Influence of Xtianity

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

So simple economics dictates, that horses are cheaper to use as labor than slaves, even if you factor in the horse-operator costs.

Trouble is, they're a bit cack-handed when told to assemble cheap cameras in Chinese factories.

Your observation that the word "labor" as I used it, was rather limited within today's world, all things considered.   And you are spot-on correct.

Somewhere or other I remember reading (in a novel? I forget) that a company was proposing increasing the level of automation within a Chinese/Mexican/Twianese/Etc factory.  The reason for so doing, was to increase quality-control of the finished product-- machines do not get tired, and when they make mistakes, the mistakes are often predictable, and easily checked-for.  

But the factory foreman (the local liaison) had extremely strong objections to the automation process-- "what will I do with the excess workers?  You want me to put them out on the street?  They have families----they need the work!"

When the human population is overwhelmingly abundant?  Human labor becomes inescapably cheap-- disposable even.

Obviously, my comments pertained to animal-powered transportation and animal-powered agriculture.   The invention of the stationary steam engine (and it's modern descendants) has rendered animal-powered manufacture all but extinct....

.... oddly enough, animal-powered transportation and animal-powered agriculture still dominates all other forms in many places even now.

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

I also want to note that I think it's very easy to assign inappropriate blame at religion's door when simple monkey nature (often disguised as religion) is really the answer..

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I also want to note that I think it's very easy to assign inappropriate blame at religion's door when simple monkey nature (often disguised as religion) is really the answer..

Quite likely so but that doesn't answer the main question, what was the real influence, good, bad or otherwise?
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To make it easy to pick, can we list which are individually the items that are critical in Xtian religion and which of those permeate society?

For instance, while the original xtianity promoted the abandonment of property, the structures that followed were anything but poor.
There is a mandate of charity too, the question is, did charity existed before/besides xtianity? What would be the influence of xtian charity?

That's just to mention one.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Then, there is the immediately obvious:

The first "lesson" of any religion of the bible is a sad one, really:  knowledge is forbidden.

And throughout the middle ages?  That lesson was applied over and over, usually with brutality and to wanton excess.

Had that "lesson" not been at the heart of this religion?

How far would human-kind have made it, based on what the Greeks and other ancients had already discovered?   

Who can say?  Religion's influence was one of suppression-of-thought, over most of its' history.

[Aggie]

1) a horse eats roughly 5 times as much a day, as a slave-man
2) a horse, without a horse-collar, can do roughly 5 times the work of a slave-man, but requires an operator as well, to make him do the work you want

Once the horse-collar was invented?   #2 becomes #3:

3) a horse with a horse collar, can do roughly 10 times the work of a slave-man.

Side note:  I would love to have some confirmation of this 'fact', but I was told once by a well-educated rancher that prior to the availability of farm machinery, one unit of human and animal labour-energy (calories burned) yielded 2 units of human food energy (calories produced).  Our current modern efficient system of farming uses 8 units of petroleum-based energy to produce one unit of food energy.

The first "lesson" of any religion of the bible is a sad one, really:  knowledge is forbidden.

And throughout the middle ages?  That lesson was applied over and over, usually with brutality and to wanton excess.

I have an entirely different interpretation of the Adam and Eve myth that perhaps I'll treat y'all to sometime. 

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

1) a horse eats roughly 5 times as much a day, as a slave-man
2) a horse, without a horse-collar, can do roughly 5 times the work of a slave-man, but requires an operator as well, to make him do the work you want

Once the horse-collar was invented?   #2 becomes #3:

3) a horse with a horse collar, can do roughly 10 times the work of a slave-man.

Side note:  I would love to have some confirmation of this 'fact', but I was told once by a well-educated rancher that prior to the availability of farm machinery, one unit of human and animal labour-energy (calories burned) yielded 2 units of human food energy (calories produced).  Our current modern efficient system of farming uses 8 units of petroleum-based energy to produce one unit of food energy.

As would I.  I've seen the figures in several different places, most of which I no longer recall.  But two I'm pretty sure of are the TV show/coffee table book Connections, and a novel King David's Spaceship. While I realize a novel is not usually a good source of such things, one of the authors is pretty anal about fact-checking, so...

... I also seem to recall it being mentioned in College/History more than once as well. `

[Swatopluk]

So why are the Jews so notoriously eager to study and learn, although they use an earlier edition of the same holy book?
What I see in the Bible is more of a negative view on the human ability to grasp reality/knowledge than a condemnation of seeking it. Even the story of the tree in paradise looks more like a moral question to me not being about knowledge per se but about a certain aspect. I do not deny that the 'holy scriptures' were used for suppression of thought but I think Galilei was right with his bonmot that the Bible is about how to move towards heaven not about how heaven moves. Or to put it the other way around, the writer of Exodus would have been flabbergasted to learn that his book would be quoted as an authority on celestial mechanics (if he would have understood the discussion in the first place). Also cf. pi=3 .
---
On the horse vs. human topic.
Humans are a bit more flexible and can go places and do things that horses cannot. Reducing costs to raw food consumption looks also a bit oversimplified to me*. I think there is an ideal mix of raw animal power and refined human abilities from a pure efficiency point of view. As far as horses go one should also take into consideration the available bandwidth from swift racehorse to heavy workhorse. Special case: warhorses. There was a notorious shortage of the special breed of chargers throughout all the era of  knights on horseback making them hideously expensive ("They sell the pasture now to buy the horse", Shakespeare, Henry V) while horses otherwise were common and numerous (and knights usually had one charger plus a number of other horses to serve all purposes except use in battle).

*a horse needs far better treatment than a human being and will/cannot cope with what was usually meted out to the latter.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Religion's influence was one of suppression-of-thought, over most of its' history.

