Church before state.

Landowners - people with money. I have to admit, some things haven't changed. 😉

Originally posted by RocasAtoll
Again, you have no idea what you are talking about. The Aedui tribe was a republic based on elected chieftains voting in a council. We do have documented cases of Germanic and Scandinavian tribes with government systems closer to ours than any since.

Where are these sources then. At least, some pre-Roman era sources. Because I think every scholar of the Roman era will tell you there are no written sources from Germania during the Roman Empire. The only sources they use is what Roman historians write about the Germanic Empires. These peoples were illiterate, so we can only guess at how these coucnils were held and how 'democratic' they were.

Honestly, knowing that a full blown equal rights democracy as we know it today did not come into being until early 20th century, I have no illusions such systems existed before.

But please, feel free to name some pre BCE Germanic and Scandinavian sources.

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
Are you joking? A great number of posters on this forum are violently opposed to the idea of Christianity having done anything good or innovative while never leveling the same sort of criticism toward other faiths. Or at the very least those people have convinced themselves that anyone who says something good about Christianity is claiming it is a universal good that has never done anything wrong.

Let me guess im one of them?

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos

People here will fight to deny that. But maybe there's a good reason that every time someone mentions a positive thing that Christianity accomplished or may have accomplished they get mainly a torrent of "Crusades", "fundamentalist homophobia", "delusional", "xxxx did it first" or something in the same theme whereas threads on paganism, Judaism, Buddhism and such never get "human sacrificing baby killers", "crazy people", "sacred of made up monsters", "xxxx did it before they did".

Yes just as I thought. Serioulsy are you trying to be annoying unpurpose? Get this into your thick head. I am not trying to demean Christanity the point of bringing up The Crusades was not to make the religon look bad but was to create a balanced view that the religion had done GOOD AND BAD JUST LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE. If your going to make assumptions about what posters are trying to say at least don't sound like an arrogant dick it makes you look an even bigger dick....oh and this isn't the first time you've done this.

Hell I even explained this to you and even tried to confirm what you thought I was trying to say but you couldn't even be bothered to respond to the post and like you didn't ahve the balls to admit that you completely and totally misintepreted what I was trying to say.

Originally posted by queeq
Because I think every scholar of the Roman era will tell you there are no written sources from Germania during the Roman Empire. The only sources they use is what Roman historians write about the Germanic Empires. These peoples were illiterate, so we can only guess at how these coucnils were held and how 'democratic' they were.

Wow.

Originally posted by RocasAtoll
They didn't. Women rights in Celtic and Greek society were greater than women in Christian society until about the 1600s.

I don't know about The Greeks 😬

http://celtlearn.com/pdfs/women.pdf

A Few interesting lines from that text:

The Iron Age Celts were nevertheless a patriarchal people and for the most part men had the ultimate power in politics and the home.

Although the highest political authority was often vested in males, women OCCASIONALLY became ruling queens and military leaders.

Though public life among the Iron Age Celts was largely the domain of men, women managed to play a prominent role as well.

They SEEM not to have been systematically excluded from any occupation.

So, women seemd to have a more liberal position than in other societies. Still, it says nothing about their general position as democratic parties. So all we have is a tribal culture were women were not excluded from public life as much as in contemporay cultures. To say women were EQUAL or had rights to vote, or that Celts had any form of democracy is stretching the truth a bit. THe occasional examples of female leaders shows there is a form of totalitarian rule, strking though that women were not PER SE excluded from this position. Needs to be said they were more exceptions than rule.

I still don't know how this applies to the debate though. And again, major sources are Roman, so we don't know a whole lot.

Don't make it more than it was.

Originally posted by queeq
To say women were EQUAL or had rights to vote, or that Celts had any form of democracy is stretching the truth a bit. THe occasional examples of female leaders shows there is a form of totalitarian rule, strking though that women were not PER SE excluded from this position. Needs to be said they were more exceptions than rule.

To quote yourself....

Originally posted by queeq

I did? Please quote me on that. I don't like people totally misquoting and misinterpreting by not reading my posts properly.

Point 1

Originally posted by RocasAtoll
Women rights in Celtic and Greek society were greater than women in Christian society until about the 1600s.

Point 2

Originally posted by Phantom Zone
The Celts gave more rights to women than they do in SOME countries today

Note: I can't comment on The Greeks. Context please.

Originally posted by queeq

I still don't know how this applies to the debate though.

You're not just talking about democracy but also about tolerance in general?

Originally posted by queeq

And again, major sources are Roman, so we don't know a whole lot.

We go by what we know stop making excuses.

Originally posted by queeq

Don't make it more than it was.

Im not you are. Nobody said anything about them having equal rights stop nitpicking and making excuses. I still don't see what proof you have brought that Christanity brought something new to civilsation, all you keep doing is trying to debunk pagan contributions.

so, since there is no argument, I assume most people agree that much of the Christian philosophy we are discussing came from the arab world?

If you include ancient Palestine to the ancient Arab world, yes. But it's more appropriate to call it the (west)Semitic world (which includes the contemporary Arab world).

And Phantom, I never said Christian society in the 1600s was better than the Greeks, we were talking about philosophy and its influence on democracy. The philosophy from the Celts and/or Greeks did not present ideas of equality, tolerance and sepration between religion and state.

As for the Roman sources, we know theye were biased. The very article you posted confims that: it says that Romans looked down on women in high positions. So their picture is tainted by bias, that is beyond respute, so we have to be careful to accept Roman reports on 'barbaric' cultures as some truth. We go by what we know indeed: we know the Roman reports were biased.

