I haven’t looked up the evolutionary history of “humans enslaving humans”…BUT using my imagination?
One tribe overtakes another tribe that is encroaching. Benefits fo keeping the women alive? Offspring. BUT don’t piss off your own tribe women - they’re “special”. So are your offspring by the known tribal women. The other women produce labor.
Ahhhh -
damn!!!
Wrong “slave” guy…
AH HA!!! It was this thread 
. This claim.
I beg to differ.
The idea of “slavery” is just a more advanced play on dominance/subservient behaviours.
Teach the monkeys about the $$$ (value/trade) and they quickly learn the benefits of prostitution.
Slavery, and the buying and selling of slaves, is documented in written sources at least as far back as the 21st century BCE in the neo-Sumerian empire[1]. Also, in ancient Sumer, “kings would send bands of men out to plunder neighboring city-states in the hill country in order to acquire slaves (Moorey). In order to justify the acquisition of slaves, these kings would claim that their gods had given them victory over an inferior people.”[2]. In other words, racial or culturally based slavery. Before the advent of agriculture (around 10-12k years ago) and the settling in cities, there were just not economic surplus to afford holding slaves in groups of hunter-gatherers, although small-scale slavery can certainly not be ruled out.
[1] Slaves and Households in the near east, proceedings from symposium held at the oriental Institute of the university of Chicago 5–6 March 2010
[2] Slavery | Ancient Mesopotamian Warfare
OK. I stand corrected. thank you
Coincidentally, I’m currently watching a fascinating doco on Youtube about beginning of Islam and the so called Islamic conquests… Seems there is no contemporary evidence for Muhamad. That the Quran was not actually written down until 200 years after the death of the prophet. Nor is the prophet mentioned anywhere until 100 years after his death.
I recommend the documentary
Just more man-made BULLSHIT.
Keep researching. The Quaran we have today was written from previous Quarans that existed prior to the life of Muhammad. Uthman had all the versions destroyed and possession of one of the unofficial versions was a death sentence.
Some of Muhammad’s followers already knew the whole Quran by heart in his lifetime. (How is that possible? But it is factual.) It may have existed prior to Muhammad and his birth. Early Mosques face Petra, not Mecca. Petra is described in the Quaran as the birthplace of Muhammad, not Mecca.
Today knowing the Quran by heart is not all that uncommon. Difficult indeed, but not impossible. Of course historically such a person would have to had to hung around Muhammad for 27 years, memorising each new bit as it was revealed to the Prophet. Not so much impossible as exceedingly unlikely imo.
There are also devout Jews who have memorised the Torah.
Havin said that, I’m interested in the elephant in the room. As far as I know, carbon dating is imprecise. No one seems to have made a fuss about the earliest date this fragment could have been written. At the very least ,it suggests fragments of what became the Quran could have existed before the prophet was born.
Right now, my position is that The Quran is the Mythology of Islam. That the historicity of Muhammad is irrelevant to the religion of Islam. The author(s) of the Quran are irrelevant
Same goes for the founders of ancient Egyptian religion, Sumerian, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism to mention a few.
Well, we can agree on this. Not just the Quaran but the Hadith as well. Stories about Islam collected and presented as reality. Islam; however, is built on the fantasy of Muhammad. If history does not support the mythos, the system falls apart.
So you are asking everyone to work completely within the belief system as if everything asserted by the Quaran and the Hadith were factual and true? What’s the point?
Not from where I sit. The same can be claimed of Christianity. That religion is predicated on the passion, death and resurrection (especially) of Jesus.
What? I thought I just said the exact opposite. In opining a thing is myth is to also opine that it is untrue. This is a basic characteristic of myths.***
***contrary to popular belief, some myths contain some truth, but most do not.
Okay… Um… unrelated post at best I guess. Full agreement from me. Religious people telling stories about their fantasy gods and prophets.
Hmmm… Well then… agreement again. Perhaps I have read it backwards. It would not be the first time.
I guess I am not getting the “irrelevancies.” Why would the authors or Muhammad be irrelevant. Does the Quaran exist independent of them? If they are not considered, then we are working within the context of the myth without consideration of the external.
Anyway…Like most shit, we are probably looking at the same crap and expressing it differently. Your posts are generally spot on and I have a hunch that once I get what you are actually saying in this one, you will be spot on once again. Cheers…
I don’t know, but it has to change.
I don’t think people are afraid of the verbal pushback, more of getting shot at a draw Mohammed event.
I was livid when they blurred out the Charlie Hebdo Cartoons on the news after Islamic terrorists murdered 12 people. The simple answer is fear of retribution.
Most Christians haven’t read The Bible, or they cherry pick. I’m constantly hearing, “oh, that was the old testament.”
They wouldn’t think of stoning someone for adultery.
Muslims follow their book to the letter. It’s taught in their schools.
They do stone people & throw them off buildings for being gay.
The ones who attack are labeled extremists, but they are doing exactly what their book instructs. Anyone who follows a book that instructs them to kill nonbelievers are all extremists to me.
Could you define “follows a book” in this context? I mean I disagree with some the claims in the OP, not least because to me extremists can’t involve a massive demographic like a global religion, by definition?
I meant by what they consider holy scripture. The Quran & The Bible.
Usually when someone commits a terrorist act, they are labeled extremist, but what I am saying is that regardless of whether they commit violence in the name of their god or just preach what their holy books command literally, it is all extremism. For example, conversion “therapy” is rooted in the teachings of The Bible & is terrorism.
