Is it that anti-realism applies to ethics and aesthetics because we seek to make the world as we say, while realism applies to ontology and epistemology because we seek to make what we say fit the world — Banno

Strange to posit a psychological basis, implying a subjectivity even in the theories we choose.

I'd say simply that we are ontological realists by default because it is intuitively obvious the stair we just tripped on is actually there independent of us. Only through (too) much thought will we question that.

As to why morality isn't the same, I'd say because we don't trip over good and evil and we realize we create all sorts of social norms. If the morally real is out there, where is it?

And Aesop meant to explain the lack of resolve foxes had in securing grapes.

You're right. But "the man" was only warned of death, not everything else--working, sweating, experiencing pain, sickness, inclination towards evil, etc., for himself and all his descendants. So, "the man" wasn't fully informed. — Ciceronianus

But see, Genesis 3:17, "To Adam he said, 'Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat from it,' 'Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life."

I take this to mean that Adam was punished not just for what he did but "because [he] listened to [his] wife." It's one thing I guess to defy God on your own, but to do it because your wife tells you to seems just a bit too much for even the good Lord to tolerate.

Were Adam and Eve informed of the consequences of the choice they made? I'd say no, they weren't, but could have been, by God. So, God is arguably responsible for the harm which resulted. — Ciceronianus

Sure he did. Genesis 2:15 to 2:17.

15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

Note the wording of 2:17 where it says "when," not "if." Much has been said of this wording, indicating it was going to happen, not that it was something that might not. Had it not, would there have been no Jesus, considering his necessity arose from this original sin and he became necessary to save the souls of all future humans?

God is arguably responsible for everything, so when your tire blows out, you should properly thank God for that. Also, God does answers all prayers. Just a lot of times he says no.

isn’t that you have to agree with them (or me), Banno, but in your fullness of meaning in the absence of community (especially those communities feasting on putrifying deity), you can’t pretend as if your judgment (your aesthetic preference) is the necessary judgment. — Ennui Elucidator

I take your definition of "truth" then not to be a correspondence theory (to say the least), but a pragmatism that states the truth is that which is most helpful, not from a predictive perspective, but from a psychologically pleasing level. You anchor truth to subjective value, while, at the same time, admitting there exists an objective method of distinguishing truth from falsity (i.e. whether it corresponds to reality), but you just insist this objective method is "uninteresting" (your word, which I best understand as meaning "does not provide useful results" else you're just informing me it bores you).

To break this down to what I'm saying: If you say God created the world in 6 days, you claim that's a fact because it gives your life meaning, all the while knowing the actual world out there evolved over millions of years, correct? That is, you recognize clearly what is true out in the world, but your focus isn't in learning that, but in figuring out what you need to believe to get you mentally to the next day? What then to do with what you know the actual world to be like? Do you pretend it not to be? Does it obtain the status of all falsehoods, no different than theories that the world is flat for example?

That is: You call X a "fact, " and it is defined as a belief that succeeds under your utility theory even if it fails under correspondence theory. But what do you call belief Y that succeeds under corrrespondence but fails under utility? And, what do you call Z that fails under both?

Surely X, Y, and Z are deserving of different terms, with X and Y being metaphysically different. If you view Y and Z differently, you have to explain why, and that might erode your pragmatic theory if you are forced to admit it's because Y is a "fact," yet Z is not.

Also, how do meaningfully debate @Banno if he obtains psychological satisfaction from demanding that facts correspond to reality? How can you tell him he's wrong in his objections to you in this thread? Mustn't you afford him the same latitude as you did the starving man who needed to believe his apples weren't rotten and tell Banno all he has said is exactly right?

I do see our tacks being distinct here. I an committed to declaring there was no Noah's ark, that those who claim there was are wrong, but that the story itself is metaphorically true.

Have I understood correctly?

I wonder what 12,021 will look like. — James Riley

Duh.

They were fine until the neighbors moved in. Now they fare as well as their prey base. Not so good. What, with all the clear cutting, strip mining, over-grazing, damming, paving, subdividing, developing and commodification of natural and human resources. It's not looking good for them, but it's not looking good for the culprits either. — James Riley

I'm thinking the land demands per capita for hunter gatherers exceeds that of industrial societies by several hundred fold at least.

Hunter gatherers lost the Darwinian game. https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/hunter-gatherer-culture/

How are modern day hunter gatherers faring these days?

For the life of me, I'm not really sure what you guys are going on about with this "what is a fact" conversation. If the terms have different meanings in different contexts, can we not create two words for the purposes of this conversation so that we don't have to accuse one another of misusing a term?

