<!--QuoteBegin-dhu+Oct 31 2007, 01:07 PM-->QUOTE(dhu @ Oct 31 2007, 01:07 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->actually, that's rather very goebbelsian/hitlerian of the red disease).
What I'm trying to say is this: <b>communism tried to repeat the French Revolution under laboratory conditions. As in, it's contrived: the comrades try to set/present the external conditions such as to recreate the original phenomen.</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
So all these mutations upon Christianity are happening to unify the Internal European space ??[right][snapback]74697[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->I think the reasons are simpler and sadder: the mutations upon christianism are due to <i>semi-random</i> misfortune. Can't find better words - it sounds a bit cryptic even to me, so here follows a long explanation of what I mean.
Ever since christianism was imposed in Europe, there have been splits and 'heresies' and even constructions of religions/sects directly <i>opposed</i> to christianism - but all were offshoots of christianism itself. They sprung up in consequence of christianism and with christianism as their base (it was the only available worldview from which ideas were generated -> therefore ideas were needs derived from the same pool). In other words, we can track all these different mutations back to the original: christianism.
The <i>religion just never sat well</i> with people as a whole (in Europe or elsewhere - would explain the vehement anti-christianity of formerly-christian Koreans in S Korea and some formerly-christian Indians too). So as a result of people having become stuck with an unnatural religion, there's <i>ever</i> been
- groups of people thinking that if they 'went back' to 'just' the bible everything will be okay;
- groups of people thinking that the other streams of christianism are wrong and/or there <i>must be</i> some other deep reveal in it or some 'true' christianism out there somewhere;
(Examples at the end of this post - it has something to do with what Ramana said just above)
- or outright anti-christian movements like communism, western-style secularism and modern missionary kinds of 'atheism' including the confusingly named 'rationalism'. In fact, there have been anti-christian groups going far back: there were certain medieval satanist and other declared anti-christian cults (apparently these are documented: people who willingly admitted to being anti-christian in the dark ages - this is according to Joseph McCabe IIRC).
Going back to what I said at the top: " the mutations upon christianism are due to semi-random misfortune."
- '<i>Semi</i>-random' as in, Europeans have revolted constantly throughout history against christianism, but in medieval times they did not have sufficient ideas/vocabulary/cosmology to express themselves or think outside the box - that is, ideas were not entirely independent and free from christian influence (or at least after-taint; the Renaissance had such aftertaint/was dabbed with blotting christian ink afterward). This lack of independent expression meant the revolts merely created christian-based 'heresies'. (That's still true of communism and secularism too; but it's even more overtly the case with the early heresies that I will paste examples of below.)
- 'Semi-<i>random</i>' as in, Europeans could not control the expression or outcome of their revolts. These gave birth to mutations - the resulting mutations/ideas and the effects which these gave rise to they could not control, so the birth of these invariably christian-based ideas were inevitable as explained above.
The more I think of it, the more I feel bad about what's happened to Europe. Great damage has been done to their psyche by prolonged exposure to the tyranny of christianism. It's like a child that was regularly beaten by some evil step-'parent' that kidnapped it - it's grown crooked and hunched up when it could have grown up very straight. Abused people often have a tendency to carry out the same abuse themselves. It's all because of the christian <i>meme</i> that they've not been able to shake, and which they are attempting to infect everyone with. Misery loves company and christianism creates misery.
Before I continue:
<!--QuoteBegin-Honsol+Oct 30 2007, 09:53 PM-->QUOTE(Honsol @ Oct 30 2007, 09:53 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->The conquest of Siberia is seen by some historians as a revenge against turko-mongols,a kind of response to dominance of Mongol empire.[right][snapback]74675[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->I thought Siberians were more closely related to the Sami and Fins and possibly Estonians. As in, they're part of the western branch of Finno-Ugric peoples. Whereas Mongolians and Turkic people were part of the Eastern branch, or so I was led to believe. The rest of Russia is plonked in between the two.
