Keep Your Jesus Off My Penis

[nathan1977]

Do you protect the Mohammed cartoons?

Yes.

What of piss-Christ?

Yes.

How about pornography? Or erotica?

In what contexts?

Or a nude painting? Or a depiction of human form?

Yes.

Wait, I'm confused. Are you saying that calling this guy out for being an idiot equals not defending his right to say whatever stupid thing comes out of his mouth? I can and do defend his right to say whatever he wants. I think it's wonderful that a socio-political system created on the belief that all men have been endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights -- which carries certain Judeo-Christian influence -- allows for someone to vent his spleen about religion and its place in American culture without threat or fear. As I said before, there are billions of people in the world who don't have that fundamental right.

But that sure as sh*t don't mean he can't stand to be corrected.

 

[A_Wanderer]

I think it's wonderful that a socio-political system created on the belief that all men have been endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights -- which carries certain Judeo-Christian influence

And I refute that the concept, which was introduced by the naturalistic deist Thomas Jefferson, is a religious one, it is rooted in secular enlightenment values not revealed truth, free speech is not an innately Christian quality nor does it owe terribly much to religion. Rights and liberties are man made, we formalise them and respect them but they are not justified by any power higher than the state. A right to free speech is only guaranteed by preserving an open society which can tolerate different opinions and principles of freedom.

I explicitly deny that free speech is a Christian virtue, for instance that world view does not respect my right to say I deny the holy spirit, if in fact if it were true then I would experience harm for what I think and say.

 

[nathan1977]

Rights and liberties are man made, we formalise them and respect them but they are not justified by any power higher than the state.

So the state has the ultimate power and say over human rights? Tell that to those who suffer under totalitarian regimes.

The founding fathers knew the flaw in such a mentality, which is why they explicitly appealed to a power higher than the state in their justification of human rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and everything that comes from that -- including speech.

 

[melon]

So the state has the ultimate power and say over human rights? Tell that to those who suffer under totalitarian regimes.

The founding fathers knew the flaw in such a mentality, which is why they explicitly appealed to a power higher than the state in their justification of human rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and everything that comes from that -- including speech.

I agree, for the most part, which is why you've got to love the Republicans then, who complain about the "activist judges" who brought us the civil rights in the 1950s and 60s that the state refused to enact. Had Brown vs. Board of Education (1955) never happened, would the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ever been imagined?

 

[nathan1977]

I explicitly deny that free speech is a Christian virtue, for instance that world view does not respect my right to say I deny the holy spirit, if in fact if it were true then I would experience harm for what I think and say.

again, you have the right to say that you deny the holy spirit if you want. it doesn't mean that you won't be held accountable for it if you're wrong...but that's something we all discover after the end.

and i suspect that denying the holy spirit is really more of a "how you live your life" kinda thing, as opposed to an "instantaneous smoting" kinda thing.

 

[A_Wanderer]

So the state has the ultimate power and say over human rights? Tell that to those who suffer under totalitarian regimes.

The founding fathers knew the flaw in such a mentality, which is why they explicitly appealed to a power higher than the state in their justification of human rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and everything that comes from that -- including speech.

I was asserting that the most powerful institution is the modern nation state and through laws and law enforcement peoples rights are either guaranteed or abused. Human rights only exist because governments sometimes recognise and even more rarely respect them. There is no higher power justifying them, they are artificial in the scheme of things.

 

[nathan1977]

...the most powerful institution is the modern nation state and through laws and law enforcement peoples rights are either guaranteed or abused. Human rights only exist because governments sometimes recognise and even more rarely respect them. There is no higher power justifying them, they are artificial in the scheme of things.

Again, look at the founding fathers. They had to appeal to a power higher because the ruling nation-state was abusing its powers. Their specific appeal to a Creator and the rights He endowed points to the fact that there is a worth to human beings far greater than that bestowed on us by whatever nation or political ideology we happen to be affiliated with.

Just because a totalitarian regime declares its citizens to be unworthy of human rights, does that make it so?

 

[A_Wanderer]

They were not referring to a personal God, that type of entity doesn't justify those self-evident truths, it did however justify the divine right of Kings which many of those thinkers took issue with.

Human rights are not universal constants, they are artificial, that doesn't mean that they are not conducive to a civil society or that we should consider violent autocracy on par with liberal democracy, merely that their origin is not from on high but from mutual agreement and respect between human beings.

