A phone conversation with a muslim missionary

[c0de]

That's absurd. The best-off people 8000 years ago were worse off than people we would nowadays consider direly impoverished.

Are you kidding me?

"The cities of Sumer were the first to practice intensive, year-round agriculture, (from ca. 5300 BC). By perhaps 5000 BC, the Sumerians had developed core agricultural techniques including large-scale intensive cultivation of land, mono-cropping, organized irrigation, and the use of a specialized labour force, particularly along the waterway now known as the Shatt al-Arab,"

Have you heard of Summer and Akkad? What about something more recent like Babylon and Assyria? Do you know how the Roman elite lived? They had central heating! Every major civilization has elite and the impoverished. And the elite have ALWAYS enjoyed luxuries. The scales are no different today then they were since the dawn of civilization.

You seem to have some "noble savage" romanticism about how idyllic life in primitive hunter-gatherer societies was.

I was specifically talking about CIVILIZATIONS not hunter gathering societies.

Whoa, stop right there. I was not at all saying that our capacities have evolved to any significant extent in historic times (too short a scale), but that we are making better use of the capacities we have (and have always had, from our beginning as a species).

No, not "always". Human history is cyclical, not progressive. There have been many times when we have surged as a species, but an equal amount of times we have been knocked back. The "progressive" model of history that you seem to believe in is a FANTASY. Look at what happened to Europe in the Dark Ages compared to where ROME was.

And there is no guarantee that the current surge will last all that long. When the global population peaks in 2050, and the demographic bubble bursts in Europe, Japan and other post industrial societies (combined with dwindling resources) whose to say this current (and recent) surge won't come to an abrupt end by our own hands?

This is false as regards the US. The slave states were singularly devoid of technological progress, which occurred in the free states.

I'm not talking about the Southern vs Norther economies. Of course the Southerners were less advanced technologically, they were the ones using the slaves in the field. But how did America as a whole benefit from the capital generated from the Tobacco, Cotton and other staple exports?? (I took a course on this. Trust me.) Without slavery, America would NEVER have become the superpower that it did. I doubt it would even have managed to take over the Spanish territories let alone overtake Europe.

 

[bob x]

Are you kidding me?

"The cities of Sumer were the first to practice intensive, year-round agriculture, (from ca. 5300 BC). By perhaps 5000 BC, the Sumerians had developed core agricultural techniques including large-scale intensive cultivation of land, mono-cropping, organized irrigation, and the use of a specialized labour force, particularly along the waterway now known as the Shatt al-Arab,"

Minor quibble: there existed no "waterway" where the Shatt-al-Arab is now in Sumerian times; the Tigris and Euphrates emptied separately into the Gulf, which extended further north after the inundations of the diluvial period, until silting created the present Shatt in medieval times. Not that this is crucial to the point, but it does make me question this author.

Have you heard of Summer and Akkad?

They were the first to undertake back-breaking labor day in and day out to maintain bare-subsistence agriculture; which was still an improvement over hunting and gathering because people often lived into their forties and fifties, instead of dying in their thirties, and more of their children, though still not a majority, survived. The "elites" in Sumer and Akkad, however, had shorter life-spans, since they were not a leisure class but a professional fighting class, and warfare was not, as in medieval times, a frequent occupation of theirs, but rather a non-stop constant necessity. The priests were somewhat more of a leisure class, since somebody did have to study the stars and maintain records, so maybe you wouldn't have minded being one of them so much, if it's not too much of a bother to have your genitals hacked off.

Do you know how the Roman elite lived? They had central heating!

As Gibbon points out, "Augustus was a mighty ruler, who had neither glass for his windows nor a shirt for his back." Central furnaces were quite the necessity, since they could have no light without large holes in the walls and roof; the homes were still very drafty. You know why they wore togas? Nobody had yet thought of the button, or even the hook-and-eye; brooch-style clamps were the best they could do; nobody had clothes that actually fit.

Every major civilization has elite and the impoverished. And the elite have ALWAYS enjoyed luxuries. The scales are no different today then they were since the dawn of civilization.

The number of the "elite" was a miniscule fraction of the population in Roman times. Your claim was that the proportion of wealthy and poor has stayed constant, which is quite untrue; aside from the other point that even the wealthy (relative to the standards of the day) back then lacked what have since come to be considered "basics" (somebody who lived like Augustus, in a house with all the windows busted out, but a big fire going in the middle, and wrapped in a sheet because he didn't have any clothes, would be called "poor" today).

I was specifically talking about CIVILIZATIONS not hunter gathering societies.

You specifically talked about 8000 years ago. That is when only a handful of people had yet stumbled on the idea that sticking some of the seeds you would like to eat back into the ground instead causes the plants you liked to come back next year. Your specific choice of "8000" years ago as a time that was just as happy as now made me think that you didn't even regard agriculture as a worthwhile idea.

There have been many times when we have surged as a species, but an equal amount of times we have been knocked back. The "progressive" model of history that you seem to believe in is a FANTASY. Look at what happened to Europe in the Dark Ages compared to where ROME was.