I'm almost certain I've seen Finnish sites mention Saami Religion and Siberian Shamanism as being closely related to theirs and more distantly to Hungarian and even more distantly to Turkic and Mongolian.
Ramana:
<!--QuoteBegin-ramana+Oct 31 2007, 02:24 AM-->QUOTE(ramana @ Oct 31 2007, 02:24 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->In short, from the tenth century onward this revolt against orthodox Christianity and its corrupt priests and monks spread over Europe like a prairie fire.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->So this is how the reformation movement grew in Western Europe and finally ended in the great split by Luther. I always wondered how did Luther wake suddenly one day and decide ot break with the Roman Catholic papacy.
Need to save this item.
[right][snapback]74681[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Luther was never the first. There was some famous English dude in medieval times - I *think* it was a John Wyclif or something? - who insisted on the utterly forbidden: translating the bible into English. Back then that was an offence punishable by death followed by eternal damnation in you-know-where. Today the church pretends it was always okay to read babble in local lingo. Anyway, he got a big following until he and his kind were exterminated. WASPies often point to him as their actual 'protestant' predecessor when they discover that Luther and the other bloodsoaked reformers weren't as swell as they'd initially imagined. They also like to point to/imagine some 'true christianism' lost in a misty haze of time or otherwise claimed to have been lost due to catholic history rewriting/erasing. A 'true christianism' that they claim also involved reading the bible in the local tongue and interpreting it for oneself. Local language? Most probably, but which 'bible' they would mean is beyond anyone's guess. But it ain't the catholic-protestant collection of gospels for sure.
Ramana, here you go, Joseph McCabe summarises his vast knowledge (he read voluminous tomes and so we don't have to <!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo--> :thankful):
Second and third paras in this first excerpt are added for interest.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Let us keep a sense of proportion. The record of Christianity from the days when it first obtained the power to persecute is one of the most ghastly in history. The total number of Manichaeans, Arians, Priscillianists, Paulicians, Bogomiles, Cathari, Waldensians, Albigensians, witches, Lollards, Hussites, Jews and Protestants killed because of their rebellion against Rome clearly runs to many millions; and beyond these actual executions or massacres is the enormously larger number of those who were tortured, imprisoned, or beggared. I am concerned rather with the positive historical aspect of this. <b>In almost every century a large part of the race has endeavored to reject the Christian religion, and, if in those centuries there had been the same freedom as we enjoy, Roman Catholicism would, in spite of the universal ignorance, have shrunk long ago into a sect.</b> The religious history of Europe has never yet been written.
It is unnecessary to add that the Reformers followed for a time in the bloody footsteps of the Popes. But when Catholic apologists eagerly quote the sentiments of Reformers and the executions of Catholics by Protestants, they betray the usual lack of sense of proportion. A twelve-century-old tradition of religious persecution is not likely to be abandoned in a few decades. This particular kind of savagery, the infliction of a horrible death for opinions, had been introduced into Europe by the Christian leaders -- ancient Rome never persecuted for opinion or had any standard of orthodoxy -- and it had got into the blood. The killing of men for their beliefs by the early Protestants was murder just as was the killing of men by the Inquisition. It is a mockery to ask us to detect any divine interest in Churches during those fourteen centuries of ghastly injustice and inhumanity.
