Author Topic: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant  (Read 357736 times)

Robby

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Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #640 on: December 26, 2009, 12:19:51 PM »

"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"

   



What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
   Volume Five (The Renaissance)
       
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
 
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
       
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
       
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."



SAVONAROLA AND THE REPUBLIC

The Prophet
The Statesman
Literature: The Martyr
Architecture and Sculpture: The Republic and the Medici
Art Under the Revolution

In this volume the  term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples. 

In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.

Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.

The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.


This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.

Discussion Leader: robby



Durant continues

   
The joy of Christendom was brief.

When the Greek Emperor and his suite returned to Constantinople they were met with insults and ribaldry.  The clergy and population of the city repudiated the submission to Rome..  Eugenius kept hiis part of the bargain.  Cardinal Cesarini was sent to Hungary at the head of an army to join the forces of Ladislas and Hunyadi.  They were victorious at Nish, entered Sofia in triumph on Christmas Eve of 1443, and were routed at Varna by Murd II.  

 The antiunion party in Constantinople won the upper hand and the Patriarch Gregory, who had supported union, fled to Italy.  Gregory fought his way back to St. Sophia and read the decree of union there in 1451 but from that time the great church was shunned by the people.  The antiunion clergy anathematized all adherents of union, refused absolution to those who had attended the reading of the decree and exhorted the sick to die without the sacraments rather than receive them from a “Uniate” priest.  The patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem repudiated the “robber synod” of Florence.  Mohammed II simplified the situation by making Constantinople a Turkish capital.  He gave the Christians full freedom of worship and appointed as patriarch Gennadius, a devoted foe of unity.

Eugenius returned to Rome in 1443 after his legate general, Cardinal Virelleschi, had suppressed the chaotic republic and the turbulent Colonna with a ferocity unequaled by the Vandals or the Goths.  The Pope’s stay at Florence had acquainted him with the development of humanism and art under Cosimo de Medici and the Greek scholars who had attended the Council of Ferrara and Florence had aroused in him an interest in the preservation of the classic manuscripts that the imminent fall of Constantinople might forfeit or destroy.  He added to his secretariat Poggio, Flavio Biondo, Leonardo Bruni and other humanists who could negotiate with the Greeks in Greek.  He brought Fra Angelico to Rome and had him paint frescoes in the Chapel of the Sacrament of the Vatican.  Having admired the bronze gates that Ghiberti had cast for the Florentine Baptistery, Eugenius commissiond Filarete to make similar doors for the old church of St. Peter.  It was significant – though already it aroused hardly any comment – that the sculptor placed upon the portals of the chief church in Latin Christendom not only Christ and Mary and the Apostles but Mars and Roma, Hero and Leander, Jupiter and Ganymede, even Leda and the swan.

In the hour of his victory over the Council of Basel, Eugenius brought the pagan Renaissance to Rome.


Must have been hard for churchgoers not knowing the rules of the day.  Were you entitled to go to Heaven or not?


Robby

Justin

  • Posts: 253
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #641 on: December 26, 2009, 06:45:11 PM »
Heaven went to Limbo where it was held in suspense till the Patriarch and the Pope could straighten things out.

Today, six centuries later, the Patriarch remains in Istanbul. Tne city continues under Turkish rule however the freedom of worship allowed Christians has greatly diminished. The dominant religion in the city is Islam. They have harassed the Patriarch till he is today confined to a small headquarters in the center of the city. From that small base he rules his flock of 300 million people. The movements of the Patriarch and his staff is severely restricted. His seminaries are closed and Hagia Sophia, the fourth century basilica built by Constantine, is now a Mosque. He doesn't want to move to another city though several have offered space to him. The Eastern Churches have been headquartered at Istanbul for almost 20 centuries. So much for the tolerance of Islam.

Brian

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    • Brian's Den
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #642 on: December 26, 2009, 11:20:17 PM »
Justin - - -  the Hagia Sophia was a mosque until Kemal Atatürk turned it into a museum in 1934.

 http://www.sacred-destinations.com/turkey/istanbul-hagia-sophia

There's a lot more here.

Brian.

