Couldn't resist
Posted on 04/05/2006 7:26:24 PM PDT by MC Miker G
I can't afford to watch such things. I have children and homeschool them.
Of course they will, because a Theory is as big as a scientific idea gets.
Ah, thats a fine enterprise, homeschooling children...fortunately for me, my children are no longer in school...so I can waste(and I do mean waste), my time, watching this Creation Network, when it does come on, and see what they are up to...so far I have seen 4 of their episodes, and they have been grand disappointments....I had hoped that they would have some really different perspectives, but all in all, what they wound up being, more than anything else, were advertisements for various tapes that they were selling...a sheer waste of time for any information...but entertaining, in their attempt to portray themselves as being 'scientific'...
Look up Pythagoreas. The first University.
Look up the Roman Virtues. Concordia, Abundancia, Gravitas. A system of virtue independent of religion.
Thou shall not make unto thee any graven images. Sound familiar? How do you twist that into being a patron of the arts? Actors were long condemned as immoral by the Church. And you know what? The Church was right. Actors were, and many still are immoral.
Peace? Pax Romana was not created by Religion, but rather by a strong military and a State that knew what it wanted to do. Alas the Christian Byzantine Empire took a thousand years to lose the Empire that it took the Pagans a thousand years to gain.
Shall I go on?
You can go on but these will do fine for starters.
Pythagoras: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pythagoras/
Sounds a bit more like a religious cult than a "University" to me, but details seem a bit sketchy according to Stanford. But far more tangible and in the modern era are the efforts of the RC Church to bring literacy, learning, and the written Word to pagan Europe such as the creation of Monastaries with book copyists and library collections, the founding of the University of Paris (tangential to which were efforts of a man named Guttenberg)and efforts of that nature. Why, a Catholic Priest named Martin Luthor provided Germany with it's first written language in his efforts to provide the Good News in the native tongue (doubtless many other written languages can boast the same provenance). Later Christians of course founded Bible Schools you may have heard about with names like Harvard & Princeton, that directly spawned the education system and traditions we enjoy today in the US.
Those Roman virtues have nothing to do with what we call virtue today. They are what is required by the state for it to be sucessful. Loyalty, Subservience, & GNP do not a compassionate society make.
And have you really not noticed how very much of high art began as religious art? Really?
But you are totally right about the actors. I had not even thought to include them among the Painting, Mosaics, Sculpture, Bas Reliefs, Architecture, Personal Adornment, Dance, Music and song that religions down through the ages have engendered, and how they have gone on to inspire and influence secular works.
Pax Romana-outside of Rome proper was similar to Islamic "peace" or Pax Saddam. Here in the west we subscribe to a higher standard. The good nations do is due to a spirit of higher Moral Law that would not exist without the precepts of religion. People doing good work in the world in the name of God are a model, imperfectly followed, by others who do good merely in the name of secular humanism. Without that model Pax Romana would still be the law of the land and charity and freedom would be alien concepts
I think it is rather silly to assert that Martin Luther provided Germany with written language. Written German had been there a long time before.
I taught my daughter at age 4 how to inscribe a pentagram inside a circle. That part of his entrance exam. Can you pass it?
As for the Roman virtue, included are Piety, Gravitas (remember how it was the big meme when Dick Cheney got W
's nod for VP?). If more people worked to develop a functional society and fewer worked on qualifying for the next world, we would have a world worth living in.
One life at a time, I say.
No, high art did not become christian religious art until the rennaissance. Under Byzantium tax rates were high, so the common people were no longer able to afford art. That was not the way the world was during the Roman Republic. In particular the Christians destroyed pagan statues, both idols and statues of political figures such as Constantine. Have you ever heard of the Iconoclasts? Their entire movement destroyed art of all kinds.
Finally, during the rennaissance, artists were again able to return to classical themes, which were definitely not religious, at least not associated with a contemporary religion, but rather in opposition to it.
You can see, on line, the frescos in Rome and outlying villas, with which people adorned their dining rooms (triclinium). The tuscany tombs had much the same art. What wonders were created before organized religion sucked the people dry.
From the Catholic Encyclopaedia...
Like all his writings in German, it was the speech of the people; it struck the popular taste and charmed the national ear. It unfolded the affluence, clarity, and vigour of the German tongue in a manner and with a result that stands almost without a parallel in the history of German literature. That he is the creator of the new High German literary language is hardly in harmony with the facts and researches of modern philological science. While from the standpoint of the philologist it is worthy of the highest commendation, theologically it failed in the essential elements of a faithful translation. By attribution and suppression, mistranslation and wanton garbling, he made it the medium of attacking the old Church, and vindicating his individual doctrines.
Catholic encyclopaedia....
Like all his writings in German, it was the speech of the people; it struck the popular taste and charmed the national ear. It unfolded the affluence, clarity, and vigour of the German tongue in a manner and with a result that stands almost without a parallel in the history of German literature. That he is the creator of the new High German literary language is hardly in harmony with the facts and researches of modern philological science. While from the standpoint of the philologist it is worthy of the highest commendation, theologically it failed in the essential elements of a faithful translation. By attribution and suppression, mistranslation and wanton garbling, he made it the medium of attacking the old Church, and vindicating his individual doctrines.
Couldn't resist
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