I was saying that sometimes humans do right, sometimes wrong; not that humans always do right. We don't have to go all the way back to the Fall of Rome for a "backwards" move by the race: the 20th century World Wars were a serious retrogression, if fortunately not a long-lived one. But there is not an "equal" amount of backwards and forwards; I'm sorry, you're just being silly.

whose to say this current (and recent) surge won't come to an abrupt end by our own hands?

That is up to us. We can do either. That is what "freedom" means.

Without slavery, America would NEVER have become the superpower that it did. I doubt it would even have managed to take over the Spanish territories let alone overtake Europe.

The South has always been a lead weight around our necks. Lincoln would have done better to let it break off and sink.

 

[rodgertutt]

That is up to us. We can do either. That is what "freedom" means.

"Freedom" in the usual understanding of the meaning is that one could have chosen differently than they did.

No one could have chosen differently than they did because, all influences considered, they chose what they wanted MOST.

God has locked up humans in a lifetime made up of a sequence of choices that are ALWAYS made in the direction of the strongest sets of influences that dictate what they actually prefer MOST at the point in time that they make the choice. They could not have chosen anything else.

Everything HAS to happen the way that it does, including all of our efforts to assist, or prevent it from happening. That is called God's DECRETIVE will which is that which MUST occur.
biblical studies: His Achievement Are We - Part 16 - Choice and Deity
Especially read the section called
THE MISUSE OF VOLITIONAL TERMS
AND
THE VAUNTED POWER OF CONTRARY CHOICE

 

[rodgertutt]

The REASONS that we choose "something" over "something else" are the CAUSES of our choice.

If we insist that our will is so "free" that it was not caused to choose, we are saying that there were no reasons that we chose what we chose.

That would mean that we had to have chosen randomly, i.e. not based on any reason, or combination of reasons.

In either case, a caused choice, or a random choice, could not have been prevented. The choice that was made was the only choice that could have been made at that point in time.

Consequently, in both cases, "free" will not only does not exist, but cannot exist.

 

[c0de]

The South has always been a lead weight around our necks. Lincoln would have done better to let it break off and sink.

A Lead weight?? I am sorry, but that is completely false and you (like most Americans) have been grossly misinformed. There is a reason why you think this: because historians have only recently begun to take stock of the ENORMOUS contribution slavery made to the entire world order. It was always hushed away and ignored by most historians.

It was only BECAUSE of the South (and the slave labor it provided) that the United States went anywhere at all. And it doesn't even stop at the United States: Here is a quote from the first link I found on google:

"More than half a century ago, Eric Williams argued that slavery and the slave trade played crucial roles in financing the Industrial Revolution in Britain."

Link: The vital contribution to the economy of the Atlantic world made by American slaves of African descent has been argued by several historians over the past fifty years. It is now generally accepted...

This is why I reject your thesis on principle. All the technological progress that the modern world has made was due to exploitation, specifically, slavery in the US, while Europe shot ahead due to the raw materials it got through colonization of Asia and Africa and the slave based Atlantic economy. All of this, is blood luxury. I am not a superstitious person, but if I was, I would go as far as to say that it is "cursed".

The "elites" in Sumer and Akkad, however, had shorter life-spans, since they were not a leisure class but a professional fighting class,

"Morton Fried and Elman Service have hypothesised that Ubaid culture saw the rise of an elite class of hereditary chieftains, perhaps heads of kin groups linked in some way to the administration of the temple shrines and their granaries, responsible for mediating intra-group conflict and maintaining social order."


Doesn't look like the elites were doing much of the fighting to me. And this is just the first period Summer civ @ 5300 BCE. By 4000 BC an all out urban civilization formed and all the jazz came with it.

Your claim was that the proportion of wealthy and poor has stayed constant, which is quite untrue;

You can't be serious!

First of all, I am not even talking about just the United States (where 2% of the pop. own 90% of the wealth), but I was talking about the HUMAN SPECIES AS A WHOLE. How many people in the world live on less then $2 a day? Don't tell you me you've never seen the infomercials dude.

You think we can just compare the lower-middle classes of the developed nations and use that as the "norm" when comparing to the "norm" of the world population thousands of years ago? Do you know how 95% of the population of China and India lives? And these two are supposed to be economic powerhouses!

You specifically talked about 8000 years ago. That is when only a handful of people had yet stumbled on the idea that sticking some of the seeds you would like to eat back into the ground instead causes the plants you liked to come back next year.

I picked "8000" because it was the beginning of civilization and agriculture, and to show that the same inequalities existed then as they do today. The elites ALWAYS lived in luxury and the majority always got screwed. There has been little change today (stop looking at figures from only the developed world)

And again, this is all ignoring the fact that I think your thesis is flawed from the start, on principle.

As Gibbon points out, "Augustus was a mighty ruler, who had neither glass for his windows nor a shirt for his back." Central furnaces were quite the necessity, since they could have no light without large holes in the walls and roof; the homes were still very drafty. You know why they wore togas? Nobody had yet thought of the button, or even the hook-and-eye; brooch-style clamps were the best they could do; nobody had clothes that actually fit.