[...]But death for heresy is the actual law of the Roman Catholic Church today. Vacandard and others convey to their non-Catholic readers that Rome has repented like every other Church. Not in the least: it has not sacrificed one syllable of its teaching about heretics. I am under sentence of death in the Canon Law of the Roman Church. I have in my popular work, "The Popes and Their Church, shown that about the end of the last century, when the new generation of apologists were busy with their glosses on the past and their pretty appeals for universal tolerance, a new manual of Church Law, specially authorized by Leo XIII, written by a Papal professor, printed in a Papal press, was published. It was in Latin; and probably few Catholics in America will fail to be astonished to learn that the author states, and proves at great length, that the Church claims and has "the right of the sword" over heretics, and only the perversity of our age prevents it from exercising that right! More recent manuals of Church Law have the same beautiful thesis. It is today the law of the Roman Church. Remember it when you read these subtle Jesuits and eloquent Paulists and unctuous bishops on the "blunders" of the past and the right and duty of toleration today, The Inquisition (the Holy Office) exists. The law exists. And you and I may thank this age of skepticism that we keep our blood in our veins.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
And here, another excerpt - initial two paras included again for interest - the third and subsequent paras are what is relevant to Ramana's statement. Note how <i>later on</i>, there were again at least two classes of protest against the then mainstream christianism: the christian reformation (protestants) and the more secular Renaissance. (More recently, when protestantism became mainstream we've seen further mutations in protest to <i>it</i>. And on and on. Christianism just doesn't sit with anyone, even though a population may have long been indoctrinated with it or societies may have developed around it.)
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->In justice to our ancestors we must avoid judging them by our modern standards. It occurred to nobody in those days to ask when, where, and by whom the Gospels were written; which was the first condition of escape from the Christian creed. To talk about the "simple piety" of our ancestors is bunk. They were duped so thoroughly and comprehensively that even a scholar did not think of asking those skeptical questions. Do not imagine that I am making bold statements which modern scholars would not sanction. It is merely the words I use that they would not sanction; and these pages are written for people who prefer a lie to be called a lie instead of a terminological inexactitude.
Most of the more learned theological authorities on the Gospels now say that words are put into the mouth of Jesus which Jesus certainly never uttered. All but Catholic scholars say this of the profoundly important supposed saying to Peter: "On this rock I will build my Church"; and even learned Catholic scholars say it of the almost equally important command (Matthew xxviii, 19) to "baptize" in the name of the Trinity. Then attention was distracted from such weaknesses as the gospel narrative obviously has by the fabrication of a supernatural version of the triumph of Christianity (the tabarum, the discovery of the cross and Veronica's pocket handkerchief, thousands of forged legends of saints and martyrs, etc.). A number of further forgeries (Donation of Constantine, etc.) established the Pope's royal dignity, and a vast number of falsified or forged decrees of Councils proved his spiritual supremacy. There had been, on the admission of all historians, six hundred years of forgeries. The stark humanity of the Church was concealed under a purple and gold robe of supernatural favor.
<b>In the circumstances it is remarkable how much radical anti-Christian heresy there was before the revival of learning. I must not attempt even to summarize it here. It is enough to recall that,</b> to our positive knowledge, hundreds of thousands of men and women were killed for revolt against the ruling creed <b>between 1200 and 1500 A.D</b>. If we were to take the early Christians as a standard -- say, in the Diocletian persecution, when a few hundred suffered for the faith and a few million abjured it -- we should have to conclude that there was a colossal proportion of heresy in the Middle Ages. Remember that the total population of Europe in those days was only about thirty millions. Life was so ghastly, so ruthlessly devastated by disease and violence, that, although men and women bred like rabbits, the population was almost stationary. However, let us be liberal and grant the apologist that the medieval heretics were much more faithful than the early Christians -- or, if he prefers it, that the Christian Church was much more thorough in its bloody measures than the pagan authorities had been -- so that we will not claim a thousand heretics for every one that died.
This revolt took two different lines. In part (in the Bogomiles, Albigensians, Luciferists, etc.) it was a revolt against Christian doctrine. In part (Waldensians, Lollards, Hussites, etc.) it was a revolt against the Church's corruption of Christian doctrine. But in both cases the mightiest element in the revolt was disgust at the state of Christendom. The corruption of the Church was the seed of heretics. Whether they said that the creed was wrong and unnatural, or that the creed was right but corrupted, they united in pointing out that the actual state of the Church repelled people of delicate spiritual nostrils.