The statement "fiction is true" is paradoxical, and honestly, when that claim was first presented to me it provided a bit of an "aha!" moment. It made room for religion in a scientific world, where everything was either considered true or false in a lab experiment sort of way, but this paradoxical statement allows that meaning could be known though entirely fictional means.

How the statement "the false can be true" can only make sense if we're using two different epistemologies when we say "false" and another when we say "true" in that sentence. In that sentence, the term "false" means false in the scientific sense, as in there was not really a talking fox in the fox and grapes parable. But "true" means true in the metaphorical sense in that parable, as in it explains how humans find meaning in the world.

When I say "the Bible is false, but it is true," that statement makes sense and is not contradictory because that sentence does not use "false" as a negation of true within the specific confines of that sentence. So, Christianity can be false and true at the same time, if false references literalism and true the metaphorical.

On another note, I took for granted the validity of your claim that the Christians destroyed much of Classic literature, but upon looking it up, I see that claim is disputed somewhat:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Darkening_Age I truly don't have a dog in that fight and am no more or less concerned if the ancient Christians did or didn't do as alleged, but it does seem to be an issue of scholarly debate.

And finally, I do generally have an objection to punishing someone for the sins of his ancestors, and I'd apply that also to organizations, like religion. That is, if ancient Christianity (or any religion) did all sorts of brutal and evil acts, that doesn't mean that the modern day form of the religion must inherit that guilt.

So, it appears that the extent to which the Christians actually burned classic literature is in dispute among scholars: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Darkening_Age

There does appear to be a factual question as to this, using the term "factual" in the usual ordinary way.

A person is supposed to do something, and then they will attain something — baker

Educate me on the eternal rewards provided to the righteous followers of Judaism denied to the sinners. This should be interesting.

No, it requires more than that. Belief in the historicity of Jesus is essential to Christianity. One has to believe that Jesus literally rose from the dead, or else the whole project of salvation becomes moot. — baker

Are you citing to some particular Protestant dogma that prescribes the particularities of the faith required for salvation, or are you just telling me your basic understanding or what you think ought be the case?

The point in religion is that particular moral tenets have to be believed for the right reasons. Ie., e.g. you have to believe that stealing is bad not because your mommy told you so or because you don't like being stolen from, but because God said that stealing was wrong. — baker

Now you're just making things up. It is not a universal tenant of religion that intent matters regardless of impact, and it is not universally considered sinful to do the right thing for the wrong reason.

It sounds like I'm just hearing a recitation of your recollections from Sunday school at this point and
you're presenting it as if they are universal axioms.

The type of problem you point to comes from reading literature primarily in a didactic, ideological sense, from reducing literature to a didactic, ideological message. It's a moralistic approach typical for American literary theory, but it is far from universal. It's not how we would read literature in continental Europe, for example. — baker

The story was originally in Greek I suppose, but do enlighten me how they read the fox and grapes story in continental Europe? Do they get held up when the fox starts talking and start looking for archeological evidence for talking foxes? Could you itemize those European nations for me that don't understand metaphor?

But this didn't do away with interreligious competition. On the contrary, it made it worse, far worse. — baker

Religions don't compete. People do, so it's hard to blame the idea over the person. But in any event, ideological differences lead to conflict, whether that be religious, political, or just general worldviews.

Why close our eyes to the obvious? Why not consider the possibility that religion is the way it is precisely because it is intended to be that way? — baker

Intended by whom? Do you envision a committee having met thousands of years ago and arriving at all sorts of explanations about the universe, packaging it up into a concise book, and then peddling it to the masses so that thousands of years later they could use it to control the world? If that is what happened, then my hat's off to them, and I think they ought to control the world, considering their seemingly divine intelligence and foresight.

I also don't know what you mean by "religion is the way it is." How is religion? What is the essence of "religion" that you claim exists across the board, from the Wiccans to the Greek Orthodox to the Chasidim to the Amish to the Mormons and to the Hindus that makes them all so terrible? I suppose you mean the caricature religion where they yell at you about going to hell and then take all your money? Suppose that isn't religion as it must be, but is just one really bad form?

If you don't like the church you're going to, go to a different one. If you don't want to go to church at all, that's fine too, but I don't see where you have this great insight and knowledge into where I go and can make comments on it. All this talk about facts, yet here you're just factually incorrect.

There are those on this thread - and it turns out that you are not amongst them - who choose to deny the facts of early Christianity. They render themselves irrelevant to the main discussion here.