I can't believe you are actually arguing AGAINST the fact that the Roman elite lived a life of unbelievable luxury....

They were the first to undertake back-breaking labor day in and day out to maintain bare-subsistence agriculture; which was still an improvement over hunting and gathering because people often lived into their forties and fifties, instead of dying in their thirties, and more of their children, though still not a majority, survived.

The fact that they were the first one to brew wine and beer suggests that they were doing a little more then subsistence farming and living There is a reason the area is called the "fertile crescent" you know.

I was saying that sometimes humans do right, sometimes wrong; not that humans always do right. We don't have to go all the way back to the Fall of Rome for a "backwards" move by the race: the 20th century World Wars were a serious retrogression, if fortunately not a long-lived one. But there is not an "equal" amount of backwards and forwards; I'm sorry, you're just being silly.

And you are being incredibly naive. The industrial age only started in the 18th century! Most of this world is not even "modern" today. And why are you assuming that because we survived WWI and WWII (which was basically just a single 30 year long war), that we will survive anything in the future?? Throughout the entire "cold war" the world stood on the brink of being knocked back to the stone age. Have you seen "The fog of war" the documentary with Robert McNamara? Because his lesson #2 is "rationality will not save us"

Let me give you a little run down of the situation as it is today. If you think the problem with our global resources is bad right now, consider the fact that the world population is due to peak in 2050, at something like 10 billion! The closest thing to a solution to the energy deficiency are space based solar arrays. And if you think it is hard to protect the sea-routes for oil, how easy do you think it is going to be to protect those floating bullseyes???

And this is all ignoring the biggest issue for the developed world: the demographic bubble, which is about to burst! Japan is not an anomaly. What is happening there with its population crash will happen all over Europe.

I could go on...

 

[bob x]

"Freedom" in the usual understanding of the meaning is that one could have chosen differently than they did.

I repeat: is there ANYTHING, anything at all, that you DO call "free"? Or have you defined the word for yourself in such a way that it cannot be used for anything? Give me an example of something that IS "free", according to you, or else I just have to assume that any sentence you utter with that word in it is just, by definition, meaningless.

No one could have chosen differently than they did because, all influences considered, they chose what they wanted MOST.

So far, this sentence is just saying "What the decision is has to be what the decision is." Of course we choose what we want: "choosing" and "wanting" and "deciding" and "willing" are all just different verbs referring to the same process, and A does equal A. If there is no reason for what we choose except that we choose what we want, that is MY definition of "free". But then you go on to assert that there are always some other reasons:

God has locked up humans in a lifetime made up of a sequence of choices that are ALWAYS made in the direction of the strongest sets of influences that dictate what they actually prefer MOST at the point in time that they make the choice.

Your assertion that previously-existing influences "dictate" the choices appears to be factually false; the choice could follow either one influence or the other, and there is nothing in the previously-existing situation that dictates which it will be; naming that influence "strongest" AFTER THE FACT is evading the issue that nothing in the previously-existing conditions dictated the result at all.

The REASONS that we choose "something" over "something else" are the CAUSES of our choice.

We cannot always articulate "reasons" why we chose what we did; and if we do articulate such "reasons" after the fact, sometimes they appear to be just rationalizations (they may even appear so to ourselves, even while we're making them up!)

That would mean that we had to have chosen randomly, i.e. not based on any reason, or combination of reasons.

I don't like that word "randomly" which carries the implication that the process is like some kind of giant dice-throw, when it might not be like that at all. A neutral term is "independently": whatever the process is, it is independent of the material conditions, that is, not determined by anything material. My particular favorite word for it is that we choose "freely" in such a case: but that is precisely the word that you have some allergy to.

A Lead weight?? I am sorry, but that is completely false and you (like most Americans) have been grossly misinformed. There is a reason why you think this: because historians have only recently begun to take stock of the ENORMOUS contribution slavery made to the entire world order. It was always hushed away and ignored by most historians.

I think the historians you are listening to have their own axe to grind. The "blame the West" mentality may be a useful correction to the "white man's burden" self-congratulatory mentality, but I don't see it as more accurate.

Once the "slavocracy" was crushed, the United States (except the South of course) was free to become an enormously attractive economy, drawing hordes of people from all over the globe. It doesn't fit well with your thesis (that the slaver economy is all that made us prosperous) that the prosperity didn't really start to take off until the slaver economy was gone.

Europe shot ahead due to the raw materials it got through colonization of Asia and Africa and the slave based Atlantic economy.

How, pray tell, did Europe ever manage to dominate Asia and Africa in the first place? Wasn't it because Europe had shot ahead ALREADY?

I am not a superstitious person, but if I was, I would go as far as to say that it is "cursed".

Lincoln said something very similar (not sure of the verbatim quote, and not going to Google it now, but much like this): "If this war must continue until every last bit of treasure wrung from unrequited toil by blood and the lash is sunk into the ground, then we can only say, as was said thousands of years ago, The ways of the Lord are true and just altogether."

