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I just realized I did not give my answer in the earlier post.I am going with geography - a nation is defined by its borders even if they are only loosely established and not totally agreed upon by neighboring countries (though if they don't even agree the nation exists and put down an uprising, that's another story). Consensus is a vague word, but I think there is a pretty reasonable point at which there is a consensus that the nation exists. If it is over run and the invaders keep the name and borders, it is the same nation IMO.
I would not consider any of the Native American religions major world religions.
I am late to the party and reopening an old thread, I know, but this is a topic of great interest to me. Take a look at a different ranking:http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.htmlThey lump "primal-indigenous" together as a single item and it definitely qualifies. You may cry foul because they aren't a single religion organized under some umbrella organization. I would argue that they never have been and never will be because that is one of the many attributes that defines it. In many (most?) of the cultures, they don't disbelieve in the gods of other tribes or cultures. It is often a form of "inclusive polytheism" where they worship one or more gods of their own while respecting the gods of their allies and fearing the gods of their enemies.Joseph Campbell was mentioned earlier. "Myths To Live By" is a very interesting read. Tremendous similarities in the religious stories of disconnected societies.
So is the argument then inclusion by amalgamation? They aren't quite the same but we will fake it and then claim that native religions are major?BTW, welcome to the forum and if I seem caustic sometimes don't hesitate to call me on it. I get fervent sometimes when defending an opinion but try very hard to not get personal.
Thanks. I don't take much personally when discussing topics like this. I have accidentally offended people by questioning what assumptions they are bringing into theological discussions on a few occasions but also don't intentionally get personal (can't claim 100% compliance, but mostly level headed debating).Inclusion by amalgamation? Hmmm... an interesting side effect of that notion is that you might lump Islam, Christianity and Judaism together along with any other monotheists whose "one true God" is compatible with their theology.There was a question buried in my earlier post I guess - does a belief system have to be organized to be considered a religion?Perhaps the realization that organizing religions could have benefits was not universal.There is an old story about the devil and God walking down a path when God spotted a bright object and picked it up to admire it - "Ah, truth". "Let me see that" said the devil, "I'll organize it." ;D
If you consider a worlwide survey, China is definitely the greatest one, before, during and after Rome.
That's the standard opening to point out this is a discussion about Western Civilization, but with China it is a tough call. A lot of things happened there and then elsewhere not all that long thereafter. Silk was not the only thing to come down that road. IMO, early China had a lot of indirect impact on European development. I would concur about them having the greatest ancient civilization if you consider other parts of the world.
But with anything but fairly complex symbols or symbols found in the presence of other clues to give them context, it becomes very difficult to be certain of meaning. In the modern world, for example, the cross and the sign of the fish are pretty widely accepted as signs of Christianity. But both symbols were used to denote other things, some religious and some not, in other cultures before the dawn of Christianity.Wait - I've got it - the ring fort is based on the Zen Enso and proves the Japanese conquered Ireland in the 7th Century... ::)
I have built garden dry stack and mortered stone walls and can tell you from personal experience that corners are a major pain with random shaped natural stone. But my other point is how simple they are to layout (scribe is actually what I said; probably not the best word choice). I could take 40 or so sticks an make a pretty sizable circle with reasonable accuracy. Just drive one in the center and take the same number of paces away from it in various directions and drive in perimeter stakes until the distance between 3 consecutive ones is small enough for you to walk in an arc around them without having to make large corrections. If you have a long rope or twine and no obstructions, it is even easier and more accurate over uneven ground. I sometimes think we read to much into symbolism of common shapes. "Look these paths cross at right angles; they must have been Christians." One of the researchers of the Viking fort I referenced earlier actually suggested that. Anyway, a circle can be sun, moon, a letter, a number or just a shape that is easy to layout...
I watched a special on the American cultures before Columbus and they also identified the Andes as the source. It and corn were both the result of primitive genetic engineering, where stocks of plants were cross bred for many generations before they became suitable crops. I think corn started more in Central to North America. Both crops were spread by native traders before Europeans arrived in force.
I think most of the emigration came well after the American Revolution. If I recall correctly, there were about three major waves of Irish immigrants, starting in the 1840s or 1850s. No, I don't think they went to Great Britain for the most part; part of the problem during the potato famine was that there was a choice to go hungry or convert to Protestantism and get fed by the wealthy Protestants. If they did this, it was known as "taking the soup" and had some negative connotation to it. As Britain would have been still quite Protestant during this time I'm not so sure the Irish would have been going there quite as much.BTW, I think the movie "Gangs of New York" was supposed to have taken place in the 1860s, reflecting the troubles of the Irish in adjusting to their new home.
I claim the clan McCann from that period, though it isn't clear whether my ggGrandpa was a farmer or not, being from Belfast. He actually emigrated to Canada.One of the Viking kings built a couple of large circular forts in Scandanavia; not sure there is any relationship, though. It is awfully easy to scribe a circle and it is simpler to build a wall soundly without corners. EDIT - I should qualify that to say "natural stone wall". If using uniform rectangular bricks, corners are simple and very strong.
How about one about outlaws in the forests of England around the time of the Crusades? ;DActually I would like to see something out of the Macedonian dynasty of the the Byzantine Empire.
If you read Plato, he seems to indicate that the philosophers didn't buy into the mythology of the gods, but saw it as a civic religion beneficial to the structure and order of the state more than anything else. I'm sure many of the more educated Greeks saw it this way too, and only revered the gods as a cultural tradition more so than a true religion. The lower classes probably had greater faith in their gods I suspect. Probably because they were more dependent on the fortunes of nature because their livelihood was closely tied to the sea and land. Of course everything I just said would be difficult to prove.