The intellectual or doctrinal revolt was murdered. Churches are always sterner against intellectual vitality than erotic vitality -- in practice. The Renaissance was not in the least a continuation of the earlier doctrinal rebellion. It was confined to the cultivated few. It was generally on good terms with the Church and as willing to burn incense to Jesus as to Apollo or any other form of thought. Where it was outspokenly anti-Christian, it was Greek: Platonist or Epicurean or Stoic. But in Greek literature were the germs of modern thought and the modern spirit.
Hence the relation of the Renaissance to the more dramatic revolt which we call the Reformation is profoundly interesting, and quite opposite opinions are expressed on it. The Reformation was in the direct line of moral revolts against the Church in the interest of pure Christianity. It continued, and it was greatly helped by, the revolts of the Wyclifites, Hussites, Christian Cathari, etc. It agreed with the Humanists in the attack on Scholastic theology and Canon Law; and the leading Humanists (Erasmus, etc.) agreed with the Reformers in denouncing the corruption of the Church. Yet, although the effects of the Renaissance remained -- the act of awakening is merely the first and temporary condition of the state of being awake -- the Reformers denounced the human or, as they said, pagan spirit of it, which was its finest contribution to the new era. Did the Reformation do more harm than good? Did it postpone unnecessarily the development of the modern humanitarian, libertarian, and scientific spirit?<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
http://freetruth.50webs.org/A2c.htm
<b>ADDED:</b> One of the many medieval sects that sprang up - and was crushed - that was very similar to the later reformation:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Followers of Peter Waldo of Lyon, called Waldensians, also suffered the wrath of official Christendom. They promoted the role of lay street preachers despite official policy that only ordained ministers be allowed to preach. They rejected things like oaths, war, relics, veneration of saints, indulgences, purgatory, and a great deal more which was promoted by religious leaders. ...They were declared heretics at the Council of Verona in 1184 and then hounded and killed over the course of the following 500 years. In 1487, Pope Innocent VIII called for an armed crusade against populations of Waldensians in France. Some of them still apparently survive in the Alps and Piedmont.
Dozens of other heretical groups suffered the same fate - condemnation, excommunication, repression and eventually death.
Link http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/chri...ol_crusades.htm<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->As for the christian love they received from mainstream western christianism (catholicism) - do a search on the word 'wald' on this page
http://freetruth.50webs.org/A2d.htm
<i>Warning:</i> It's sickening. I stopped reading now after three lines. The first included the faithful following jehovallah's commandment on dashing children's brains out... And it keeps going at that level.
<b>ADDED</b> Going back to Dhu's statement again:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->So all these mutations upon Christianity are happening to unify the Internal European space ??<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Europeans are not in control: historically the mutations have not really been intentional; even now they can only direct the mutations (like communism, liberation theology) against others, not consciously cook them up.
Christianism is causing them to convulse repeatedly but it's not properly coming out. It's like a sick person whose body goes through different symptoms of a single disease when its trying to ( r)eject the bug. (Visualise a cartoony image: a character turning green, then getting pink bumps all over, then flashing hot and cold, then...).
Will they eventually shake the disease this way? I don't know. The revolting hasn't worked for over 1.5 millennia. That is why I think the only way they can be healed - the only medicine for Europe - is their Gods and their Real Religions. If they are reintroduced to their Gods - or just plain old humanity/freedom from christianism (for those that have a tendency to be non-religious; but then I don't know why they stomached christianism before that though...) - then the christian disease will be reversed and normalcy will return to their lives. And as a wonderful side-effect, we may regain some peace/normalcy too. There'd still be the problem of islam, of course, but as its still in the openly ultraviolent stage ('high fever'), muslim countries will have to apply the same solution to themselves later on when they've cooled down a little.
<b>ADDED:</b> here you go, a greater mind than mine says the same words (McCabe again - when it comes to christanism he knows his stuff):
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->And the broad human truth here is that <b>Europe</b> was in a stupid and muddled condition of mind because <b>an unnatural creed had been forced upon it</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->If you will believe me, I don't think I ever read this statement before now. I just glanced at it when looking up Waldensians and McCabe for getting material to put in this post.