Justin

  • Posts: 253
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #643 on: December 27, 2009, 03:17:06 AM »
Thank you, Brian. Even as a secular museum Hagia Sophian art is not completely restored. Many of the Christian mosaics  remain uncovered. Visiting Muslims think of it only as a Mosque. They tend to be offended when exposed to Christian imagery  and since they are in the majority, and I mean majority, Christian mosaics have had minimum exposure. Many remain covered by plaster. 

The Eastern Patriarch is in a tight place and it would be nice if the current Sultan and the Turkish government would lay off. Turkey wants to join the European union and it would be nice if those guys made toleration a condition of membership. The Koran says that's a tenet. So Turkey could not easily object.

Emily

  • Posts: 365
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #644 on: December 28, 2009, 07:50:45 PM »
Quote
The Koran says that's a tenet. (toleration)

The Koran, like its predecessors the Torah and the New Testament, say one thing in one verse and something else in another. The Koran also stated that when the warriors of Islam came upon those who were not Muslim, to convert them. Sometimes they gave a choice, convert or pay. Other times they did not get the choice to pay and either converted or died. We discussed all that in 'The Age of Faith'. (It now seems so long ago)

The Patriarch of Greece was interviewed on 'Sixty Minutes' a few weeks ago. In the interview the Patriarch stated that since the Turks had closed all the schools, and passed a law that any Patriarch or church leader had to be born in Turkey, when he died there would be no one trained to succeed him. Without priests or leaders the church will wither (which seems to be the Turks aim).

The Turks intend to kill Christianity in the crib they have built, using punative laws they have passed. The term Patriarch of Eastern Churches will be slowly smothered to death.

So much for 'toleration'.

Emily

Brian

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    • Brian's Den
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #645 on: December 28, 2009, 08:49:07 PM »
Emily - - - the 60 Minutes program can be see here  : -

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6001717n&tag=related;photovideo    

I was impressed by viewers comments - - - especially those who felt that the Armenians in Turkey have also had a very poor deal.

Brian.                                          

Emily

  • Posts: 365
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #646 on: December 28, 2009, 09:27:18 PM »
Thanks Brian. I just used my memory and hoped I had the right program.

Emily

Justin

  • Posts: 253
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #647 on: December 29, 2009, 12:58:32 AM »
The Patriarch will be forced to move his headquarters if Turkey is not persuaded to change it's ways as an entrance pass into the European Union. Current European Union demands and NATO's as well, do not include toleration as a precursor to membership consideration. But I think it is part of the talk. If pressure does not come from the European source Turkey will be allowed to squeeze the Patriarchy. In the end he must move as did the Papacy when the heat in the kitchen became unbearable. The Patriarch's problem is not so much when to move but where to move and what to do about the ancient libraries that he is responsible for. The Turks will burn the books. Only scholars know their worth  so the out cry will not be severe but it will be a lasting one. We will moan some what as we do when we think of the library at Alexandria.

The question of where to move is one of power. The country in which the new base is established will gain in power over the others. A neutral spot would be inappropriate but very helpful.

Tweety

  • Posts: 3
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #648 on: December 30, 2009, 02:29:39 PM »
It is so sad and ubelievable that thousands of years have passed and religion is still the impetus of world conflicts. However we all came to be on Earth is a mystery. But it seems that religion will inevitably be at the root of our extinction.

Tweety

Brian

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    • Brian's Den
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #649 on: December 30, 2009, 05:43:16 PM »
Welcome, Tweety - - - I hope you will find much to interest you on SOC.

Brian.

Justin

  • Posts: 253
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #650 on: December 30, 2009, 06:29:15 PM »
Nice to have you in here, Tweety. The world has been sometimes Tweet and sometimes Tour and we have fun looking at both conditions. Hope you enjoy your stay.

It is sad that we have not yet caught on to the magic of peace. Lots of talk and bumper stickers but little understanding of reality in the world. You'd think a society capable of getting to the moon would get wise to the perpetrators but that hasn't happened in thousands of years so I don't hold out much hope for peace in the long run. There is a political advantage in having religion in the world though it may not be intuitively obvious. Large masses of people can be parked in one place and controlled by a capable leader. That's an improvement over anarchy but it is fraught with power problems.