"Morton Fried and Elman Service have hypothesised that Ubaid culture saw the rise of an elite class of hereditary chieftains, perhaps heads of kin groups linked in some way to the administration of the temple shrines and their granaries, responsible for mediating intra-group conflict and maintaining social order."

OK, so maybe I have been overstating how bleak the beginnings of Sumer were. But the records speak of constant, and I mean CONSTANT, warfare between the neighboring towns and raids from the surrounding non-agricultural peoples. Sargon of Akkad achieved (bloodily, of course) the first large-scale, relatively peaceable (once he was finished) empire; but it didn't last long since soil had been overused and the river-waters diverted to the max, so that a drought period was enough to push the whole system over the edge.

First of all, I am not even talking about just the United States (where 2% of the pop. own 90% of the wealth), but I was talking about the HUMAN SPECIES AS A WHOLE.

You are comparing to Rome, which was about (I'm only claiming "roughly") as much ahead of the SPECIES AS A WHOLE in its day, so far as general prosperity is concerned, as the US is now. The senatorial class in Rome was a couple thousand out of a population ~100 million, that is 0.002%, and while I doubt the senatorial class held "90%" of the wealth, the extent of inequality in ancient times is something you seem to be missing utterly; I mean you are orders of magnitude off if you think "nothing has changed" in that regards.

How many people in the world live on less then $2 a day?

The New Testament cites a "penny" as a good daily wage; work at that rate is something people would line up for. This "penny" (denarius) was about 1/7 ounce of silver, or ~70 cents; that is only a good measure of the price of metal goods relative to unskilled labor, the price of other basic goods like foodstuffs being considerably lower relative to metals (this is what makes "currency" conversions between ancient and modern times problematic, that the ratios between metals, foodstuffs, and labor are out of whack); it is estimated that the amount of bread one could buy with one denarius would cost about $20 in 2005 US dollars ("a loaf of bread for a penny" is cited in Revelation as an example of dire scarcity, the measure-unit mentioned being about a kilo, thus quite a large "loaf" but still, it was obviously expected that a penny should buy much more); however, the price of food in the US is four or five times higher than in places where people are living on $2 a day.

That is to say, the working class in the Roman Empire (one of the most prosperous countries of its day) was considerably more secure than the present-day African poor in terms of sustenance (they could expect to buy maybe three times as much food with their daily money), but actually had less possibility of acquiring material goods. Have you been to Third World countries much? I haven't, not much really. But in these impoverished African villages, some people will have wind-up radios, and lots of people will be dressed in castoff surplus Western clothing, incongruous Yankees baseball caps and University of Michigan sweatshirts and the like; in the boondocks of Kurdistan, I was invited into a hut, mud-wattle construction but divided into rooms (not just the kind of place where the sheep live with the family), not "village chiefs" just an average-seeming family, and in the living room (nice carpets on the floor) they opened up the cabinet with the good tea-set (I was being highly honored; obviously they seldom used these). In Roman times, few people would have even one change of clothes (if they lost their clothes, they were naked until someone took pity); a household would have some pottery (cups, dippers, plates, jugs) and some leather sacks and pouches, but at most one knife, and not much else.

You think we can just compare the lower-middle classes of the developed nations and use that as the "norm" when comparing to the "norm" of the world population thousands of years ago?

The existence of lower-middle classes anywhere is somewhat of a difference, isn't it?

Do you know how 95% of the population of China and India lives?

About like the upper class during the beginning of Sumer; nothing like the upper class of Rome, certainly, but better than 95% of the population of Rome.

I picked "8000" because it was the beginning of civilization and agriculture

Yeah, and I was taking that to mean that you thought things before civilization and agriculture really got started were just as good as today. Never mind, I'm understanding you better now. But why are you accepting that the Agricultural Revolution was "real" progress, and not seeing anything at all since then as having been progress?

I can't believe you are actually arguing AGAINST the fact that the Roman elite lived a life of unbelievable luxury....

By the standards of their day, certainly; they monopolized much of the resources. Objectively, they were quite well-fed, had ample leisure time, and were well entertained during that leisure time, and many of them had long life-spans; but on the downside, they had an unusually high chance of early death through violence, no better chance than the lower classes of seeing the majority of their children get through infancy (medicine was a joke), and I was pointing out that in terms of clothing, shelter, and other basic goods they were surprisingly ill-equipped.

The fact that they were the first one to brew wine and beer suggests that they were doing a little more then subsistence farming and living

You are mistaking wine and beer for "luxury" items. Water was largely undrinkable once manure fertilization was widespread, so weak beer was the common drink (remained so until surprisingly recent times); and grapes could not be stored for later any other way but fermentation (bottled grape juice was a 19th-century invention).

And you are being incredibly naive. The industrial age only started in the 18th century!

That was by no means the start of technical progress. The High Middle Ages (before the 14th-century retrogression in the face of the Hundred Years' War and Black Death) well exceeded the Roman level of prosperity.