 

[nathan1977]

Human rights are not universal constants, they are artificial, that doesn't mean that they are not conducive to a civil society or that we should consider violent autocracy on par with liberal democracy, merely that their origin is not from on high but from mutual agreement and respect between human beings.

And who wins when human beings disagree?

In your scenario, the state.

Which, given the state of things in North Korea (to use just one example), is a bit terrifying.

 

[A_Wanderer]

You keep trying to frame me as a champion of autocratic communism because I said that the highest power on Earth is the modern nation state, I was only alluding to the fact that it is the police and military that enforce the laws over populations and not a deity, in general I would think people give cops with guns more consideration than God in heaven. The state needs to be checked, it is a necessary evil for civil society and the tendency of it is to expand (quite democratically more often than not).

America was founded upon secular enlightenment ideals, evidenced by Article 11 of the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

A rather solid endorsement of American secularism.

Give some thought to what justifies freedom and liberty, right and wrong. You claim that God gives these concepts value but that says nothing about their merits. Deferring to God is a hollow appeal to authority, one might just as well argue that God wants us to mutilate an infant sons penis or stone blasphemers, those actions would be just as valid because it says so in a particular revealed truth and that makes it right. It says nothing of consensuality, harm or benefit for the involved parties only that God says its alright. I reject the idea that freedom of speech is conditional upon a Christian tradition, I think that it is conditional upon (to paraphrase Orwell) having a population that can respect the right of others to tell them what they don't want them to hear.

The argument that God gives human morality and liberty is unsound. It does not agree with the evolutionary origin of altruism and empathy (Children do not need to be taught the golden rule) and it says nothing about how ethical or justified they are. Rights are built by consensus and are conditional upon other people respecting those rights, God has nothing to do with it, especially in the American constitution which is explicitly secular.

To quote another infidel founding father Thomas Paine

It is a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives rights. It operates by a contrary effect — that of taking rights away. Rights are inherently in all the inhabitants; but charters, by annulling those rights, in the majority, leave the right, by exclusion, in the hands of a few. ... They...consequently are instruments of injustice.

The fact therefore must be that the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a contract with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.

With nary a God to be seen.

 

[nathan1977]

A rather solid endorsement of American secularism.

Your problem is not with me, but with the founding fathers and the Declaration, and their specific citement of a Creator -- as opposed to a nation or ruler -- as the arbiter of human worth.

Rights are built by consensus and are conditional upon other people respecting those rights.

The problem, again, is when "consensus" is trumped by louder, stronger voices. You still haven't answered any of my questions having to do with what happens when a totalitarian regime refuses to confer upon its people human rights. Your comment that "human rights are artificial" was rather troubling in this regard.

 

[A_Wanderer]

Your problem is not with me, but with the founding fathers and the Declaration, and their specific citement of a Creator -- as opposed to a nation or ruler -- as the arbiter of human worth. That some of the more prominent founding fathers were unbelievers deserves recognition.

No, I have no issue with them as the context is not of an interventionist God, creator may just as well be nature. The explicit rejection of any theistic justification for the American government bolsters the secularists contention over those who claim America was founded on Christian values.

The problem, again, is when "consensus" is trumped by louder, stronger voices. You still haven't answered any of my questions having to do with what happens when a totalitarian regime refuses to confer upon its people human rights. Your comment that "human rights are artificial" was rather troubling in this regard.

There is no dilemma, when a state has power it will be abused and this is witnessed time and time again. Having God as the justification does not diminish this problem, evidenced by Christian Europe and theocratic Islamic nations. When a state has power it can abuse rights with impunity - which is why it is good to have secular mechanisms to prevent abuses such as separation of the powers, a bill of rights and democracy. God does not say that George W. Bush is wrong to wiretap US citizens or that elected officials shouldn't have a religious test.

God does not make people respect other people or their rights, it is our capacity for empathy that enables this respect and mutual consensus that guarantees it. If God and religious belief were the source of this respect then the faithful should show significantly better behaviour than unbelievers, because studies show unbelievers behave either no different or marginally better than the religious, for instance their underrepresentation in the prison population, this argument doesn't hold up.