Originally posted by Phantom Zone
I still don't see what proof you have brought that Christanity brought something new to civilsation.

So you think there's no reason to think that Christianity brought anything new? 😉 😈

Originally posted by queeq
And Phantom, I never said Christian society in the 1600s was better than the Greeks, we were talking about philosophy and its influence on democracy. The philosophy from the Celts and/or Greeks did not present ideas of equality, tolerance and sepration between religion and state.

Correction: they didn't present ideas of equality, tolerance and seperation betwen religion and state as we know it today!

Originally posted by queeq
Correction: they didn't present ideas of equality, tolerance and seperation betwen religion and state as we know it today!

Neither did the Christian Authorities at that time, did they?

Originally posted by queeq
If you include ancient Palestine to the ancient Arab world, yes. But it's more appropriate to call it the (west)Semitic world (which includes the contemporary Arab world).

I wish you would use the same distinctions from one post to the next

If we are talking about the "west" in general, then you have no argument with Phantom, as all his things were in the "west" too

Literally, you are now trying to argue that Arab philosophy, from the height of the Islamic empires, is really just Christian philosophy, even though the concept didn't really even exist at the time.

The Arab world, and much outside of palestine, had a huge influence on what you are talking about.

While Christianity has an origin much earlier, it wasn't until Arab influence that anything close to the equality and democracy you describe evolved in Christian Europe after the Christians went to all the trouble they could to destroy it.

Originally posted by queeq
So you think there's no reason to think that Christianity brought anything new?

you have yet to provide anything close to proof for this point, and I'm really tired of defending the position you seem to be arguing.

Originally posted by queeq
Correction: they didn't present ideas of equality, tolerance and seperation betwen religion and state as we know it today!

absolutly correct

guess what

we are the first civilization in history to have these rights, and they came from SECULARISM!

tracing back these rights to a darker time does show heavy Christian influence, but that the Greeks didn't have the same democracy we do today is meaningless in this argument.

Im going to respond to some posts later....but it seems to me that people are assuming that if you don't seperate religon from the state then this does not equal democracy.

I'd be really interested in queeqs response to chimps using democratic principals to solve disputes. It would appear then that the entire concept of democracy might be based off of our biology, with philosophy just adding the missing rationalizations...

But I'm with you on this PZ, I don't think Christians are exclusively responsible for democracy or anything like that. I tried to be very specific with what I attributed to them, and I think personally, there are some things that are uniquely Christian.

hey, just because I don't know better and because it might have been burried in posts, are there any documents from Germanic or other "barbarian" tribes? I know they traded with romans, so the idea that their merchants were unable to read and write seems to not fit...

Originally posted by inimalist
I'd be really interested in queeqs response to chimps using democratic principals to solve disputes. It would appear then that the entire concept of democracy might be based off of our biology, with philosophy just adding the missing rationalizations...

Yeah but its not like the democracy that we have today! durhulk

Originally posted by inimalist

and I think personally, there are some things that are uniquely Christian.

Yeah but it seems like a pointless argument. Its like saying a women gave birth to a unique baby.....welll yeah but......

Originally posted by inimalist

hey, just because I don't know better and because it might have been burried in posts, are there any documents from Germanic or other "barbarian" tribes? I know they traded with romans, so the idea that their merchants were unable to read and write seems to not fit...

Sorry don't know enough about that period. edit: As far as I know Germanic tribes had runic script up to a point but I don't think Germanic tribes were considered to be able to read and write until they stopped using it....I think that was around the 10th century....but im not sure.

I mean as far as I know they did 'write' down the runic script on objects so I guess they could read and write to an extent...

Originally posted by inimalist
But I'm with you on this PZ, I don't think Christians are exclusively responsible for democracy or anything like that.

Amazing... are you guys blind? I NEVER SAID it was. We're talking about philosophies derived from the New Testament... When you write something on how people should deal with each other, then we can derive a philosophy from your writings. Then starting to say that you didn't do everything perfectly yourself and others had something similar but totally different, or you didn't invent [philosophy in the first place, that would demonstrate a complete lack of understanding the arguments posed.

So, the debate is down to whether modern democratic values like equality and speration between state and church orginated in secular philosophy or in New Testament philosophy. Well... some New Testament text can be brought forward as philosophical evidence for the latter... what is there of the first?

Originally posted by queeq
Amazing... are you guys blind? I NEVER SAID it was.

I didn't say you said that *shrug*

Originally posted by queeq

We're talking about philosophies derived from the New Testament... When you write something on how people should deal with each other, then we can derive a philosophy from your writings. Then starting to say that you didn't do everything perfectly yourself and others had something similar but totally different, or you didn't invent [philosophy in the first place, that would demonstrate a complete lack of understanding the arguments posed.

So, the debate is down to whether modern democratic values like equality and speration between state and church orginated in secular philosophy or in New Testament philosophy. Well... some New Testament text can be brought forward as philosophical evidence for the latter... what is there of the first?

Hasn't equality got something to do with the rights of women? Anyway you are refering to the part of The Bible were Paul talks about seperation between church and state?

All of them.

Originally posted by queeq
All of them.

What do you mean by all of them? All of what? 😐

You don't understand how a philosophy is formed? Not by one or two lines.

Originally posted by queeq
You don't understand how a philosophy is formed? Not by one or two lines.

I understand what you are refering to now, but instead of getting crankey you could answer the bloody question. I spoke about two things in that post so you could have been refering to something else......hell don't want to misunderstand you again, do I? 🙄