And why are you assuming that because we survived WWI and WWII (which was basically just a single 30 year long war), that we will survive anything in the future??

I explicitly said the opposite, that we always have the potential to go either way. Why are you paying no attention to what I post? It is UP TO US whether we survive upcoming crises or not.

Throughout the entire "cold war" the world stood on the brink of being knocked back to the stone age.

And yet we chose to do right, or right enough.

 

[c0de]

I think the historians you are listening to have their own axe to grind. The "blame the West" mentality may be a useful correction to the "white man's burden" self-congratulatory mentality, but I don't see it as more accurate.

Once the "slavocracy" was crushed, the United States (except the South of course) was free to become an enormously attractive economy, drawing hordes of people from all over the globe. It doesn't fit well with your thesis (that the slaver economy is all that made us prosperous) that the prosperity didn't really start to take off until the slaver economy was gone.

This by far your weakest argument yet. And since it is crucial to your thesis, you have pretty much lost this debate.

The point of view I am expressing is now a widely accepted area of research which you need to (quickly) familiarize yourself with. And if you are not satisfied with the one link I provided, here is a bibliography from an essay I wrote a while back:

1. Conrad, Alfred H. “The Economics of Slavery in the Ante Bellum South.” The Journal of Political Economy (1958) Vol LXVI Num 2.
2. Fox-Genovesse & Genovesse. “Fruits of Merchant Capital.” (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983)
3. Fogel, Robert William & Engerman, Stanley L. “Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery” (Little, Brown and Company, 1974)
4. Genovese, Eugene D. “The Political Economy of Slavery.” (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1989)
5. Hodgson, Adam. “A Letter to Jean-Baptiste Say on the Comparative Expense of Free and Slave Labour.” (London: Hatchard and Son, 1823)
6. Kelly, Alfred. “The German Worker: Working Class Autobiographies From the Age of Industrialization”(Berkley: University of California Press, 1987)
7. Lightner, David L. “Slavery and the Commerce Power.” (Yale University Press, 2006)
8. Mandel, Bernard. “Labour Free & Slave: Workingmen and the Anti-Slavery Movement in the United States” (New York: Associated Authors, 1955)
9. Neiboer, Dr. H. J. “Slavery As an Industrial System”(New York: Lenox Hill, 1910)
10. Rawick, George P. “The American Slave: Texas Narratives”(Westport: Greenwood Publishing Company, 1972)

How, pray tell, did Europe ever manage to dominate Asia and Africa in the first place? Wasn't it because Europe had shot ahead ALREADY?

When colonialism started, Europe was still a backwater compared to the actual centers of cultural and technological power in the world. Colonialism began (in the 14th century) as a series of bottom-feeding raids on the most backward parts of the world (to fuel the struggles within the continent). And it isn't like it took much effort to "conquer" them. North America, for example, was basically depopulated by small pox.

It was after this run-amok bottom feeding that Europe shot ahead.

OK, so maybe I have been overstating how bleak the beginnings of Sumer were. But the records speak of constant, and I mean CONSTANT, warfare between the neighboring towns and raids from the surrounding non-agricultural peoples. Sargon of Akkad achieved (bloodily, of course) the first large-scale, relatively peaceable (once he was finished) empire; but it didn't last long since soil had been overused and the river-waters diverted to the max, so that a drought period was enough to push the whole system over the edge.

---

About like the upper class during the beginning of Sumer; nothing like the upper class of Rome, certainly, but better than 95% of the population of Rome.

Dude, the evidence I provided clearly contradicted what you said and it proved my point. The elite existed, and lived a life of luxury. That is all I was saying. I never said the area was politically stable (guess what, neither is the world of today).

This also completely refutes your point that the poor of today lived like the elite of Summer.

In Roman times, few people would have even one change of clothes (if they lost their clothes, they were naked until someone took pity); a household would have some pottery (cups, dippers, plates, jugs) and some leather sacks and pouches, but at most one knife, and not much else.

You are now changing your argument. You said the poorest today are better off then the best back then. When the fact is that the poorest today are totally screwed like the poorest back then, while the elites are living in luxury. Nothing has changed.

You are comparing to Rome, which was about (I'm only claiming "roughly") as much ahead of the SPECIES AS A WHOLE in its day, so far as general prosperity is concerned, as the US is now. The senatorial class in Rome was a couple thousand out of a population ~100 million, that is 0.002%, and while I doubt the senatorial class held "90%" of the wealth, the extent of inequality in ancient times is something you seem to be missing utterly; I mean you are orders of magnitude off if you think "nothing has changed" in that regards.

Again you are "overstating" to make your case seem valid. Not all the elite in Rome were necessarily part of the senatorial class. There were many who did not take part in politics. By quoting the figure of ".002%" you are misleading. That would be like saying that in America, only the people who have served in the Senate qualify as the "elite" of the United States. This argument makes no sense.

Secondly, there were THREE classes in Rome. The Patrician (senatorial), the Equestrians (aristocratic), and the Plebes. The Upper, Middle and Lower, just like today.