"We begin by telling children fables, and the fable is, taken as a whole, false, but there is truth in it also." from Plato's "Republic". A little further, referring to a couple of particularly vile stories he says "Even if they were true I should not think that they ought to be thus lightly told to thoughtless young persons." I think that is what you are referring to; it is pretty obvious he doesn't believe it. The same sort of discussion goes on today - "These are the stories of our tradition. Whether they are explicitly accurate from a historical perspective is not as important as the underlying lessons they teach."It sounds like there is no disagreement on the original point. I guess studying history with any depth at all will pretty quickly dispel the notion that the ancients did not have nearly the intelligence we do.
I tried to track down more on the show. It was actually on “History International” and called “Ancient Monster Hunters”. From their listings, it looks like it isn't coming on again very soon. But I searched around and found the person they featured on that one:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrienne_MayorShe mapped the sites mentioned in the ancient writings (I want to say 30 or so) and they matched up almost exactly to modern digs. Because of geologic activity in the region, fossils were at or near the surface in many areas.BTW, the Greeks may not be the only ones endeavoring to explain such things. See Genesis 6:4...I think they very much believed as well. They even had some fantastic relics and no science to tell them their assumptions were incorrect. Today many of us believe in things despite science that tells us otherwise, so this point definitely does not make us seem any more intelligent.
I'm sure in many cases that intelligence and wisdom are related, but how would you explain someone who has a PhD in rocket science yet is virtually clueless in economics or politics? How could an elder individual, who didn't go beyond 4th grade, have more common sense (wisdom) than one who has a graduate degree? I think wisdom is more related to experience than it is to education.
The rocket scientist example is not that uncommon and I think it is due to expertise honed by single minded pursuit of one subject to the exclusion of others. It's not an absolute exclusion; other subjects are picked up more from conversation than serious study. While that scientist would likely insist on seeing a new formula verified under scrutiny, he might overhear a comment about economics in an elevator and take it as fact. I think wisdom requires humility and equanimity in addition to experience. I am probably too proud to ever be very wise. :-
I am not sure if you caught my sarcasm or maybe you are being more subtly sarcastic in your reply, but I feel sure we would still have those stories. My point was that my story, based on the science that we think is so vastly superior, would probably be rejected as even more ridiculous than their rational explanation.You might not have caught the recent news about the triceratops:[url url=http://'http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-20012471-501465.html?tag=mncol;lst;1'%5DScientists: Triceratops May Not Have Existed[/url]We may have more education behind our educated guesses, but guesses they remain.Wisdom and intelligence are definitely interrelated IMO. But you will never hear wisdom described as cold and calculating; there is an implication of compassion in wisdom (again, IMO). When you have a problem, the more intelligent you are the more solutions you are likely to come up with. The wiser you are, the more likely you are to pick the best solution, taking some intangibles into account.
I agree with ski - if you told them we might not have those cool stories. It's funny, but I didn't know that the Greeks would have stumbled across dinosaur bones.
It was on a HC show that I recorded on the DVR the other day. Several writers reported them. One was a travel writer (an interesting side story in itself) from about 150 AD that listed a few places to go see the bones of giants. Archeologists have been throwing bones away for decades, thinking they were unrelated to their digs when they had actually been brought to temples as relics. The researcher was only able to find a couple in existence from digs, though lots of logs had notes about finding them and then disposing of them.My point in that tangent was that a lot of people consider the stories of monsters as the result of primitive thinking, when there may have been some very rational thought behind them. Once they believed they existed, they wrote stories about them, just as there are many modern stories about the triceratops because we believed they existed (and maybe they did; the recent research isn't absolutely conclusive).
An interesting thing about the Greeks in particular…I just watched a HC show about the "Greek monsters". There is a researcher with some pretty strong evidence that their belief in giants (Amazons, Cyclops and some heroes) and griffins was the result of trying to interpret ancient mammal and dinosaur bones. They were all over Greece and the Aegean islands. They were finding femurs shaped like human femurs but 2.5 times as large and postulating that there had been creatures closely related to humans only 2.5 times taller in the area recently. Their paleontology produced many of the monsters of legend. Mastodon skulls were fairly common. Their eyes were on the side and in the front where you might expect the eye sockets on a skull was a single large nasal cavity. They thought it was a single eye socket. If I were able to travel back in time, I could set them straight. No, I would tell them, it's a creature that lived a million years ago and had a nose 6' long which it used to rip trees out of the ground. Wouldn't they feel silly? ::) We are so superior with our knowledge; I bet they didn't know about the triceratops, either...
You're right, I should clarify that. I'm not sure what distinguishes between a real genius (e.g. Einstein) and your average Joe. However, I will say that most people (everyone else?) can develop their reason to a high degree given the right environment. Some people simply don't want to (e.g. they prefer to spend their time enhancing other valuable traits, like creativity), don't have the desire to do so (i.e. they are apathetic to it), don't have the means to do so (e.g. they live in the ghetto rather than Beverly Hills). I bet there are a lot of books written about this.
With all due respect, your clarification is tantamount to a retraction; you are distinguishing between degrees of intelligence. Yes, there are books including the infamous one named for the shape of the graph of intelligence distribution in populations. FWIW, acccording to studies, most of us are convinced we are above average.But my point is that while I feel certain that we are more intelligent than the humans of 100,000 years ago, when we are compared to the ones 6,000 years ago I think there is little or no difference in thinking capabilities.
I don't think there are “grades” of reasoning power
Please correct me if I am wrong, but it sounds like you are implying that any healthy human is capable of genius. I believe that all races have some geniuses and some idiots with most of us in between. But I also believe that inherent genius has to be exercised to develop to its potential (I am also fairly sure that inherent idiocy does not :D) and opportunities to develop the mind are more prevalent in some cultures than others.