Robby

  • Posts: 245
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #651 on: December 30, 2009, 08:04:26 PM »
I would like to introduce Tweety to all you folks.  She lives in the same Warrenton, Virginia area where I am.  She is going through a rough time.  Her right arm is in a sling after surgery and she suffered from chronic pain even before that.  When I learned that she has a degree in History, I suggested that she become part of us in order to help divert her mind from her pain.

I know that you will all welcome and and include her in our conversation.  What happens, Tweety, is that from time to time I print out a page from the fifth volume )Renaissance) of Durant's eleven volume set "The Story of Civilization."  People make comments as they see fit and I encourage you to do the same.

Robby

mabel1015j

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Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #652 on: December 31, 2009, 02:28:15 PM »
Welcome Tweety - another history major here...............jean

Justin

  • Posts: 253
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #653 on: December 31, 2009, 04:09:50 PM »
me too.

Robby

  • Posts: 245
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #654 on: January 01, 2010, 08:21:28 AM »
We are now on Page 373 of the fifth volume.

The Renaissance Captures Rome

1447-92

Robby

  • Posts: 245
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #655 on: January 01, 2010, 08:24:41 AM »
The Capital of the World

Robby

  • Posts: 245
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #656 on: January 01, 2010, 08:29:04 AM »
When Pope Nicholas V mounted the oldest throne in the world, Rome was hardly a tenth of the Rome that had been enclosed by the walls of Aurelian (A.D. 270-5) and was smaller in area and population (80,000) than Venice, Florence, or Milan.

 Since the ruin of the major aqueducts by the barbarian invasions, the seven hills had been without a reliable water supply.  Some minor aqu4educts remained, some springs, many cisterns and wells but a large proportion of the inhabitants drank the water of the Tiber.  Most of the people lived in the unhealthy plains, subject to inundation from the river and to malarial infection from the neighboring swamps.

 The Capitoline hill was now called Monte Caprino, from the goats (Capri) that nibbled its slopes.  The Palatine hill was a rural retreat almost uninhabited.  The ancient palaces from which it derived its name were dusty quarries.  The Borgo Vaticano, or Vatican Town, was a small suburb across the river from the central city  and huddled about the decaying shrine of St. Peter.

 Some churches, like Santa Maria Maggiore or Santa Cecilian , were beautiful within but plain without.  And no church in Rome could compare with the duomo of Florence or Milan, no monastery could rival the Cerrosa di Pavia, no town hall rose to the dignity of the Palazzo Vecchio, or the Castello Sforzesco, or the Palace of the Doges, or even the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena.

 Nearly all the streets were muddy or dusty alleys.  Some were paved with cobblestones.  Only a few were lit at night.  They were swept only on extraordinary occasions like a jubilee or the formal entry of some very important person.


I wonder what Pope Nicholas V thought.

Robby

Tweety

  • Posts: 3
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #657 on: January 01, 2010, 11:20:09 AM »
Rome was a dismal place, not worthy of being the Capital. If I were Pope Nicholas V I would have wanted to move to a nicer city--or work very hard at improving Rome if I decided to stay.  Can't wait to find out what happens next!

P. S. Thanks to all for the warm welcome.

mabel1015j

  • Posts: 3656
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #658 on: January 01, 2010, 11:27:05 AM »
At the first and last mtgs of my college classes i would say "you live in the best of times." Then i would ask who disagreed w/ that statement and the students would tell me, at the first session, when the times were better. Many times they would say the "1950's" were better - ala tv shows they have seen. I would not disagree, but would ask if it mattered "who" you were in the fifties, and did it matter where you lived?
I say all of that to say that we tend to glamorize/romaticize historical periods and places. We forget about simple things like no paved roads, no street lights, the smells of the animals that for thousands of years roamed the streets. We think that streets are dangerous now, but don't realize that thru most of history there have been no public protection for the masses. As we discussed various times and places, the students came to understand why i made the statement the first night of the semester and when i asked it the last night, they had often changed their minds.

I was not a professor who stuck only to battles and politics, altho we covered those. The battles were often covered quickly w/ the students having to understand the causes and results, not the particulars of the battles. I talked alot about the social history and the personalities and personal histories of the historical figures which gave rise to the decisions that they made...............it makes history so much more interesting and memorable..............................jean

JoanK

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Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #659 on: January 01, 2010, 02:59:10 PM »
I wish I had taken your classes, I might have been a historian.