"With the exception of the purely hereditary patricians, the equites were originally defined by a property threshold. Although the rank, once attained, was passed from father to son, members of the order who, at the regular quinquennial census, no longer met the property requirement were usually removed from the order's rolls by the Roman censors. In the late Republic, the property threshold stood at 50,000 denarii (approximately US$ 85,000 by current bullion value of the coins) and was doubled to 100,000 by the emperor Augustus (sole rule 30 BC - AD 14)."

By the standards of their day, certainly; they monopolized much of the resources. Objectively, they were quite well-fed, had ample leisure time, and were well entertained during that leisure time, and many of them had long life-spans; but on the downside, they had an unusually high chance of early death through violence, no better chance than the lower classes of seeing the majority of their children get through infancy (medicine was a joke), and I was pointing out that in terms of clothing, shelter, and other basic goods they were surprisingly ill-equipped.

They were obviously better equipped then you seem to be portraying. And modern medicine by the way (in terms of pharmaceuticals) is an industrial product and is therefore not yet admissible to your thesis.

That is to say, the working class in the Roman Empire (one of the most prosperous countries of its day) was considerably more secure than the present-day African poor in terms of sustenance

Yea, that's because Africa had not been exploited then as it has been now. It was made into what it is now.

But why are you accepting that the Agricultural Revolution was "real" progress, and not seeing anything at all since then as having been progress?

Because as I already stated: most of the population of the world even today is agrarian. As for the technological improvements, I already told you it is not admissible. (unless you can refute the point listed at the top)

That was by no means the start of technical progress. The High Middle Ages (before the 14th-century retrogression in the face of the Hundred Years' War and Black Death) well exceeded the Roman level of prosperity.

That supports my point, not yours. I think you are getting confused. I was saying that this age of grand technology that you are touting is VERY recent and there is no deductive reason to suspect that it will last.

Why are you paying no attention to what I post?
-
And yet we chose to do right, or right enough.

Dude, YOU are the one not paying any attention to what I post. I told you that you can not ASSUME that things will carry on the way they are today. So you can not use that as a part of your argument!

​

Lincoln said something very similar (not sure of the verbatim quote, and not going to Google it now, but much like this): "If this war must continue until every last bit of treasure wrung from unrequited toil by blood and the lash is sunk into the ground, then we can only say, as was said thousands of years ago, The ways of the Lord are true and just altogether."

Yes, he was an impressive personality (for a politician : P)

 

[rodgertutt]

I repeat: is there ANYTHING, anything at all, that you DO call "free"? Give me an example of something that IS free"

There is no such a thing a choice that is "free."
That is why I cannot give an example of one.
Such a choice simply does not, and cannot exist.

Our will is only "free" to choose whatever the strongest sets of influences have on our mind to choose.

It cannot choose what it does not want the MOST.

Consequently, it is not even possible that any of our choices in the past could have been any different than they were.

biblical studies: His Achievement Are We - Part 16 - Choice and Deity
Especially read the section called
THE MISUSE OF VOLITIONAL TERMS
AND
THE VAUNTED POWER OF CONTRARY CHOICE

 

[citizenzen]

Bob, you are a glutton for punishment, as is anyone else who tries to wade through this thread. How long are you willing to endure Mr. Tutts repetitive nonsense?

I'm going to pitch this as an idea for reality TV: put a group of people on the thread with Mr. Tutt. The last person able to endure his post after post of circular reasoning will be declared the winning "survivor".

Frankly, I'd rather eat bugs.

 

[rodgertutt]

Bob, you are a glutton for punishment, as is anyone else who tries to wade through this thread. How long are you willing to endure Mr. Tutts repetitive nonsense?

I'm going to pitch this as an idea for reality TV: put a group of people on the thread with Mr. Tutt. The last person able to endure his post after post of circular reasoning will be declared the winning "survivor".

Frankly, I'd rather eat bugs.

Why it is not circular reasoning.

A combination of influences begins the process of making a choice.

Deciding what we want MOST continues the process based on due consideration of that combination of influences.

The actual choosing of what we have decided we want MOST concludes the process.

STRAIT LINE, NO CIRCLE, ALL THE WAY FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE DECISION PROCESS TO THE CONCLUSION OF THE DECISION PROCESS.

During the process of all of the choices we have made in the past, it is not even possible that we could have chosen any differenty than we did because we were influenced to choose by what we decided that we wanted MOST.

biblical studies: His Achievement Are We - Part 16 - Choice and Deity
Especially read the section called
THE MISUSE OF VOLITIONAL TERMS
AND
THE VAUNTED POWER OF CONTRARY CHOICE

 

[citizenzen]

Why it is not circular reasoning.

A combination of influences begins the process of making a choice.

Deciding what we want MOST continues the process based on due consideration of that combination of influences.

The actual choosing of what we have decided we want MOST concludes the process.

Boy, that sure is a lot of deciding, wanting, consideration and choosing for a lack of free will.

