The Gods--All of them! (Religion)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Sunday, November 28, 2010, 05:04 (5107 days ago) @ dhw

dhw, -First I apologize wholeheartedly for any injury! -Lets go to your objection: 
"After the above, you see no need to apologize for man being a brutal creature, Achilles is a fighter, Christ gets himself crucified, the fatal flaw of Judaism and Christianity is the issue of fate v. free will (though none of the Jews and Christians I know would subscribe to that idea)......What's all this got to do with your question and my answer? Jews, Christians and Muslims worship a god whom they deem to be omnipotent. So who says "we" only value weak gods?"-I feel here you're either playing coy or are somehow childish...-Without a doubt, if you study the history of Western Civilization, Christ has been the focal point. Only in the 1800's do we begin to see cracks in the firmament; the first opportunity for another view to take its place firmly in the Pantheon of philosophy; namely that of the modern, sleek, sexy, stylish, materialist perspective. -By and large, most of the "noble" virtues we attribute to people, to be direct--altruism--is the product of Paul and his interpretation of Jesus Christ. Only by analyzing my ancestors do I get a glimpse of the alternate view; but at the risk of being pedantic, I will enumerate, a topic, followed by a valuation for pre and post Christ-paradigm.-Topic: Pre-Christ: Christ:
Free Will non-existent Paramount
Predestination Paramount Non-Existent
War Necessary Restricted
Meekness Weakness Strength
Confrontation To be sought To be avoided-
By no means is this exhaustive, but the picture I'm trying to paint is one of this: all the things we value today are opposite values of those characteristics that demand what we consider to be "strong" leaders; we deny those things (envy, greed) that are necessary to become "great." -If you look at this brief list of what was "noble" pre and post Christianity, you will see, without doubt, a list of virtues on the right that you agree with. (Ask yourself, why?) And on the left, a great many virtues that are no longer in-vogue, but are nonetheless part of the human character and psyche... -To me, even speaking as a non-believer, we clearly have a culture that is based on the values on the right, but how could those values on the right ever have existed without the values on the left? What place do we have for these values? -Some of your response I must directly challenge:-MATT: History would have had some other course had he [Alexander] traveled a more peaceful path [...] Had Greek culture not been spread as a consequence of Alexander's conquest, there is no way that a man called Christ would have even been born [sensational new genealogy for Christ]; and it is Christ that brought the civilizing influence into Europe. [The Greeks and especially the Romans would have been surprised to hear this, but still...][...] I am unapologetic for the crimes of my fathers, grandfathers, going back to my great ancestors. [...] Guilt from the past is something we should have been long free from!-Had Alexander not conquered the known world; The Seleucids would never have imposed a harsh ruling to destroy Jewish culture, resulting in the Maccabean revolt and Judea becoming an ally of Rome. But more importantly, without Alexander's example, the Romans would not have had a paradigm for a conquering hero with which to base their own conquests on. Alexander was the first; we may never have had another "hero" of this kind until Genghis Kahn. -Putting this together, without Rome in Jerusalem, without an apocalyptic literature; there would be no Messiah and thus no Christ. Attack me if you dare here, but even large swaths of the Old Testament are dedicated to Alexander and his conquests. The long-term implications of this are obvious---And how we ended up where we are today is hardly irrelevant!

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"