That's why Ennui Elucidator and @Metaphysician Undercover find themselves advocating telling lies. — Banno

I don't actually read them that way, but they can defend themselves. I'm a mouthpiece for a living, so I'm on break while here.

Just my observations, but among non-believers, there is often passionate negativity towards religion. Maybe it's borne in trauma, maybe it's a challenge to a competing worldview held dear, or maybe it's actually anger over ancient misdeeds as you've presented.

My view here is just to accept there have been and currently are truly fucked up stewards of our religious traditions. Like it or not though, the human quest for meaning and spirituality hasn't evolved away. We're still going to want to take a sabbatical from our Sisyphusian existemce occassionally (perhaps weekly) and sit back, contemplate, stop from our creating and working, and ask ourselves what is important and celebrate our creation from the past week.

That is to say, yes, I believe in the creation story (and the above only scratches the metaphorical surface of it), but it has nothing to do with the origins of the cosmos. It has to do with meaning, and it is most certainly true. The book is only about existential meaning. It's not an encyclopedia of worldly facts. That simple minds simplify it or malicious minds misuse it, doesn't make it simple or abusuve, and it surely doesn't give someone cause who is neither simple nor malicious to reject it.

But enough of my sermon. Reject it because it holds no allure for you, but that's really the only legitimate reason I can see for its rejection. That fucked up people saw the sway it held and used it for their advantage says something about them, not it.

Ironically, the use of 'faith' to describe believing despite the facts comes from Augustin of Hippo. He thought it a virtue. — Banno

Can't speak to how others use the term, but it's something I'd suspect has had a meaning that has varied greatly over the years.

The Bible doesn't reference disputes between atheists and theists, but disputes over whose god reigned supreme. It was a given there were gods, magic and the like. Back then, what we take as "faith" was taken for granted. They were not wedded to the scientific method like we are today.

In the early portions of the Bible, there would have been no need for "faith" as we understand the term today. They saw splitting of seas, manna from heaven, and all sorts of violations of physical laws. They had empirical evidence for the existence of God.

What we call "faith" today, I'd submit is an entirely separate epistemology that can co-exist with a scientific one only insofar as it doesn't attempt to respond to scientific questions. How the world works is a scientific question, but how I should live my life is not. There are obvious oversteps that occur when people attempt to offer Biblical interpretations to explain our origins for example, but I'd submit that is the fault of an unreasonable literalism.

Religion also tends to maintain that it holds the truth, while government rarely gets any more totalizing than expressing broadly held community values. — Tom Storm

I think you greatly over-simplify things when you attempt to draw a clean break between government and religion. This concept of secularism is fairly new, and it's hardly complete.

But to the idea of mythology, it's no secret that the original Pilgrims were less than open and giving to the Native Americans, despite what we might have learned about Thanksgiving. The American founding fathers were also not as interested in equality of man, considering they were actually part of an aristocracy who used a servile class of black slaves and white indentured servants to do their dirty work. The value in the myths we learn of government (like religion) is to advance an ideal and their deconstruction does leave a void. Obviously no myth should be advanced that denies another's suffering or that continues his or her oppression, but, properly understood, we need not go around screaming that the US (and likely every other nation) was built upon a lie. What it was built upon was an ideal that the people fell quite short of and that should now be better advanced.

That it is to say one can believe in American ideology, but be disappointed in American behavior. The same can be said of any particular religion.

If one allows religion not to be factually correct, to consist in metaphor and allegory, for the betterment of mankind, then does that mean it need not be honest? — Banno

I concede your every point when you claim that horrors were committed in the name of religion, but blame always lies at the feet of people, not religions, not governments, not corporations, and not whatever mechanism they weaponize. The horrors people have commited in the name of religion go far beyond destroying literature and culture. Such is child's play in the scheme of things.

But I see the same horrors at the hands of government. How can you participate in government knowing what a past it has had? Might your response be "not the government I believe in"? Substitue "religion" in there for me.

And of course that's obvious, since the entire internet is flooded with them, and often are even crappy moderators that ban people for bullshit reasons, as is the case on reddit, and well you know so many others. — AlienFromEarth

I was just sittimg here innocently minding my own business and you hurl an insult at me. Evil.

The destruction of 90% of classical literature is swept away, denied, and those who point to it castigated. — Banno

I acknowledge it's some serious sad shit. I cry with you. What do you need me to say?

As to the question of whether the pain they brought was because that's what religion do, especially the monotheistic ones, that's where we disagree. I'm also not sure the Romans were all kind folks either.