I have no dilemma with why there is evil in the world, why bad things happen to good people or human rights get abused. I don't need to invent outside forces that are the root cause of people doing bad things (such as the Devil) to make sense of it. I also have no problem treating other people with respect because I understand most of us obey the golden rule, and we are evolved to feel good about cooperation, and this transcends religion because we are all derived from common stock. If faced with a moral choice I am capable of ethical reasoning, my conviction that liberty is a means of maximising happiness for myself is reasonable without outside justification and it does not owe anything to religion.

The idea that God gives meaning to life and actions is a lie, people are just as capable for good without retaining belief in an unlikely creator, the founding fathers knew that the state had to be justified and held to account by the governed and not an eternal higher power and crafted a secular constitution. A creator does not imply the Christian God and it may just as well be processes in the universe.

 

[nathan1977]

creator may just as well be nature.

The Founders and Framers specifically referenced a Creator who endowed men with certain inalienable rights. They reference both Nature and "Nature's God" as the assigners of each man to his station. They specifically referenced a "Supreme Judge" who would evaluate the "rectitude of their attitudes". They specifically looked to the hand of "Divine Providence" to protect them.

The Declaration is not a secular reading of humanity's worth and value; rather, the Founders and Framers explicitly referenced a higher Authority for the rights of man, and used that spiritual and moral justification to passionately argue for the rights of self-governance, and they closed the document by specifically referencing Him as the ultimate Judge and Providence by whom they would govern. It was this spiritual and moral justification which compelled them both to A) assert their rights, and B) justify their actions.

There is no dilemma

There is a huge dilemma. You yourself referred to human rights as "artificial", and that the state should be the ultimate arbiter of human rights. You're working from an ideal situation, but time and again the state has corrupted, controlled, denied, or persecuted such rights. Clearly the state can and should not be the ultimate arbiter of the rights of man.

Bringing this back to my initial point, it's one thing to say that America has these systems in place. (Again, what I find interesting again is that America was founded on principles extending at least in part from the Judeo-Christian tradition, which allow for such systems.) Many other countries don't. In that situation, what else are the oppressed to appeal to if not the state? Saying that secular mechanisms should be in place to prevent abuses is well and good, but most of the rest of the world does not live in our system. Such abuses are rampant. When presented with an ideology that the state is all there is, people aren't exactly left with many options. Clearly the Founding Fathers saw a higher, greater Authority than that of the state.

 

[melon]

Your problem is not with me, but with the founding fathers and the Declaration, and their specific citement of a Creator -- as opposed to a nation or ruler -- as the arbiter of human worth.

The problem with this argument is that the Founding Fathers made a secular appeal to "the Creator" when they wrote the Declaration of Independence, as the concept itself arose out of the secular Enlightenment and secular Enlightenment religion, which we refer to as "deism" today. Do take notice that they did not use "God," but "the Creator," which was a deist-specific term in the 18th century. Deists sharply differed from traditional Christians in that they generally did not believe in either the Trinity, the divinity of Jesus, miracles, or the inerrancy of scriptures, but who did believe in one god. Thus, when they make the ambiguous appeal to "the Creator," they likely did not refer to the Christian God or any deity, in particular. It was an appeal to whomever or whatever created us, and that our dignity is innate, rather than granted by fellow mankind.

Deism largely fell out of favor in the late 19th century, due to the writings of David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Charles Darwin, which cast doubt on the philosophical notions of "first cause" and "argument from design" (not to be confused with the Christianist "intelligent design"), thus shoving most potential deists into modern agnosticism or atheism. Thus, we have the polarized religious climate we see today since the time of Darwin, which means that it is expected that you must be either a fundamentalist conservative Evangelical Christian that thinks Jesus rode a dinosaur, or a fervent atheist that hates all mention of religion in society.

Going back to the idea that we have inherent and inalienable human rights that transcend government, that, in itself, is a secular idea, as conventional Christianity, at that time, had a strong authoritarian and imperialist streak behind it. Instead, we can credit the philosophy of John Locke, who had a pronounced influence on the Enlightenment and our Founding Fathers, thus leaving an indelible mark all over the writing of the Declaration of Independence. Our nation would not exist at all, in its current state, without John Locke, and we all owe a huge debt of gratitude to him.

 

[nathan1977]

Do take notice that they did not use "God," but "the Creator," which was a deist-specific term in the 18th century. Deists sharply differed from traditional Christians in that they generally did not believe in either the Trinity, the divinity of Jesus, miracles, or the inerrancy of scriptures, but who did believe in one God.