We take for granted the simple things, like drinkable water. All the majesty of Rome could go to ruin so easily. Makes you wonder.

Brian

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Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #660 on: January 01, 2010, 06:19:56 PM »
http://www.romancatholicism.org/popes-slavery.htm

as in previous Jubilees, vast sums of money found their way into the treasury of the
Church,


Though Pope Nicholas V did channel most of the money into the rehabilitation of Rome as a leading city, and spent vast sums in aquiring books for the new library, which is presently the heart of the Vatican library.

His stance towards slavery of all non-Catholics was less commendable.

Brian.

Justin

  • Posts: 253
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #661 on: January 01, 2010, 06:43:51 PM »
When Nicky took over Rome was in tough shape. The Pope at that time was the secular as well as religious leader of Rome. As secular head of the city and it's most important employer, the Pope was in a unique position to upgrade the city.

Justin

  • Posts: 253
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #662 on: January 01, 2010, 09:50:08 PM »
Brian: I ran across that slavery thing too, somewhere but I can't remember where I saw it. I can't help thinking it might have been a  commendable action?It could be seen as a first step in the right direction. He was leader of the Catholic world. He takes action to protect his own. The slave trade wasn't big in the Renaissance however,  Venice and Genoa imported tens of thousands of slaves every year from Russia and Islam. He couldn't very well end foreign trade or prizes of war. When Capua fell to Papal troops thousands of female Capuans were imported into Rome.  Ferdinand the Catholic gave 100 Moorish slaves to Innocent V111 as a gift. He distributed them to the Cardinals, gratuitously.

Brian

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    • Brian's Den
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #663 on: January 02, 2010, 12:15:48 AM »
Justin - - - "commendable action" - - - "step in the right direction" - - -"protecting his religion" - - - I am sure that was tongue in cheek.  I can't feel that the support of slavery comes far behind the killing of "unbelievers" of any religious group.

The details of his papal bull - Dum Diversas - are in the link I cited.

A Danish cartoonist almost lost his life today to a fanatic.  I don't care for fanatics of any sort.

Brian.

Brian

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    • Brian's Den
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #664 on: January 02, 2010, 04:31:37 PM »
Talk about fanatics - - - here's a Jewish rabbi who wants to ban music that he doesn't like 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7609859.stm

I don't like it either, but ban it?  I don't think so.

Brian.

bluebird24

  • Posts: 415
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #665 on: January 03, 2010, 03:03:04 PM »
http://www.sacred-destinations.com/italy/rome-capitoline-museums

I love the statue here in the pictures
Robby thank you I learn alot

Emily

  • Posts: 365
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #666 on: January 03, 2010, 07:34:09 PM »
Welcome Tweety. Thank you Bluebird for the Capitoline view.

From Robby's last post in the Renaissance.

Quote
The Capitoline hill was now called Monte Caprino, from the goats (Capri) that nibbled its slopes.

From the great temples built for the gods of Rome to the lowly goat who now claimed the Capitoline hill.

Quote
The Palatine hill was a rural retreat almost uninhabited.  The ancient palaces from which it derived its name were dusty quarries.

One generation builds it and another tears it down.

I recently read "The fall of Baghdad" where what the bombing by the USA did not destroy, the Iraqis finished. They ripped out plumbing and wiring, windows, floors, stairs, and anything that could be removed. These palaces were mostly built of reinforced concrete so they were not easy to tear down or quarry as the Romans did with Palatine hill.

The president of Iraq did not live in any of these palaces according to the author. They were sometimes used for ceremonial events. They did remind one of the Roman and Greek temples built for a similar purpose.

As the saying goes, 'Uneasy the head who wears the crown' or even better 'One day a peacock, next day a featherduster'.

Emily

Frybabe

  • Posts: 9983
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #667 on: January 03, 2010, 08:38:36 PM »
Quote
'One day a peacock, next day a featherduster'.

That's a good one Emily. I have never heard it before.

Emily

  • Posts: 365
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #668 on: January 03, 2010, 11:21:17 PM »
Thanks, Frybabe. I have used it before here, but it seemed to fit the situation under discussion.