Well, they probably won't open a church, but there are people who worship the ancient Greek and Roman gods even today. — Ciceronianus

Thus erasing the tragedy brought about by the Christians by resurrecting the demolished ancient Roman culture.

If we lose Jesus, the cost is considerably higher (for most believers). — Tom Storm

The object isn't to take Jesus. It's just to note that whether he actually walked the earth and did the things suggested shouldn't matter. So the claim goes, salvation from eternal damnation requires faith that Jesus died for your sins. I take that to mean that one should accept the tenants advanced by Jesus (e.g. peace and humility) should he wish to see the world a better place today and forever forward (i.e. eternally). It offers the building blocks for heaven, which is an ideal, which is why we create myths.

The literalism dumbs things down considerably, offering a single person some sort of eternal Disneyland if he says he agrees with the New Testament.

To my eye, and I suppose you will agree, the dive into darkness that followed the destruction of classical culture was tragic. — Banno

There are all sorts of historical tragedies. The Roman destruction of the second temple that I referenced was considered a dive into darkness by the Jewish people and it is still commemorated to this day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tisha_B%27Av

Had it not been for the destruction of the temple, I would still be able to make burnt offerings to Yahweh, but, alas, I'm now stuck listening to sermons in synagogue.

Also, to throw this in there, the evolution to monotheism was a positive moment in the intellectual history of humanity. It moved us from a world of competing anthropomorphic physical gods to a single incorporeal conceptual god posited to offer meaning and generalized explanations for the our existence. I can buy into the idea that the political upheaval created by the emergence of Christian power wasn't an all positive event, but I can't see why one would harken back to the days of Mars and Neptune and think that represented advanced civilization.

There's nothing to keep someone from opening a church today that worships the Greek and Roman gods. Well, there's lack of demand, but other than that.

AH. So adhering to the OP. It's not meant to be factually correct, because we found out that it doesn't match the facts.

What would one think if we had an independent account of their destruction? Then it would be factual? — Banno

If we learned there were no actual Ebenezer Scrooge or Tiny Tim, would the moral that even the coldest souls are capable of redemption be impacted? That there was no talking fox means his sour grapes story is bullshit?

That our myths are fictional does not impact their truth. Those who smugly prove that Washington never chopped down a cherry tree really miss the point.

We use myths to advance ideals. Reality never lives up to the myth. It can't. The real world is complicated and nuanced.

No specific response for you just yet, but I know there is a similar discussion here

Yeah, and I was taught in Yeshivah that we don't know who Amelek is. (Some extremists have a hunch.) — Wheatley

I prefer the non-literal approach, where Amelek represents evil and the reminder that such actually exists. One shouldn't have sympathy for the devil I suppose it is to mean.

Haven't read much of these alternative accounts in relation to language. Can these alternative accounts reasonably explain why humans which were not exposed to language in their preadolescent years cannot learn to speak grammatically correct language? — javra

If you fail to develop your language skills at an early age, they don't develop correctly. What other explanation is there?

You could, however, make that information public. There is an object that is pointed to. The thing about a private language is that it cannot be made public. — Fooloso4

I get that I cannot point to an internal sensation, but what of non-nouns that I cannot point to, like run, put, beside, and without? What about nouns that I can't point to, like freedom, the United States, agency, Bigfoot, the current Queen of France, etc.?

There's also the genocide of Amelek — Wheatley

I'm not making the claim the ancient Hebrews were a kind hearted bunch, but I do deny that their reasons for the wars were to kill infidels who wouldn't accept monotheism.

I also deny the historical accuracy of the Old Testament. That is, that didn't actually happen.

But anyway, since you brought up this story, the best I recall (and memory isn't always correct), was that the Amelek slaughter was ordered by God after the Hebrews were finally released from 400 years of Egyptian bondage at the hands of the Pharaohs only to be subject to an unprovoked attack by the Amelek tribe. God ordered the death of all their people, including killing all their animals. I think Saul spared the death of their king (Agag), but Solomon killed him the next day. Supposedly that failure eventually cost Saul the kingship. Fast forward 600 years to the Book of Esther and you'll note that the antagonist Haman (who attempted to slaughter all the Jews in the world) is referred to as Haman Hagagi, indicating he was of direct lineage of the king of Amelek. This means that Agag impregnated someone in the single day he was spared (or so the story goes).

What do we learn from this story? Kindness to evil is a sin. Compare and contrast to "turn the other cheek." Different ethical principles I guess, which is why the word "Judeo-Christian" ethics makes no sense to me.