I think there is a kernel of truth on the statement albeit a qualified one. Regardless of what the interpretation of the myth is (to me it exemplifies how the good vs evil problem is perceived) it was frequently interpreted in a way the helped suppress what was perceived as undesirable thought. IOW, regardless of the intention of the writers, there is an influence and for a good part that influence is (still) negative.

Personally I do strongly believe that the main problem of most religions stems from the definition of the absolute and the presumption that a particular source (ie, the bible) by being written under the supposed influence of that absolute, is by definition inerrant, and anything that contradicts it is by definition evil. But that is a consequence that shows up in almost all religions (albeit the bigger emphasis happens on monotheistic ones). Specifically in xtianity, that influence is devastating, particularly against science up to this day, but that is related to the institutional nature of xtianity, in contrast, while judaism can be as fundamentalist (see the orthodox) it's influence has been limited because it isn't an institutional religion up up until the re-foundation of Israel (and you can see a level of influence there now).

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

In another venue, we were talking this subject a bit, and I pointed out the obvious:

How do you compromise with the claim, "God Said X"?  About the only argument you can bring to the table is "No He Din't", and how can a compromise/consensus be reached in such an event.

One of my fellow posters there, who happens to be a pagan/polytheist, correctly pointed out another tactic:  "You say your god said X?  Fine.  My god said Y.  You may keep your X for yourself."

In a polytheistic world-view, things are much more plastic and flexible as compared to a monotheistic one where it is presumed all gods are the same god, and that people are just "mistaken" in their interpretation of It.

I find that if I must embrace some form of theistic policy, I much prefer the polytheistic version to the presumption of just one.   

To me, but a single-god in all the vastness of the greater Universe makes little since.  If there be one, there is more likely many, and none are as all-powerful as all that.

A multitude of gods certainly makes more since if you consider the evidence¹ -- they would have a sort of neutralizing effect on one anther's activities, I would think.  Which could explain why there is no evidence for any.


__________

_{¹ or rather, the sheer lack of the same}

[Griffin NoName]

So why are the Jews so notoriously eager to study and learn, although they use an earlier edition of the same holy book?

They are only eager to study and learn THAT book. They regard universities as dangerous places.

[Swatopluk]

So why are the Jews so notoriously eager to study and learn, although they use an earlier edition of the same holy book?

They are only eager to study and learn THAT book. They regard universities as dangerous places.

That would be the ultraorthodox specimens. But historically Jews were disproportionally well-educated compared to their surroundings. A reason might of course be that access to 'honest' jobs (i.e. those that could be done by idiots) was blocked for them. I wonder where Jewish physicians (and I don't mean travelling quacks) studied while they were still excluded from universities?

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

It would seem that historically the jews had a significantly higher level of alphabetization than the gentiles, likely because you need to read to learn from the Torah (as opposed to the ban on reading the bible by the catholic church for all the middle ages and further), and that trend remained until universal education started to show its face.

As for physicians, smart people figures out means to solve problems, I'm sure once the press was invented access to the books would have been a great asset, plus the time honored tradition of apprenticeship.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Rereading Asimov's The Dark Ages, I can see how Xtianity became an incredible vehicle of instability, yet there was a detail to consider: when Mohamed invented Islam he used both elements from the xtian and jewish lore while adjusting them to the traditions of the inhabitants of the Arabic peninsula. If my understanding is accurate, the motivations of Mohamed would have been exactly the same with or without xtianity, and given that the jewish tradition was around anyway, chances are that he would've created Islam regardless of xtianity.

Now, that is a serious consequence of xtianity, considering the explosive expansion of islam during the middle ages, it isn't absurd to consider that the romans and later germanic tribes might have converted to islam eventually. And while it is true that the arabs were significantly more civilized than the europeans of the time I suspect that we fared better with a xtian rather than muslim europe.

Any flaws on that view?

[Swatopluk]

Islam radicalized when confronted by (Latin) Christianity. In many cases the hardliners (fundies) took over where the confrontation turned hot (Spain, Palestine) and the Kristian(TM) fanatics won militarily against the moderate Muslims. The Spanish Muslim rulers called in Berber auxiliary troops to counter the Kristian(TM) onslaught. Those turned out to be the Al Qaeda of their day. Successful against the Kristian(TM) aggressors they seized power from the 'decadent' Muslim elites and erected a Taliban-like rule.
Saladdin was an exception and had no successor. He also was confronted with a mix of fanatics, moderates and just greedy bastards on the Crusader side, not just the first kind like in Spain.
A point of comparision may be the Muslim expansion to the East where the oponents were not monotheists. I know very little about that. Were the Mughals in India moderate or fanatic on average (before the arrival of the Euopeans, that is)?

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

I would agree with Swato's analysis... prior to strong fanatical Xianist opposition, much of Europe was controlled by moderate muslim leadership.  And contrasting that to what came later, it's clear Europe was better off under the moderates than under the later-to-come extreme Xianists' rule.

For example, the moderate Islamists copied and sent back home, many many aspects of the ancient cultures, including much of the Greek writings.  And later, when the Xianists destroyed it all, we only learned about it, by way of re-introduction of what was preserved by the Islamist regimes back in their homestates.

Had Europe not been occupied by moderate Muslims for as long as it was?  We'd never know about these ancient civilizations at all; so xenophobic were the Xianist regimes that came later.

And what came later was more than a 1000 years of stagnation and ignorance.  Ignorance which in turn enabled the spread of the Black Plague.  For as it turns out?  There is nothing spectacular about the Black Plague's genome... it was spread because of human ignorance and stupidity.  ERV's take on the spread of the Black Plague.