece, e.g. by Alexander the Great´s mom when she goaded dad and hubby King Philip´s ex-homosex lover to assassinate him, and on into Rome when Caesar was kindly assassinated by a band of Senators, Emperor Commodus later kindly renamed Rome after himself, slayed the physically disabled, and after numerous kind plots to assassinate him was kindly assassinated by conspirators kindly inciting his mistress and training partner who kindly strangled him in his bath. Emperor Decius kindly had Christians executed, and so with all that "kindness" also in Asia, it´s good to value Buddhism, yoga, Taoism, Confucianism, and so on. However, Buddhists weren´t nice to old ladies on buses before University-based Karl Benz or without facing Japanese Imperial militarism defeated by FDR´s US. And then there was the Buddhist need to flee Tibet from China. Don´t confuse commonalities with very distinct psychosocial, cultural, and religious systems and which one underlies globalization and the UN with its Human Rights. Commonalities reflect psychosocial biological potential, and important points of intersection. Those Eastern practices are desperately needed in unsustainable, widely hypocritical Christianity to intensify and spread the neglected spiritual integrity teachings of the founder, the Supershamanic Savior, Jesus in globalized Western Culture that "kindly" used secularism to hide any cultural reference to him as the right wing has hijacked his image by manipulating antiquated doctrines. US profiteering Corporate executives kindly refuse to go sustainably, or promote living wages, economic democracy, and human rights, but that would mean respecting Jesus´ "cruel" teachings for a loving God to "love thy neighbor as thyself" instead of funding the kind-to-fetuses and executives Religious Right. I´m an interfaith Christian, see, like the ex-communicated Matthew Fox and Alan Watts, based on Unitarian Universalism. Again, by not acknowledging your own context accurately, you are failing to recognize the human need for standards, and that the UN Universal Dec of Human Rights doesn´t come from Buddhist or Confucian leadership. FD and Eleanor Roosevelt weren´t like Alan Watts or George Harrison, but they were modernizing. *** Aloys Fleischmann 55 minutes ago Green Peacemst It’s kind of hard to keep up with what you’re saying, but my point is that Christianity had a nasty habit of burning any book that wasn’t explicitly Christian and suppressing any science that conflicted with scripture. And, as I’m sure you’re aware, the “Judeo” part of Judeo-Christian is a relatively recent addition to North American cultural chauvinism. Until about 70 years ago the idea that Jews had anything to do with Christian thought was repulsive to the masses—they much preferred to be seen as the inheritors of Greek philosophy. The Judeo part started getting added in the 30s as a reaction to fascism, then as a means of unifying the non-Islamic Abrahamic religions against communism and... Islam. Green P ​@Aloys Fl Kindness needs definition and standards to avoid the trends to unkindness. Jesus´ life, mission, and message for God´s love have set an unprecedented ball rolling that has at least resulted, through hacking, slashing, excess, dissidence, and discernment, in University-based society, the UN, and globalization. Meanwhile, Communism was largely a distraction, while Islam is also in the corporate imperialist US, except for valiant Israel, with Marx´s insights all contaminated. Denmark, Germany, and Social Europe have illuminated social business models and social market democracy, although a bit artificially and needily divorced from spiritual philosophy. Historically, sure, burning books and executing heretics, and persecuting the Jews has taken place in institutionalization, but that´s the unkindness that has been afflicting humans. That´s the unkindness that undid the ancient Greeks, the pagan imperial Romans even into their Imperial Roman Christianity. Christian sociopolitical unkindness, however, has had a "kindness monkey" on its back, the Christian monastic system that descended from St. Anthony of the Desert and has another branch in E Orthodoxy. Sure, Jesus for God´s love didn´t claim to automatically abolish human inclinations to unkindness, just like he didn´t invent kindness. People have had to choose, learn, and clearly err. Jesus´ life, mission, and message are a Big Bullseye message from God, a Neon Sign On The Long and Winding Road With God´s Certification, that underlies the complexity of the rise of Christian society in the West. The History of Christianity and Science is not reducible to Galileo, and emerges before Aquinas, and steers clear onto other bumpy roads, but less so, after Luther and Henry VIII. Scholar Huston Smith´s work is helpful, as is Stan Jaki´s. As for the " Judeo-" thing, I´ve been reading