Please note that I am not making the argument that the Declaration is a theological document. It isn't. My point is simply that the Declaration points to a higher, deeper justification for the inalienable rights of man than simply our common humanity, and it is this perspective that our rights are specifically Divinely-derived -- and thus trump the state's attempt to remove them -- that has informed our democracy for more than 200 years.

And if we're going to credit John Locke for the philosophy that "we have inherent and inalienable human rights that transcend government" (which according to the Declaration is specifically cited as coming from the hands of the Creator), then we would do well to remember Locke's thoughts in "Two Treatises on Government": "the Law of Nature stands as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well as others. The rules that they make for other men's actions must . . . be conformable to the Law of Nature, i.e., to the will of God. [L]aws human must be made according to the general laws of Nature, and without contradiction to any positive law of Scripture, otherwise they are ill made."

ETA - I realize this all has very little to do with the posted topic at this point.

 

[A_Wanderer]

Again you are trying to frame me as saying that the state is the justification of human rights, you are either misunderstanding me or deliberately misrepresenting me. The people are what hold the state to account, the people with guns and the capacity for revolution when the government becomes tyrannical, not God. The state guarantees property rights as well as law and order because the governed pay their taxes to support the institution, the state as a consensual institution does not rely on any concept of God; it doesn't mean that laws are always just or that the nature of government is to maximise liberty, only that human rights and the mechanisms to protect them are man made.

Appealing to God the higher power as justification for anything is rife with problems. It sidesteps genuine justifications such as consent and harm with a weak appeal to authority that says absolutely nothing about the merits of anything. It is no coincidence that rulers throughout history have used religion as a tool of social control, it gives carte blanch justification for any action by the state. A state justified and accountable to the people guarantees freedom far better than one justified by God (who represents the whims of the clerical class and the dictator).

You have the dilemma, you can't answer why any action is right or wrong if you are just following the orders of God. Just because something is in the bible does not make it right, the argument that God gives justification falls apart with most basic considerations. Appeals to God say nothing about the ethics of any position, the American constitution is not guaranteed or justified by God and the explicit rejection of America being a Christian state in official documents demonstrates this.

Agreements between people provide far better justification for human rights than any charlatan claims that God makes something right. Even if God existed it would say nothing about how right or wrong the entities commandments are.

 

[melon]

And if we're going to credit John Locke for the philosophy that "we have inherent and inalienable human rights that transcend government" (which according to the Declaration is specifically cited as coming from the hands of the Creator), then we would do well to remember Locke's thoughts in "Two Treatises on Government": "the Law of Nature stands as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well as others. The rules that they make for other men's actions must . . . be conformable to the Law of Nature, i.e., to the will of God. [L]aws human must be made according to the general laws of Nature, and without contradiction to any positive law of Scripture, otherwise they are ill made."

No mention of John Locke and religion cannot leave out how he defined religion, which he outlines in "A Letter Concerning Toleration" (1689). Locke proffered the then-radical idea that religious diversity strengthened the state and prevented civil unrest, countering Thomas Hobbes' earlier belief that religious uniformity was preferable. Thus, the revisionist notion that our Founding Fathers were interested in a "Christian nation," as often used as a rallying cry by American conservatives, is directly contradicted by their strong Lockean influence.

Going a bit further with Locke is his even more intriguing definition of "tolerance," which only extends toleration to those churches that teach tolerance. Thus, from Locke's 17th century English POV, the Roman Catholic Church could not be tolerated, because it demanded loyalty to a foreign jurisdiction outside of the state--i.e., the Vatican--and he also happened to hate atheists, because he thought that "promises" and other oaths that "bond" human society had no hold on them.

Nonetheless, no philosopher ever likely meant that their ideas had to be taken literally ad infinitum, presuming that the underlying logic still had any meaning. Thus, Locke's polemics against Catholics and atheists are irrelevant, due to the underlying logic collapsing, and Locke's philosophy on the inalienable rights of mankind can still be upheld with or without religious philosophy, due to the later philosophy of Hume and Kant--both of whom, incidentially, were influenced by Locke considerably. "Nature," as it is today, is science, and science is officially neutral when it comes to the idea of God. Thus, as a believer, I still think it is perfectly logically acceptable to maintain Locke's philosophy regarding the innate rights of mankind and still have it work within a natural, atheist outlook.