I’m not educated well in OP, so I can’t speak to that, I was specifically referring to the religious texts of the Quran & The Holy Bible, to clarify.
Why is Islam off limits? To be honest I would say that each religion grapples with it’s own history. Over time, they change focus on literal interpretation to “spiritual” wisdom & understanding. Sometimes it takes a disappointment or some catalyst that shows there isn’t any real communication between their religion and “God”. For Jews, they never recovered from the destruction of the temple in 70AD. Their version of God allowed them to be enslaved, as a nation, by Rome and this was going on during the time when Christianity was still on the drawing board. The natural result is that Jews started to take their doctrines less seriously, less literally, just less… and so there are far more atheist and non-practicing people of Jewish descent than they were ever allowed in the past.
Christianity received a somewhat similar blow and continues to do so the longer they sit, waiting for some kind of rapture. Christians honestly, don’t study like they used to and although they still believe they’re less willing to die for their faith. It’s more of a get out of jail free card in case hell is real, which of course it isn’t.
Islam is not nearly as old as Judaism and doesn’t have a charismatic “new thinker”, someone like Yeshua/Jesus who was attempting to reform the religion to make it more spiritual. Because Judaism… really wasn’t about spiritual development. It was about control.
Islam hasn’t had the decades of self-awareness it needed. Many Muslims are there and can joke about it but the extremists are straight out of 1500 years ago. There was a time when you couldn’t joke about Christianity either. Each of these religions had no sense of humor when they were young and dumb. For many Muslims they lack that catalyst that would make them grow out of this.
Welcome to Atheist Republic ZealotX. Interesting post, and I can not disagree with it.
Welcome to AR, have fun.
Excellent point. Most Christians ignore the fact the Xianity is just another failed millenarian movement. Jesus promised to return ‘soon’ in several places in the Gospels. Presumably because that is the purpose of the Messiah:
Matthew 16:28 “Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.” (KJV)
Jesus didn’t turn up. So the early church changed Jesus’ return (“The second coming”) to an indeterminate time in the future and quietly dropped it.
Of course there are a few smaller sects who still believe in Jesus’ return and the end of days are imminent. Each time the end of days doesn’t happen, they simply find a new date.
Perhaps so. However, Islam also has a mystical tradition. Most obviously in the practice of Sufism. Best known in the West are probably the Mehlevi, or 'whirling dervishes"
Although Christianity has had its mystics, it lacks an identifiable tradition of mysticism as far as I know.
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Thank you all for the warm welcome. It’s good to be among excellent thinkers.
The purpose of the messiah is an interesting subject because Christianity has warped this whole concept; such that their “christ” is miles apart from the Hebrew “messiah”.
And this is the reason Judaism still exists because Jews could never get on board with what Christians turned “Jesus” into. And this is why I refer to Yeshua as the “real” man and “Jesus” as the construct that was a symbol for whatever Christians wanted him to be. “Jesus” would be alien to Yeshua.
Christians know “christ” means “anointed”. But for what? They think there was only one Christ. That is simply not true. Every king of Israel was a messiah because they were anointed to become king. The anointing with oil was basically a coronation ceremony performed by the prophet/religious leader. And everyone knew this in the NT. That’s why he was mocked as “king of the Jews”. When I was a kid I didn’t understand this; the crown of thorns, the garment, etc. But it was because any man claiming to be the messiah was claiming to be the future king of Israel. Yeshua even talked about this future earthly kingdom and how his disciples would rule with him. And although it was mean spirited, were people wrong to mock him? His bid for the throne was a complete failure. He was sold out by his own people because they knew the only way he, or anyone else, could be king, at that time in history, was to fight Rome.
So he was hanged for sedition. The stories of miracles and all that, all very cute, were designed to try and build his mythos as “Jesus”. In reality, there is no Jewish/Hebrew concept as a prophecy in which the person dies before completion.
boomer47: Matthew 16:28 “Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.” (KJV)
The funny thing is that there was a Christian woman, named Ellen G. White, who is the main reason why the Seventh Day Adventist (who you might recall from David Koresh) denomination exists. She basically made the same mistake. She claimed to be a “messenger” not a prophet but this is a distinction without a difference. So she is treated like a prophet and of course her family still “prophets” (change the “ph” to “f”) on what they call her “testimony”.
She claimed, at a particular event, that some people present would not die before going to heaven; meaning that the end would come “soon”. Of course, “soon” is always relative to the “messenger”, not the audience. It is their ego and their all-important existence that heavenly events, like the “North Star” must, by definition, revolve around. It is the ego that makes these people potentially dangerous. 1844, for EGW, was called “The Great Disappointment” because these people foolishly followed her because they were so desperate to believe that their god was returning and that’s why they believed in her.
I think perhaps, many people owe an apology to the “evil” Pharisees and Sadducees of the Jewish Sanhedrin who saw Yeshua as a dangerous threat to their people and saw selling him out as an act of salvation which is ironic because that is the meaning of the name Yeshua/Joshua.
This is also the reason Christianity still has dangerous forms. The Q anon conspiracy is proof of that. When you have people who are desperately waiting for their god to return you can make them believe almost anything that might indirectly play some role in the fulfillment of their fantasies. They built up EGW’s mythology as well; a testament to how far humans will go to believe something that was never true in the first place.