A private linguist, each time they make use of a sign to represent a sensation, would be engaging in an act of ostensive definition. Each use would be novel. Hence, there is no rule being followed. — Banno

First, thanks for the explanation. This Wittgenstein stuff baffles me, and I teeter between thinking I'm missing something terribly to the emperor wears no clothes.

If you'll hang in there with me, let me know if I have this right:

I see a dog and I name it "dog," yet I tell no one and that private word exists for me. I then see another dog and I recall it is called "dog," and I say to myself "there is a dog," but the fact that I cannot be corrected as to my use of the term "dog" means I'm not playing a language game with agreed upon rules and therefore the idea of correctness fails to have meaning in this private language context. Since there were no rules created by other players, the second time I called the dog a "dog" was not based upon any rule, but was a new, arbitrary word creation. That is, had I declared the existence of the dog aloud to where others agreed, then I'm forced to follow those rules and the word "dog" retains its meaning. That I kept it to myself allows me to call a dog a "cat" and it would be called "cat" because I'm not compelled to follow any rules. There being no rules, there is no correct and no incorrect, and I'm no longer using language.

Do I have this right?

If I do, and I realize I might not, I'm still at a loss as to why I have to accept this whole notion that I cannot be forced into a particular word usage game even when I am the only person who knows the word I'm using.

Language formation occurs as the result of a priori rules hard wired into our DNA. It's not like we're blank slates able to modify the most basic ways we form, retain, and use language. There are cultures of all different sorts, but none constantly put the names of objects into flux as part of their language scheme. The reason they don't isn't because they just don't like that sort of game, but it's because they can't. They're human beings and that's not what human beings do

This is to say I consistently keep calling a dog a "dog" in public not because of the correction that would occur if I publicly called it a "cat." I keep calling a dog a "dog" because my brain recognizes it as such and my internal language rule structure would auto-correct me even if I privately called it a "cat."

Edit:

At this point critics of Wittgenstein have either denied that truth demands corrigibility, or have sought to show that checking is possible in the private case too.](Kenny[ 1973] pp. 191–2)

I see this is tack I have taken. Do you find it persuasive?

The Roman's didn't lay waste to Judea and Jerusalem because the Jews were monotheists. — Ciceronianus

Nor did the Jews lay waste to various other nations because they weren't monotheists.

I'd also argue that the Christians laid waste to all sorts of nations (as did the Romans) for all sorts of reasons that went well beyond religious differences.

You saw an attractive woman and told her that, and it was meant by you as an invitation for additional conversation. She declined by offering you a shrug. There is nothing unusual, rude, or inappropriate of that interaction, and something similar plays out at bars, grocery stores, high school gymnasiums, and tinder.com thousands of times daily.

Where you go from there is up to you. The ick factor many here have identified is in your internal response, where you have chosen to go hostile, getting annoyed at her for being rude, stuck up, and uncaring for your feelings. This speaks to your caring what she thinks about you, and so your response is understandable. It's protective of a bruised ego, convincing yourself she wasn't worth your time anyway.

If you're going to emotionally invest in the outcome of every romantic attempt, you're going to be a bitter young man. Just move on. Who cares what she thinks? You should have already served up a dozen or so more compliments by now, but instead you're here, doing a post-mortem on something she has no idea was of any importance.

And do empathize some for her as well. She was just standing there, minding her own business, then received an unsolicited comment, and now she is being expected to respond in a certain way, and, if she doesn't, she will be thought less of. It's why girls don't want to go to bars alone, for fear of swarming guys and fragile egos offering attacks when they are shot down.

I think this would entail absurd conclusions — darthbarracuda

The absurd conclusions arise from a failure to posit meaning into existence. Nihlism is inherently absurd.

. A good life is worth living; conversely, a bad life is not worth living. — darthbarracuda

I would think those of religious faith and those who accept the tenants of secular humanism would be aligned here in holding that human achievement is of the highest order. Whether that view arises because you view humanity as a divine extension or you hold it just as a matter of fundamental principle, it must therefore follow that there is no such thing as life not worth living.

The sacred can never be worthless.

Their monotheism was what led them to refuse obeisance to Trajan's statue. It was monotheism that refused to accept other gods, destroying their temples. Belief in the one true god implies intolerance towards those with other beliefs. — Banno

I'd argue Christianity is polytheistic. I can arrive at no other conclusion unless I accept the mystery of the triunity is coherent, which it's not.