 

[nathan1977]

The people are what hold the state to account, the people with guns and the capacity for revolution when the government becomes tyrannical, not God.

Perhaps so, but in most political systems that are not ours, the people have tremendously little power. Consider various regimes in South America or South Africa, where corrupt regimes are swept out of power by "the people," only to have the new regime become as corrupt -- if not moreso -- than its predecessor. The people are still left behind. Clearly there is a limit to the ability of "the people" to hold the state to account, and even for "the people" to govern itself -- it's hard to keep majority rule from becoming mob rule.

Appealing to God the higher power as justification for anything is rife with problems.

Naturally, but we have somehow been able to resolve this tension for over 200 years here, and while we have been at times grossly negligent in our ability to recognize the "God-given rights" apportioned to each citizen, the history of the US has been a history of progress. So there is the ability to retain an acknowledgement that our worth as individuals runs far deeper than what the state, the ruling class, or even my neighbor would decide. I would say that this ability is critical.

Appeals to God say nothing about the ethics of any position, the American constitution is not guaranteed or justified by God and the explicit rejection of America being a Christian state in official documents demonstrates this.

Naturally, which is why the Constitution does not include references to God. At the same time, the Constitution is the application of the Declaration -- you cannot divorce the two -- and the Framers sure justified the Declaration according to God. Ideologies always have their roots in some other train of thought, whether religious or philosophical. The Bible is not a treatise for governance, any more than it is a science textbook -- yet the underlying principles can have a tremendous influence on schools of thought, and they have, which is why I think that America still occupies a unique position on the political landscape, allowing people the freedom to say whatever they'd like as not just a state-given right (which can change), but as a God-given one (which cannot). In the case of our clever "Keep your Jesus off my penis" friend, I personally wish they were a little more informed, but regardless.

 

[A_Wanderer]

I feel that law must be independent of nature, it falls under the is-ought problem, just because something is natural doesn't make it right. For instance science may say that under certain circumstances infanticide is natural, it doesn't make it morally right. In that sense I feel that justification of rights doesn't come from nature.

 

[nathan1977]

No mention of John Locke and religion cannot leave out how he defined religion, which he outlines in "A Letter Concerning Toleration" (1689). Locke proffered the then-radical idea that religious diversity strengthened the state and prevented civil unrest, countering Thomas Hobbes' earlier belief that religious uniformity was preferable. Thus, the revisionist notion that our Founding Fathers were interested in a "Christian nation," as often used as a rallying cry by American conservatives, is directly contradicted by their strong Lockean influence.

But you can't ignore the fact that it was a Christian who set this philosophical train into motion...

 

[nathan1977]

I feel that law must be independent of nature, it falls under the is-ought problem, just because something is natural doesn't make it right. For instance science may say that under certain circumstances infanticide is natural, it doesn't make it morally right. In that sense I feel that justification of rights doesn't come from nature.

You and I don't disagree on this point, but then the question becomes, where do the justification for our laws come from? There are certainly secular trains of thought, but if we trace some of the fundamental principles that govern our system of laws, you can't divorce them from religious influence.

The more I think about the Founding Fathers, the more brilliant they become.

 

[A_Wanderer]

Perhaps so, but in most political systems that are not ours, the people have tremendously little power. Consider various regimes in South America or South Africa, where corrupt regimes are swept out of power by "the people," only to have the new regime become as corrupt -- if not moreso -- than its predecessor. The people are still left behind. Clearly there is a limit to the ability of "the people" to hold the state to account, and even for "the people" to govern itself -- it's hard to keep majority rule from becoming mob rule.

That has nothing to do with a belief in a higher power, kleptocracy is not a product of unbelief or secularism.

Naturally, but we have somehow been able to resolve this tension for over 200 years here, and while we have been at times grossly negligent in our ability to recognize the "God-given rights" apportioned to each citizen, the history of the US has been a history of progress. So there is the ability to retain an acknowledgement that our worth as individuals runs far deeper than what the state, the ruling class, or even my neighbor would decide. I would say that this ability is critical.

Again those rights are not justified by God, they are in a secular constitution and were progressively granted to more people regardless of belief, race or economic status (with some very notable exceptions).