And he even says 'unnatural' about christianism, just like I did. Woohoo, I independently came up with something McCabe did too!
And... that's over now - feeling of greatness lasted all of a second.
What I'm trying to say is this: <b>communism tried to repeat the French Revolution under laboratory conditions. As in, it's contrived: the comrades try to set/present the external conditions such as to recreate the original phenomen.</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
So all these mutations upon Christianity are happening to unify the Internal European space ??[right][snapback]74697[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->I think the reasons are simpler and sadder: the mutations upon christianism are due to <i>semi-random</i> misfortune. Can't find better words - it sounds a bit cryptic even to me, so here follows a long explanation of what I mean.
Ever since christianism was imposed in Europe, there have been splits and 'heresies' and even constructions of religions/sects directly <i>opposed</i> to christianism - but all were offshoots of christianism itself. They sprung up in consequence of christianism and with christianism as their base (it was the only available worldview from which ideas were generated -> therefore ideas were needs derived from the same pool). In other words, we can track all these different mutations back to the original: christianism.
The <i>religion just never sat well</i> with people as a whole (in Europe or elsewhere - would explain the vehement anti-christianity of formerly-christian Koreans in S Korea and some formerly-christian Indians too). So as a result of people having become stuck with an unnatural religion, there's <i>ever</i> been
- groups of people thinking that if they 'went back' to 'just' the bible everything will be okay;
- groups of people thinking that the other streams of christianism are wrong and/or there <i>must be</i> some other deep reveal in it or some 'true' christianism out there somewhere;
(Examples at the end of this post - it has something to do with what Ramana said just above)
- or outright anti-christian movements like communism, western-style secularism and modern missionary kinds of 'atheism' including the confusingly named 'rationalism'. In fact, there have been anti-christian groups going far back: there were certain medieval satanist and other declared anti-christian cults (apparently these are documented: people who willingly admitted to being anti-christian in the dark ages - this is according to Joseph McCabe IIRC).
Going back to what I said at the top: " the mutations upon christianism are due to semi-random misfortune."
- '<i>Semi</i>-random' as in, Europeans have revolted constantly throughout history against christianism, but in medieval times they did not have sufficient ideas/vocabulary/cosmology to express themselves or think outside the box - that is, ideas were not entirely independent and free from christian influence (or at least after-taint; the Renaissance had such aftertaint/was dabbed with blotting christian ink afterward). This lack of independent expression meant the revolts merely created christian-based 'heresies'. (That's still true of communism and secularism too; but it's even more overtly the case with the early heresies that I will paste examples of below.)
- 'Semi-<i>random</i>' as in, Europeans could not control the expression or outcome of their revolts. These gave birth to mutations - the resulting mutations/ideas and the effects which these gave rise to they could not control, so the birth of these invariably christian-based ideas were inevitable as explained above.
The more I think of it, the more I feel bad about what's happened to Europe. Great damage has been done to their psyche by prolonged exposure to the tyranny of christianism. It's like a child that was regularly beaten by some evil step-'parent' that kidnapped it - it's grown crooked and hunched up when it could have grown up very straight. Abused people often have a tendency to carry out the same abuse themselves. It's all because of the christian <i>meme</i> that they've not been able to shake, and which they are attempting to infect everyone with. Misery loves company and christianism creates misery.
Before I continue:
<!--QuoteBegin-Honsol+Oct 30 2007, 09:53 PM-->QUOTE(Honsol @ Oct 30 2007, 09:53 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->The conquest of Siberia is seen by some historians as a revenge against turko-mongols,a kind of response to dominance of Mongol empire.[right][snapback]74675[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->I thought Siberians were more closely related to the Sami and Fins and possibly Estonians. As in, they're part of the western branch of Finno-Ugric peoples. Whereas Mongolians and Turkic people were part of the Eastern branch, or so I was led to believe. The rest of Russia is plonked in between the two.
I'm almost certain I've seen Finnish sites mention Saami Religion and Siberian Shamanism as being closely related to theirs and more distantly to Hungarian and even more distantly to Turkic and Mongolian.