Please post more and let us know what you think. Rome has shrunk and become a shadow of its once glorious self. St. Peters was called a decaying shrine. Without constant upkeep any building put up by man will eventually be claimed by mother nature.

Here is another of my favorite sayings, 'In nature there are neither rewards nor punishment. There are consequences."   Robert Ingersoll

Emily

JoanK

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Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #669 on: January 04, 2010, 03:16:19 PM »
I wait eagerly, hoping we will see Rome raise from the ashes of its former self.

Justin

  • Posts: 253
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #670 on: January 09, 2010, 09:11:36 PM »
Brian: I could not agree with you more. It is only necessary to read the Papal Bull on the topic to learn the extent of the support the Church provided the practice of slavery. All non Catholics were declared enemies of the Church and therefore fair game for slavers. All colonial native peoples were particularly vulnerable. Columbus came here to these shores with that in mind. Ferdy and Isabella were interested in tapping the riches of the new world which included enslaveable natives. Many were sent to Spain as examples of the breed. Portugal had similar interests in Japan.  Papal blessing went along with the sea captains.

The excesses of religion in it's zeal and desire for exclusivity are often appalling.

Frybabe

  • Posts: 9983
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #671 on: January 09, 2010, 09:51:41 PM »
Quote
he excesses of religion in it's zeal and desire for exclusivity are often appalling.


How true, Justin. Things haven't changed much in that regard have they?

Justin

  • Posts: 253
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #672 on: January 10, 2010, 01:18:31 AM »
No, Fryabee, they haven't. It would be nice to say the Church has modernized and adopted a more tolerant view of life and social activity but they have not. Exclusivity is still prominent in their theology and what is worse it has spread with the formation of the new independent Christian groups. They can not all be right. The truth is,none are right but that matters little as each pushes his own agenda. It is all growing again, now, like a cancer, among the developing nations of the world.

Wouldn't it be wonderful is we say the effect of religion on world stage is peaceful?

Robby

  • Posts: 245
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #673 on: January 10, 2010, 08:18:55 AM »
More happiness in the name of religion - - - -

More Churches Attacked in Malaysia in Allah Feud
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:52 a.m. ET

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -- Firebombs were thrown at three more churches in Malaysia on Sunday and another was splashed with black paint, the latest in a series of assaults on Christian houses of worship following a court decision allowing non-Muslims to use ''Allah'' to refer to God.

Despite the attacks, thousands of Christians nationwide attended Sunday services and prayed for national unity and an end to the violence.

On Sunday, a Molotov cocktail was hurled at the All Saints Church in Taiping town in central Perak state early in the morning before it opened, said state police chief Zulkifli Abdullah. He told The Associated Press police found burn marks on the wall but there was no damage to the building.

A broken kerosene bottle with an unlit wick was found early Sunday inside the compound of the St. Louis Catholic church, also in Taiping, said the Rev. David Lourdes. He said it appeared to be a failed attack.

In southern Malacca state, the outer wall of the Malacca Baptist Church was splashed with black paint, police said.

Home Minister Hishamuddin Hussein said a church in Miri town in eastern Sarawak state on Borneo island also reported an arson attempt.

''The situation is under control and the people should not be worried,'' he was quoted as saying by the national Bernama news agency. An aide confirmed his comments but couldn't give further details.

Four churches were hit by gasoline bombs on Friday and Saturday. No one was hurt and all suffered little damage, except the Metro Tabernacle Church. Parishioners there moved services after fire gutted the first floor. The other churches held regular services Sunday.

The unprecedented attacks have set off a wave of disquiet among Malaysia's minority Christians and strained their ties with the majority Malay Muslims.

The dispute is over a Dec. 31 High Court decision that overturned a government order banning non-Muslims from using the word ''Allah'' in their prayers and literature. The court was ruling on a petition by Malaysia's Roman Catholic Church, whose main publication, the Herald, uses the word Allah in its Malay-language edition. The government has appealed the verdict.

About 9 percent of Malaysia's 28 million people are Christian, most of whom are ethnic Chinese or Indian. Muslims make 60 percent of the population and most of them are ethnic Malays.

On Sunday, men, women and children from the Metro Tabernacle parish assembled in the cavernous, 1,800-seat meeting hall of the Malaysian Chinese Association party for the service. They lifted their hands and sang ''We put all our faith in you,'' and ''You are the God of love and peace.''