Naturally, which is why the Constitution does not include references to God. At the same time, the Constitution is the application of the Declaration -- you cannot divorce the two -- and the Framers sure justified the Declaration according to God. Ideologies always have their roots in some other train of thought, whether religious or philosophical. The Bible is not a treatise for governance, any more than it is a science textbook -- yet the underlying principles can have a tremendous influence on schools of thought, and it has, which is why I think that America still occupies a unique position on the political landscape, allowing people the freedom to say whatever they'd like. I personally wish they were a little more informed, but regardless.

The underlying principles that you are picking and choosing are independent of Christianity, the point is that they do not rely upon the Christian myth being true and can be arrived at independently. Pointing out dictatorships in other countries that are of a different religion than Christianity or are irreligious does not diminish this. Because the ideas are divorced from Christianity there is no debt to that religion, and the State does not need to pay lip service to the Church for the order of things.

 

[A_Wanderer]

But you can't ignore the fact that it was a Christian who set this philosophical train into motion...

Is democracy conditional upon believing in Zeus?

 

[melon]

But you can't ignore the fact that it was a Christian who set this philosophical train into motion...

Actually, all Western philosophical trains start with Aristotle, and that even includes Locke. Talk of "natural law" certainly goes back to the 13th century philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, whom Locke was directly influenced by. Aquinas, although he was a Catholic Dominican priest, did not hide whatsoever that his philosophy was not possible without the works of the great Andalusian Islamic and Jewish philosophers, such as Averroës, Avicenna, and Maimonides. Averroës, known as the "Founding Father" of Western European secularism, argued that there was no conflict between philosophy and religion, and, along with his Islamic philosopher contemporaries, had an invaluable hand in reviving medieval interest in Greek pagan philosophy, particularly that of Aristotle.

Christian, Jew, Muslim, and atheist, we're all on this train we call "civilization" together.

(By the way, one can probably blame the 11th century Persian Islamic philosopher, Algazel, for steering Islamic civilization off of the "train" of Western civilization, as he condemned Averroës and his contemporaries' use of ancient Greek metaphysics in Islam. Thus, Western and Islamic civilization split apart permanently).

 

[A_Wanderer]

You and I don't disagree on this point, but then the question becomes, where do the justification for our laws come from? There are certainly secular trains of thought, but if we trace some of the fundamental principles that govern our system of laws, you can't divorce them from religious influence.

The more I think about the Founding Fathers, the more brilliant they become.

Influence isn't justification, the bible may say it is wrong to murder but doesn't give any justification. If religion was the main influence on law then why aren't adulterers and blasphemers being executed?

 

[melon]

You and I don't disagree on this point, but then the question becomes, where do the justification for our laws come from? There are certainly secular trains of thought, but if we trace some of the fundamental principles that govern our system of laws, you can't divorce them from religious influence.

Simultaneously, you can't divorce religious influence from the non-religious culture it arose out of. Old Testament law, for instance, has a firm basis in the law of the Persian, Babylonian, Akkadian, and Sumerian civilizations, with additional Greek influence in the late Old Testament and Roman influence in the New Testament.

Unfortunately, due to the limitations of pre-history, one cannot search for influence beyond the Sumerian Code of Ur-Nammu (c. 2100-2050 B.C.), as there are no known literate civilizations that precede the Sumerians, but it is pretty likely that even they had their influences from civilizations that we will never know. Interestingly, though, it has a pattern that is highly reminiscent of the legalism of Mosaic Law, which was influenced by Babylonian law, which, itself, was influenced by the aforementioned Sumerian law.

It is quite fascinating to realize that all that we have today is the result of actions set in motion that are, at least, 4100 years old and beyond.

 

[nathan1977]

It is quite fascinating to realize that all that we have today is the result of actions set in motion that are, at least, 4100 years old and beyond.

And yet somehow we're not all at the same place, are we?

Where one starts is not as interesting as where we land.

 

[melon]

And yet somehow we're not all at the same place, are we?

Where one starts is not as interesting as where we land.

We're can quibble about minutiae like socioeconomic status, but, culturally, we're not all that far apart, in the end.

Where the game changes, though, is with China, which has had a 4100+ year civilization completely independent from the rest of us, so appeals to "our heritage" will mean something completely different to them. I think, implicitly, that many people fear the rise of China, because it means the end of the dominance of Western civilization. Of course, we'll see if that happens at all.

 

[Dalton]

I like Jesus' style.