Roger, you're one of those types who could be surrounded in Africa by a herd of black and white striped equines and claim he never saw a zebra.

 

[rodgertutt]

Boy, that sure is a lot of deciding, wanting, consideration and choosing for a lack of free will.

Rodger, you're one of those types who could be surrounded in Africa by a herd of black and white striped equines and claim he never saw a zebra.

The important issue is this.

It was not even possible for you to choose any differently than you did during the process of all the decisions that you made in the past.
You chose what you wanted MOST and there simply was no other choice that you could have made at that point in time, all influences considered.

biblical studies: His Achievement Are We - Part 16 - Choice and Deity
Especially read the section called
THE MISUSE OF VOLITIONAL TERMS
AND
THE VAUNTED POWER OF CONTRARY CHOICE

 

[citizenzen]

It was not even possible for you to choose any differently than you did during the process of all the decisions that you made in the past.

How do you know that?

 

[rodgertutt]

How do you know that?

I know that it was not even possible for you to choose any differently than you did during the process of all the decisions that you made in the past because after due deliberation you always chose what you wanted the MOST at that particular point in time.

It is impossible to choose anything that you do not want the MOST.

biblical studies: His Achievement Are We - Part 16 - Choice and Deity
Especially read the section called
THE VAUNTED POWER OF CONTRARY CHOICE

 

[citizenzen]

I know that it was not even possible for you to choose any differently than you did during the process of all the decisions that you made in the past because after due deliberation you always chose what you wanted the MOST at that particular point in time.

It is impossible to choose anything that you do not want the MOST.

Rodger, you just repeated yourself again without actually answering my question.

I asked HOW do you know that?

 

[rodgertutt]

Rodger, you just repeated yourself again without actually answering my question.

I asked HOW do you know that?

Here is HOW I know that

Due to influences from within and without, a man may well change in the next moment from what he is in the present moment, but in any certain moment his deeds simply reflect what is presently choice to him; that is, they constitute his true preferences, however excellent, or awful, they may be.

Though we do what we want, according to our own choice, and therefore act voluntarily, we cannot always want what we want. That is, we cannot truly want, in a decisive sense, what we want simply in an abstract sense, so long as there are other things that we want more, in a decisive sense, than we want the ideals for which we abstractly long.

That is why It is impossible to choose anything that you do not want the MOST.

biblical studies: His Achievement Are We - Part 16 - Choice and Deity
Especially read the section called
THE VAUNTED POWER OF CONTRARY CHOICE

 

[rodgertutt]

Samuel Johnson had the perfect answer to the man who has not yet been convinced by a logical argument:

“Sir,” he said, “I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.”*

Samuel Boswell, LIFE OF JOHNSON, 6 vols., 4:313; New York: Oxford University, 1970

 

[bob x]

This by far your weakest argument yet. And since it is crucial to your thesis, you have pretty much lost this debate.

You did not refute, or even answer, the argument. If the slave economy was a net contributor, rather than a burden, its disappearance ought to have been a blow, rather than a boon.

The point of view I am expressing is now a widely accepted area of research which you need to (quickly) familiarize yourself with.

I'm familiar with "Time on the Cross". Like many, I found it tendentious and unconvincing. Yes, I know there are others who agree with it; I remain unimpressed.

When colonialism started, Europe was still a backwater compared to the actual centers of cultural and technological power in the world. Colonialism began (in the 14th century) as a series of bottom-feeding raids on the most backward parts of the world (to fuel the struggles within the continent).

14th century??? At that time the only people engaged in "bottom-feeding raids on the most backward" were the Arab slave-raiders. Spain and Portugal were still busy trying to push the Muslims out of the peninsula; England and France were entirely consumed by a mutually destructive war. Only the Italian city-states were establishing trading colonies at that time, and these were in the areas of the Byzantine Empire and Crimean Khanate, decaying polities to be sure, but not Stone Age spear-chuckers either.

Perhaps you mean the 16th century, when Spain attacked Mexico and Peru, the most advanced states in the western hemisphere, not the areas occupied by hunter-gatherer tribes, and Portugal established stopoff points in Africa as part of its successful campaign to take bases in India and China, two of the most advanced civilizations in the world then. Europeans were already, obviously, more than able to hold their own against anybody on the planet, at a time when the African slave-trade still consisted of Africans attacking each other and Arabs sporadically invading.

And it isn't like it took much effort to "conquer" them. North America, for example, was basically depopulated by small pox.

It was after this run-amok bottom feeding that Europe shot ahead.

Europe had shot ahead well before the 17th century settlements in North America, which then fueled the great expansion of the African slave trade; I have no wish to downplay the magnitude or the tragedy of the slave trade, but your chronological sense of which things came first in the history is badly confused. Europe's ability, by the 15th century, to reach out to anywhere on the globe was unmatched except by China, which made a policy decision to stop such explorations, concerned about politically destabilizing effects; and Europe, unlike China, had superior weaponry (it is a puzzlement why China, which had gunpowder first, never saw it as anything but a toy).