Ramana:
<!--QuoteBegin-ramana+Oct 31 2007, 02:24 AM-->QUOTE(ramana @ Oct 31 2007, 02:24 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->In short, from the tenth century onward this revolt against orthodox Christianity and its corrupt priests and monks spread over Europe like a prairie fire.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->So this is how the reformation movement grew in Western Europe and finally ended in the great split by Luther. I always wondered how did Luther wake suddenly one day and decide ot break with the Roman Catholic papacy.
Need to save this item.
[right][snapback]74681[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Luther was never the first. There was some famous English dude in medieval times - I *think* it was a John Wyclif or something? - who insisted on the utterly forbidden: translating the bible into English. Back then that was an offence punishable by death followed by eternal damnation in you-know-where. Today the church pretends it was always okay to read babble in local lingo. Anyway, he got a big following until he and his kind were exterminated. WASPies often point to him as their actual 'protestant' predecessor when they discover that Luther and the other bloodsoaked reformers weren't as swell as they'd initially imagined. They also like to point to/imagine some 'true christianism' lost in a misty haze of time or otherwise claimed to have been lost due to catholic history rewriting/erasing. A 'true christianism' that they claim also involved reading the bible in the local tongue and interpreting it for oneself. Local language? Most probably, but which 'bible' they would mean is beyond anyone's guess. But it ain't the catholic-protestant collection of gospels for sure.
Ramana, here you go, Joseph McCabe summarises his vast knowledge (he read voluminous tomes and so we don't have to <!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo--> :thankful):Second and third paras in this first excerpt are added for interest.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Let us keep a sense of proportion. The record of Christianity from the days when it first obtained the power to persecute is one of the most ghastly in history. The total number of Manichaeans, Arians, Priscillianists, Paulicians, Bogomiles, Cathari, Waldensians, Albigensians, witches, Lollards, Hussites, Jews and Protestants killed because of their rebellion against Rome clearly runs to many millions; and beyond these actual executions or massacres is the enormously larger number of those who were tortured, imprisoned, or beggared. I am concerned rather with the positive historical aspect of this. <b>In almost every century a large part of the race has endeavored to reject the Christian religion, and, if in those centuries there had been the same freedom as we enjoy, Roman Catholicism would, in spite of the universal ignorance, have shrunk long ago into a sect.</b> The religious history of Europe has never yet been written.
It is unnecessary to add that the Reformers followed for a time in the bloody footsteps of the Popes. But when Catholic apologists eagerly quote the sentiments of Reformers and the executions of Catholics by Protestants, they betray the usual lack of sense of proportion. A twelve-century-old tradition of religious persecution is not likely to be abandoned in a few decades. This particular kind of savagery, the infliction of a horrible death for opinions, had been introduced into Europe by the Christian leaders -- ancient Rome never persecuted for opinion or had any standard of orthodoxy -- and it had got into the blood. The killing of men for their beliefs by the early Protestants was murder just as was the killing of men by the Inquisition. It is a mockery to ask us to detect any divine interest in Churches during those fourteen centuries of ghastly injustice and inhumanity.
[...]But death for heresy is the actual law of the Roman Catholic Church today. Vacandard and others convey to their non-Catholic readers that Rome has repented like every other Church. Not in the least: it has not sacrificed one syllable of its teaching about heretics. I am under sentence of death in the Canon Law of the Roman Church. I have in my popular work, "The Popes and Their Church, shown that about the end of the last century, when the new generation of apologists were busy with their glosses on the past and their pretty appeals for universal tolerance, a new manual of Church Law, specially authorized by Leo XIII, written by a Papal professor, printed in a Papal press, was published. It was in Latin; and probably few Catholics in America will fail to be astonished to learn that the author states, and proves at great length, that the Church claims and has "the right of the sword" over heretics, and only the perversity of our age prevents it from exercising that right! More recent manuals of Church Law have the same beautiful thesis. It is today the law of the Roman Church. Remember it when you read these subtle Jesuits and eloquent Paulists and unctuous bishops on the "blunders" of the past and the right and duty of toleration today, The Inquisition (the Holy Office) exists. The law exists. And you and I may thank this age of skepticism that we keep our blood in our veins.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
And here, another excerpt - initial two paras included again for interest - the third and subsequent paras are what is relevant to Ramana's statement. Note how <i>later on</i>, there were again at least two classes of protest against the then mainstream christianism: the christian reformation (protestants) and the more secular Renaissance. (More recently, when protestantism became mainstream we've seen further mutations in protest to <i>it</i>. And on and on. Christianism just doesn't sit with anyone, even though a population may have long been indoctrinated with it or societies may have developed around it.)