''My wife was worried, but we want to be here to support the church,'' said Michael Chew, 40, who came with two children, aged 1 and 6.

Rev. Hermen Shastri, general secretary of the Council of Churches of Malaysia, said Christians won't be intimidated by the attacks, describing them as the work of an extremist minority among Muslims.

''We all have to stand together to stamp out terror perpetuated by these extremist groups,'' he said.

The government contends that making Allah synonymous with God may confuse Muslims and ultimately mislead them into converting to Christianity.

Still, government leaders and many Muslims have condemned the firebombings, saying it is un-Islamic to attack places of worship.

Prime Minister Najib Razak visited the Metro Tabernacle church late Saturday and announced a grant of 500,000 ringgit ($147,000) for rebuilding it at a new location, a major concession in a country where permission is rarely given for building new churches or temples.

The Allah ban is unusual in the Muslim world. The Arabic word is commonly used by Christians to describe God in such countries as Egypt, Syria and Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation.



Robby

Robby

  • Posts: 245
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #674 on: January 10, 2010, 05:00:43 PM »
And another one while we are on the subject of religion.

The God Gene
By JUDITH SHULEVITZ
THE FAITH INSTINCT

How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures

By Nicholas Wade

310 pp. The Penguin Press. $25.95
How is a church like a can opener? Among the pleasures of using evolutionary logic to think about matters nonbiological, one is getting to ask questions like that. The evolutionary take on a cultural fact like religion or warfare can cut through the fog of judgment and show how a social institution solves some mechanical problem of human co-existence. What function did intergroup violence serve? What are gods good for?

Nicholas Wade’s book “The Faith Instinct” is at its best when putting us through such exercises and sidelining the by-now tiresome debates about religion as a force for good or evil. According to Wade, a New York Times science writer, religions are machines for manufacturing social solidarity. They bind us into groups. Long ago, codes requiring altruistic behavior, and the gods who enforced them, helped human society expand from families to bands of people who were not necessarily related. We didn’t become religious creatures because we became social; we became social creatures because we became religious. Or, to put it in Darwinian terms, being willing to live and die for their coreligionists gave our ancestors an advantage in the struggle for resources.

Wade holds that natural selection can operate on groups, not just on individuals, a contentious position among evolutionary thinkers. He does not see religion as what Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin called a spandrel — a happy side effect of evolution (or, if you’re a dyspeptic atheist, an unhappy one). He does not agree with the cognitive anthropologist Pascal Boyer that religion is a byproduct of our overactive brains and their need to attribute meaning and intention to a random world. He doesn’t perceive religious ideas as memes — that is to say, the objects of a strictly cultural or mental process of evolution. He thinks we have a God gene.

So how did this God gene flourish? Wade’s counterintuitive answer repurposes an old social-scientific analysis of religion as a saga of biological survival. Rituals take time; sacrifices take money or its equivalent. Individuals willing to lavish time and money on a particular group signal their commitment to it, and a high level of commitment makes each coreligionist less loath to ignore short-term self-interest and to act for the benefit of the whole. What are gods for? They’re the enforcers. Supernatural beings scare away cheaters and freeloaders and cow everyone into loyal, unselfish, dutiful and, when appropriate, warlike behavior.

Wade walks us briskly through the history of religion to show how our innate piety has adapted to our changing needs. Hunter-gatherers were egalitarian and, shamans aside, had direct access to the divine. But when humans began to farm and to settle in cities and states, religion became hierarchical. Priests emerged, turning unwritten rules and chummy gods into opaque instruments of surveillance and power. Church bureaucracies created crucial social institutions but also suppressed the more ecstatic aspects of worship, especially music, dance and trance. Wade advances the delightfully explosive thesis that the periodic rise of exuberant mystery cults represent human nature rebelling against the institutionalization of worship: “A propensity to follow the ecstatic behaviors of dance and trance was built into people’s minds and provided consistently fertile ground for revolts against established religion,” he writes.