some K Armstrong, but also noted a Rabbi linked to the Unitarians after 1850 at some point. It all follows Jefferson´s landmark Freedom of Religion (not just "denominations"). Well, is Judaism without its prejudices? Jesus went beyond previous Jewish teachings, and Peter and Paul made the explicit move to the Gentiles. It´s monastic-derived Universities that fueled the (Judeo-) Christian-based Enlightenment, that fueled Jefferson, that fueled the Jewish Haskalah with Moses Mendelssohn and crossover breakthrough scholar-innovators Marx(?), Durkheim, Freud, Einstein as Herzl and Jewish nationalism emerged. *** ​ @Aloys Fleischmann Kindness needs definition and standards to avoid the trends to unkindness. Jesus´ life, mission, and message have set an unprecedented ball rolling that resulted in University-based society, the UN, and globalization. Meanwhile, Communism was largely a distraction, while Islam is also in the corporate imperialist US, except for valiant Israel, with Marx´s insights all contaminated. Denmark, Germany, and Social Europe have illuminated social business models and social market democracy, although a bit artificially and needily divorced from spiritual philosophy. Historically, sure, burning books and executing heretics, and persecuting the Jews has taken place in institutionalization, but that´s the unkindness that has been afflicting humans. That´s the unkindness that undid the ancient Greeks, the pagan imperial Romans even into their Imperial Roman Christianity. Christian sociopolitical unkindness, however, has had a "kindness monkey" on its back, the Christian monastic system that descended from St. Anthony of the Desert and has another branch in E Orthodoxy. Sure, Jesus for God´s love didn´t claim to automatically abolish human inclinations to unkindness, just like he didn´t invent kindness. People have had to choose, learn, and clearly err. Jesus´ life, mission, and message are a message from God that underlies the complexity of the rise of Christian society in the West. The History of Christianity and Science is not reducible to Galileo, and emerges before Aquinas, and steers clear onto other bumpy roads, but less so, after Luther and Henry VIII. Scholar Huston Smith´s work is helpful, as is Stan Jaki´s. As for the " Judeo-" thing, I´ve been reading some K Armstrong, but also noted a Rabbi linked to the Unitarians after 1850 at some point. It all follows Jefferson´s landmark Freedom of Religion (not just "denominations"). Well, is Judaism without its prejudices? Jesus went beyond previous Jewish teachings, and Peter and Paul made the explicit move to the Gentiles. It´s monastic-derived Universities that fueled the (Judeo-) Christian-based Enlightenment, that fueled Jefferson, that fueled the Jewish Haskalah with Moses Mendelssohn and crossover breakthrough scholar-innovators Marx(?), Durkheim, Freud, Einstein as Herzl and Jewish nationalism emerged. Ah, Spinoza, too! Yeah, Greekness is what Christopher Hitchens (of Jewish descent) goes for. And it is an impressive tradition. But it was the (Judeo-) Christian scholars at Christian Universities who started taking the Greek work et al and submitting it to Judeo-Christian thinking with Creator omnipotence in academic community Getting clear about the OT can been transformed, but secularism, Science, and right wing distortion of Jesus and Christianity requires high integrity action and scholarship. Jefferson, FD and Eleanor Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, and Barack Obama, and the UN UDHR are all good reference markers, as are Noam Chomsky and Michael Lerner. *** Aloys Fl Green P-me thanks for your thoughts. You are obviously well-read. Allow me to part with a simple observation: the problem with Christianity is that it confuses correlation with cause, and, a linked difficulty, admits to only one cause. *** ​ @Aloys Fl A pleasure trading thoughts with. A passionate guy like you deserves attention. Just remember, if you´re going to try to claim an asserted cause is merely correlation, you´ve got to demonstrate competent, necessary, and sufficient evaluation and substantiation in an attempt to justify it. Otherwise any claim you make is not well made Christianity also doesn´t underlie University-based education for nothing. It is the most complex Historical Sociological and interdisciplinary phenomenon ever, and unless you get all the issues straight, as likely as not, you´re mixing things up. If you were alleging that a simplistic Fundamentalist Christian were neglecting to refer to eclectic processes, I might agree with you on the "one cause" as problem. However, I think you´re actually failing to identify the factor that makes the correlation between Jesus´ commandments and UN Human Rights coherent and not say, Greek, biological, Chinese, Shamanistic, or Jewish in a non-Christian sense.