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->In justice to our ancestors we must avoid judging them by our modern standards. It occurred to nobody in those days to ask when, where, and by whom the Gospels were written; which was the first condition of escape from the Christian creed. To talk about the "simple piety" of our ancestors is bunk. They were duped so thoroughly and comprehensively that even a scholar did not think of asking those skeptical questions. Do not imagine that I am making bold statements which modern scholars would not sanction. It is merely the words I use that they would not sanction; and these pages are written for people who prefer a lie to be called a lie instead of a terminological inexactitude.
Most of the more learned theological authorities on the Gospels now say that words are put into the mouth of Jesus which Jesus certainly never uttered. All but Catholic scholars say this of the profoundly important supposed saying to Peter: "On this rock I will build my Church"; and even learned Catholic scholars say it of the almost equally important command (Matthew xxviii, 19) to "baptize" in the name of the Trinity. Then attention was distracted from such weaknesses as the gospel narrative obviously has by the fabrication of a supernatural version of the triumph of Christianity (the tabarum, the discovery of the cross and Veronica's pocket handkerchief, thousands of forged legends of saints and martyrs, etc.). A number of further forgeries (Donation of Constantine, etc.) established the Pope's royal dignity, and a vast number of falsified or forged decrees of Councils proved his spiritual supremacy. There had been, on the admission of all historians, six hundred years of forgeries. The stark humanity of the Church was concealed under a purple and gold robe of supernatural favor.
<b>In the circumstances it is remarkable how much radical anti-Christian heresy there was before the revival of learning. I must not attempt even to summarize it here. It is enough to recall that,</b> to our positive knowledge, hundreds of thousands of men and women were killed for revolt against the ruling creed <b>between 1200 and 1500 A.D</b>. If we were to take the early Christians as a standard -- say, in the Diocletian persecution, when a few hundred suffered for the faith and a few million abjured it -- we should have to conclude that there was a colossal proportion of heresy in the Middle Ages. Remember that the total population of Europe in those days was only about thirty millions. Life was so ghastly, so ruthlessly devastated by disease and violence, that, although men and women bred like rabbits, the population was almost stationary. However, let us be liberal and grant the apologist that the medieval heretics were much more faithful than the early Christians -- or, if he prefers it, that the Christian Church was much more thorough in its bloody measures than the pagan authorities had been -- so that we will not claim a thousand heretics for every one that died.
This revolt took two different lines. In part (in the Bogomiles, Albigensians, Luciferists, etc.) it was a revolt against Christian doctrine. In part (Waldensians, Lollards, Hussites, etc.) it was a revolt against the Church's corruption of Christian doctrine. But in both cases the mightiest element in the revolt was disgust at the state of Christendom. The corruption of the Church was the seed of heretics. Whether they said that the creed was wrong and unnatural, or that the creed was right but corrupted, they united in pointing out that the actual state of the Church repelled people of delicate spiritual nostrils.
The intellectual or doctrinal revolt was murdered. Churches are always sterner against intellectual vitality than erotic vitality -- in practice. The Renaissance was not in the least a continuation of the earlier doctrinal rebellion. It was confined to the cultivated few. It was generally on good terms with the Church and as willing to burn incense to Jesus as to Apollo or any other form of thought. Where it was outspokenly anti-Christian, it was Greek: Platonist or Epicurean or Stoic. But in Greek literature were the germs of modern thought and the modern spirit.