Dude, the evidence I provided clearly contradicted what you said and it proved my point. The elite existed, and lived a life of luxury.

You provided no evidence of a "life of luxury", just speculations that some kind of elite class existed already in the Ubaid (pre-literate) period; what we hear about the lives of these elite, once literacy starts, is that they were engaged in full-time non-stop violence. That this warrior class quite early commandeered substantial resources surely indicates that their lives had compensations, but the question here really is about just how bleak of a situation we are talking about. There is an "elite" in Mogadishu who ride around in jeeps with mounted machine guns; they get food much more regularly than most people there, but have an excellent chance of dying young, and I cannot imagine their day-to-day existence is really all that much fun; would you call it a "life of luxury"? That is how I see the elite in early Sumer, and you have not contradicted that at all.

I never said the area was politically stable (guess what, neither is the world of today).

Mogadishu is not what most of today's world looks like. The "instability" of early Sumer is orders of magnitude away from the "instability" of, say, Iran (to take a random example of some country that is neither at the top nor the bottom).

You said the poorest today are better off then the best back then.

By "back then", at that point in the exchange I was talking about 8000 years ago, at the very inception of agriculture. The situation by the time of Sumer was a little better, when the best-off were doing as well as the gunmen of Mogadishu rather than like the poorest; the situation by the time of Rome was quite different, with a substantial well-fed leisure class, although very small by later standards, and still lacking many things that even some among today's "poor" would take for granted.

Again you are "overstating" to make your case seem valid. Not all the elite in Rome were necessarily part of the senatorial class. There were many who did not take part in politics.

The "senatorial class" does not refer to people in Rome who chose to take part in politics. People were assigned to the Senate based on hereditary status, or new promotion of families that had broken into the ranks of the super-rich; whether they bothered to attend the senate or to take an active role there (most didn't) is irrelevant to their class rank.

Secondly, there were THREE classes in Rome. The Patrician (senatorial), the Equestrians (aristocratic), and the Plebes. The Upper, Middle and Lower, just like today.

The Upper (senatorial class, 0.002% of the population) is analogous to the "top 2%" that you were citing in the modern US who control 90% of the wealth; the Middle (equestrian class) would be analogous to the next tier in American society, say, those who control 9% of the wealth. Again you would surely find (though I don't have statistics handy) that this Middle was much smaller than the "middle class" of today; almost everybody was in the Lower class, fighting for bits of that 1% of leftover wealth.

They were obviously better equipped then you seem to be portraying.

In clothing and housing? No, there was a surprising level of deficiency in some of the very basics of life; some seemingly-simple ideas just hadn't been thought of yet.

And modern medicine by the way (in terms of pharmaceuticals) is an industrial product and is therefore not yet admissible to your thesis.

??? We are arguing about whether anything in life has ever gotten better. Industrial products are, of course, a major recent example of things getting better.

Yea, that's because Africa had not been exploited then as it has been now. It was made into what it is now.

That's rubbish. Africa was chronically violent and impoverished before the white man ever set foot there. It is easy to project "noble savage" romanticism onto pre-colonial Africa because most of it lacked literacy; but aside from slanted reports by European explorers, we do have substantial oral traditions; a book called (revealingly) Wars Without End sums up what the griots have to tell us about the medieval history of central Africa.

I think you are getting confused. I was saying that this age of grand technology that you are touting is VERY recent and there is no deductive reason to suspect that it will last.

The modern technological advancements are just one example of advancements throughout the course of history. The invention of agriculture itself was an important advancement, and I don't understand why you don't see it as a direct refutation of the notion that everything is cyclic and nothing
ever improves.

Dude, YOU are the one not paying any attention to what I post. I told you that you can not ASSUME that things will carry on the way they are today.

I never made such an assumption. You are arguing that nothing ever gets better; but when I disagree, that doesn't mean I am arguing that everything always gets better. I keep telling you that it is up to us whether things will go right from here, or wrong from here; either one is possible, always.

 

[bob x]

Boy, that sure is a lot of deciding, wanting, consideration and choosing for a lack of free will.

Roger, you're one of those types who could be surrounded in Africa by a herd of black and white striped equines and claim he never saw a zebra.

Rodger privately defines the word "zebra" in such a way that it cannot possibly apply to anything: to him it means a creature which is simultaneously white and black at the same point on the skin.
He will explain to you, over and over again, why it is impossible for any creature to be a "zebra": "The coloration at any point on the skin CANNOT POSSIBLY be anything other than what the pigmentation dictates!"

 

[rodgertutt]

I keep telling you that it is up to us whether things will go right from here, or wrong from here; either one is possible, always.

Actually, it's up to God "whether things will go right from here, or wrong from here," since humans will always choose what they want MOST and they cannot help but choose what they do choose.

ALL is of God
2Corinthians. 5:18

God works ALL things according the counsel of His own will
Ephesians 1:11

And at the consummation of the ages of time, God will transform the existence of evil and suffering into something better for everyone that it temporarily prevailed.

THE PURPOSE OF EVIL
evil.html