Polytheism doesn't suggest tolerance as it's just as logical for a polytheistic religion to be a form of monolatry or henotheistic, meaning the existence of lesser gods is accepted, but there is still a dominant God that is worshipped. Such existed among the Greeks and Romans with Zeus. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henotheism

As also noted, it is not logically necessary that monotheistic religion attempt to convert others or express hostility to others. Judaism, for example, posits a chosen status and a belief in a special covenant with God to obey his commandments, thereby eliminating a need to impose those rules on others. You therfore see intolerance and oppression toward Jews for lack of assimilation, not the other way around.

The irony is that as a survival mechanism, retreat inward appears more successful than outward attack, at least as evident by the Jewish experience and their continued survival.

There was a case where a motorist thought texting his girlfriend a kissing emoji was more important than watching traffic and he ran over a bicyclist. Another time a guy thought he could drink 3 beers and still navigate the interstate bit instead he slammed into a median.

There are a few more examples like this.

The difference between artificial stupidity and actual stupidity is that the former can be reduced over time as the science better develops. The latter we're stuck with, except to the extent the former will eventually save us.

Imagine a private language, i.e., just one that you're creating. Now try to imagine that you have to remember how to use all the words/concepts involved in your language. Are you remembering the correct use of your words? How would you know if you're making a mistake? — Sam26

Sure, and how would I be sure I conveyed my new langauge to someone else since I apparently can't rely upon my memory for anything?

Imagine i had private thoughts that I formed when hiking alone that consist of the recollections of that hike, the colors, the landscape, the calm, and whatever else goes into the complete internal memory of that experience.

How can i ever be sure I remember the memories correctly if I don't report them to others to verify for me that my recollections are accurate later?

It's not complicated. I remember without employing others because i know my memory works. It always has in the past and it does now.

If i create a new word for cat, how can I be sure that when I report my new word to you that I'm remembering the word I just created and haven't changed to a new word? If words have no meaning until spoken, then what were they before spoken and how did I know to start using it?

If I misuse words and you correct me, how do you know that you've corrected me if I deny you corrected me?

What am i missing here? All this reductio seems to follow if we deny the reliability of personal memory.

No one mentions Chalmers The Conscious Mind?

am referring to lefists, who are promoting the victim-hood culture for their own political gain. who are splitting the society into oppressors vs oppressed and setting them up against each other, be it lgbt against straight people, blacks against whites, women against men, etc. — stoicHoneyBadger

Do you really dispute who the original instigator was in each of these conflicts you've identified? It's not like blacks, gays, and women were all equal players in society and that they woke up one morning and spun a narrative that they were oppressed and wanted equal rights.

I'm not disputing that in any political fray either side might not be guilty of over-playing their hand well past its moral limits, but it seems fairly naive to hold one side blameless, especially when it's the side that threw the first hundred or so punches.

My contention that Christianity was largely responsible for the destruction of classical literature, and culture generally, is that presented by Gibbon, and one or two others since. You will need something more than just naysaying — Banno

That's a more focused claim than made before, which was correlating monotheism to intolerance.,suggesting it was the monotheistic aspect of Christianity that resulted in its destructive nature.

Titus did destroy Judea and the Temple in Jerusalem, so to the extent the argument is made that polytheists stand for tolereance over their aggressive monotheistic neighbors, I don't see that. The act of destroying the temple dramatically changed Judaism and that culture forever.

I more generally see a violent human nature evident throughout history, not specifically related to any religion, but to power and politics, with religion being one method used to control. Whether the Christians were helpful to Rome or Rome helpful to the Jews, of course not, but identifying religion as the malevolent force, particularly monotheism, seems overly simplified and refutable by counter-examples.

The part of your quote I bolded doesn't make sense to me because I don't know what it means to be without culture. What happened perhaps was the replacement of one set of cultural values for another and you apparently lament that those you preferred were displaced.

Hmm. Looks to be supporting my contention rather than refuting — Banno

Your position is historically inaccurate, so there's not much to argue. Amenhotep is not representative of Egyptian religion generally, but an interesting example of short lived pre-Judaic monotheism.

In any event, to what I was responding to, oppression and monotheism don't correlate. They've existed independently of another as much as at the same time.

Monotheism and prostlisizing don't go hand in hand. You can believe there's one god without demanding others follow. If your objection is simply to the forced conversion of others, I'm with you, but there's nothing specific to monotheism that demands that, nor is that aspect of religious persecution any worse than declaring someone an untouchable, as in Hindu.