Hence the relation of the Renaissance to the more dramatic revolt which we call the Reformation is profoundly interesting, and quite opposite opinions are expressed on it. The Reformation was in the direct line of moral revolts against the Church in the interest of pure Christianity. It continued, and it was greatly helped by, the revolts of the Wyclifites, Hussites, Christian Cathari, etc. It agreed with the Humanists in the attack on Scholastic theology and Canon Law; and the leading Humanists (Erasmus, etc.) agreed with the Reformers in denouncing the corruption of the Church. Yet, although the effects of the Renaissance remained -- the act of awakening is merely the first and temporary condition of the state of being awake -- the Reformers denounced the human or, as they said, pagan spirit of it, which was its finest contribution to the new era. Did the Reformation do more harm than good? Did it postpone unnecessarily the development of the modern humanitarian, libertarian, and scientific spirit?<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
http://freetruth.50webs.org/A2c.htm
<b>ADDED:</b> One of the many medieval sects that sprang up - and was crushed - that was very similar to the later reformation:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Followers of Peter Waldo of Lyon, called Waldensians, also suffered the wrath of official Christendom. They promoted the role of lay street preachers despite official policy that only ordained ministers be allowed to preach. They rejected things like oaths, war, relics, veneration of saints, indulgences, purgatory, and a great deal more which was promoted by religious leaders. ...They were declared heretics at the Council of Verona in 1184 and then hounded and killed over the course of the following 500 years. In 1487, Pope Innocent VIII called for an armed crusade against populations of Waldensians in France. Some of them still apparently survive in the Alps and Piedmont.
Dozens of other heretical groups suffered the same fate - condemnation, excommunication, repression and eventually death.
Link http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/chri...ol_crusades.htm<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->As for the christian love they received from mainstream western christianism (catholicism) - do a search on the word 'wald' on this page
http://freetruth.50webs.org/A2d.htm
<i>Warning:</i> It's sickening. I stopped reading now after three lines. The first included the faithful following jehovallah's commandment on dashing children's brains out... And it keeps going at that level.
<b>ADDED</b> Going back to Dhu's statement again:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->So all these mutations upon Christianity are happening to unify the Internal European space ??<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Europeans are not in control: historically the mutations have not really been intentional; even now they can only direct the mutations (like communism, liberation theology) against others, not consciously cook them up.
Christianism is causing them to convulse repeatedly but it's not properly coming out. It's like a sick person whose body goes through different symptoms of a single disease when its trying to ( r)eject the bug. (Visualise a cartoony image: a character turning green, then getting pink bumps all over, then flashing hot and cold, then...).
Will they eventually shake the disease this way? I don't know. The revolting hasn't worked for over 1.5 millennia. That is why I think the only way they can be healed - the only medicine for Europe - is their Gods and their Real Religions. If they are reintroduced to their Gods - or just plain old humanity/freedom from christianism (for those that have a tendency to be non-religious; but then I don't know why they stomached christianism before that though...) - then the christian disease will be reversed and normalcy will return to their lives. And as a wonderful side-effect, we may regain some peace/normalcy too. There'd still be the problem of islam, of course, but as its still in the openly ultraviolent stage ('high fever'), muslim countries will have to apply the same solution to themselves later on when they've cooled down a little.
<b>ADDED:</b> here you go, a greater mind than mine says the same words (McCabe again - when it comes to christanism he knows his stuff):
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->And the broad human truth here is that <b>Europe</b> was in a stupid and muddled condition of mind because <b>an unnatural creed had been forced upon it</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->If you will believe me, I don't think I ever read this statement before now. I just glanced at it when looking up Waldensians and McCabe for getting material to put in this post.
And he even says 'unnatural' about christianism, just like I did. Woohoo, I independently came up with something McCabe did too!
And... that's over now - feeling of greatness lasted all of a second.