There’s a safari-hatted charm to Wade’s descriptions of what he calls, a little jarringly, “primitive” religion, filled with details of the rites of tribes cut off from the modern world but still available for anthropological observation. But his ­sketches of Judaism, Christianity and Islam rush by quickly and confusingly and offer only superficial accounts of the spread of those faiths, which was in each case a dicier process than Wade makes it sound. (What if Constantine had held out against the Roman Empire’s Christian factions, instead of converting?) Judaism’s strict moral codes, he argues, held together the rival states of Israel and Judah in Biblical times and provided comfort to Jews in exile, but failed to accommodate the more diverse Jews of the first-century Hellenic world. Early Christians adapted Judaism’s attractive but exclusivist mores to a society that had outgrown tribalism, succeeding “so well that they captured an empire and defined a civilization.” Wade embraces a radically revisionist approach to Islam, which holds that it evolved out of a Syriac branch of Christianity whose members believed that Jesus was human and rejected the Trinity. This sternly monotheistic remnant was Arabized when a new dynasty needed to differentiate itself from a previous one. If the revisionist version of Islam is correct, Wade writes, it “furnishes a case study of how a religion can be adapted with great success to a state’s purposes.”

Wade would probably deny that being adaptive makes any religion better in a non-evolutionary sense than any other. His scientist’s neutrality slips toward the end of the book, however, when he starts making the case for Religion with a capital R. Like Robert Wright in “The Evolution of God,” Wade wants to defend religion from so-called “new atheists” like Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens, who see it as a malignant illusion. In chapters on religion and trade, religion and warfare, religion and nation, and the “ecology” of religion — the way in which religion regulates fertility and population size — Wade argues that our religious disposition can enhance social and national unity, manage scarce resources, even solve the tricky problem of how to get young men to die for the greater good when that’s called for. But Wade also knows that the faith-based preference for the group has engendered genocide, mass suicide and maladaptive cargo cults. Perhaps that is why he declines to draw one inference that proceeds from his arguments: that individual religions can be compared and ranked and, well, approved or disapproved of, since a religion can be good only insofar as it’s useful.

In any case, Wade says, religion is not going away, because it’s imprinted on the human genome. The first part of this claim is hard to argue with. The second part is probably true, too, but raises the question of how. Wade’s vision of religion as a socializing force is persuasive, but he does not do enough to distinguish socially efficacious religious beliefs from, say, socially efficacious political ideologies. There are biologically or at least neurologically grounded accounts of religion, like Boyer’s, that more successfully capture the weird particularity of religious experience while also revealing its tentacles in many other facets of mental and emotional life. Ask yourself: Why are our gods always equipped with recognizably human minds, even when they’re animals? How do sacred stories differ, if they do, from fairy tales, or from novels? What are holiness, impurity and ritual, exactly, and are they religious in essence, or categories implicated in everything we think and do?

The problem, to my mind, is not that Wade has overambitiously linked genetics and religion. It is that he has underambitiously portrayed religion as less encompassing and consequential than it is. Can we really isolate as distinct adaptations the magnificently bizarre and oddly satisfying behaviors and feelings crammed into that drab pigeonhole of a word, “religion”? I would have thought that would amount to explaining what makes us human.


JoanK

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Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #675 on: January 10, 2010, 05:20:51 PM »
Really interesting article.

Brian

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Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #676 on: January 10, 2010, 05:26:39 PM »
Perhaps while we are looking at the origin of religions, the results of indulgence in religion, and the good and bad outcomes of so many different religions in the world - - - we should take a look at the Bahá'i faith.

If the picture projected here is not too good to be true : -
 http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/bahai/
then it is well worth a little study.

I do not know of anyone practising the Bahá'i faith who is fanatical about anything.

Brian.

JoanK

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Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #677 on: January 10, 2010, 05:34:47 PM »
That does sound too good to be true.

Brian

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Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #678 on: January 10, 2010, 05:51:23 PM »
JoanK - - - you read everything on the site in 8 minutes?  It took me a couple of hours.

Brian.


Emily

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Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #679 on: January 10, 2010, 11:24:43 PM »
Since I did not get the 'god' gene, I only skimmed Robby's article but will try to read it later. Just reading the first couple of paragraphs was enough to start me wanting to write a five hundred page manifesto against it. I am tired and need a fresh start, maybe tomorrow.

I will also try to read Brian's article, and comment if I have anything to add to the conversation. It is doubtful.

Emily