Have you seen what that **** Joe Rogan admitted to?
Yes I linked it earlier.
Utterly bewildered by it.
I am not actually....he has always been a bit out there, regular use of a floatation tank while doing MDMA, lots of weed, and he is big friends with Brett Weinstein, who has been pushing all the ivermectin BS for months, so much so Sam Harris called him out and did a full special debunking all this crap and basically saying Weinstein has to stop this, it is endangering people.
If you liked her "Coronavirus may have infected half of UK population" in March 2020 and "Covid's IFR is somewhere between 0.1% and 0.01%" in May 2020, you're going to love @SunetraGupta's latest, "There isn’t a case for mass ‘booster’ jabs"!
If you liked her "Coronavirus may have infected half of UK population" in March 2020 and "Covid's IFR is somewhere between 0.1% and 0.01%" in May 2020, you're going to love @SunetraGupta's latest, "There isn’t a case for mass ‘booster’ jabs"!
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
The Library of the Serapeum was either destroyed by Roman soldiers or a mob rather than the Catholic church itself.
Impressive comeback. Obviously after 40 years voices don't sound the same but both songs sounded like Abba, with the harmonies and such well crafted music. That 'don't shut me down' is going to get stuck in my head.
Looking forward to listening to the full album.
And that new stadium so that they can do hologram shows in London will easily pay for itself and then some. It's actually really clever idea, allows them to keep creating music should they wish to and let the holograms play the visuals out on the screen.
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
Yes, but the church never gave us mobile phones, either. Or spreadsheets.
Impressive comeback. Obviously after 40 years voices don't sound the same but both songs sounded like Abba, with the harmonies and such well crafted music. That 'don't shut me down' is going to get stuck in my head.
Looking forward to listening to the full album.
And that new stadium so that they can do hologram shows in London will easily pay for itself and then some. It's actually really clever idea, allows them to keep creating music should they wish to and let the holograms play the visuals out on the screen.
Huge moment in music history, Abba is back.
I bet TSE hasn't been this excited since STEPS got back together!
Impressive comeback. Obviously after 40 years voices don't sound the same but both songs sounded like Abba, with the harmonies and such well crafted music. That 'don't shut me down' is going to get stuck in my head.
Looking forward to listening to the full album.
And that new stadium so that they can do hologram shows in London will easily pay for itself and then some. It's actually really clever idea, allows them to keep creating music should they wish to and let the holograms play the visuals out on the screen.
Huge moment in music history, Abba is back.
I bet TSE hasn't been this excited since STEPS got back together!
Up there with Take That reforming and Robbie appearing in 2006.
Also up there with Girls Aloud reforming in 2013. Sadly they won't be reforming as a full set and I'm utterly heartbroken about that.
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
The Library of the Serapeum was either destroyed by Roman soldiers or a mob rather than the Catholic church itself.
I am rather glad that Bill Gates is no Saint considering what many of the Christian Saints have done in the past. Not a bunch I would like to be associated with and frankly not much better than Osama Bin Laden. The early Christian Church - in fact the Church right up to the 18th century makes the Taliban looked positively enlightened by comparison.
And no, the Roman army protected the Library against the Christian mob who were then allowed to sack and destroy the place as the price for letting the pagans sheltering there leave without being slaughtered.
Just out of interest how do you think the church got all that wealth in the first place. It certainly wasn't through honest trade.
If you liked her "Coronavirus may have infected half of UK population" in March 2020 and "Covid's IFR is somewhere between 0.1% and 0.01%" in May 2020, you're going to love @SunetraGupta's latest, "There isn’t a case for mass ‘booster’ jabs"!
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
Yes, but the church never gave us mobile phones, either. Or spreadsheets.
Impressive comeback. Obviously after 40 years voices don't sound the same but both songs sounded like Abba, with the harmonies and such well crafted music. That 'don't shut me down' is going to get stuck in my head.
Looking forward to listening to the full album.
And that new stadium so that they can do hologram shows in London will easily pay for itself and then some. It's actually really clever idea, allows them to keep creating music should they wish to and let the holograms play the visuals out on the screen.
Huge moment in music history, Abba is back.
I very much like this move, as they are all stonkingly wealthy and their songs have remained popular since they were released, so there's no reason to release more now other than they just really felt like working together and making some more music.
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
The Library of the Serapeum was either destroyed by Roman soldiers or a mob rather than the Catholic church itself.
I am rather glad that Bill Gates is no Saint considering what many of the Christian Saints have done in the past. Not a bunch I would like to be associated with and frankly not much better than Osama Bin Laden. The early Christian Church - in fact the Church right up to the 18th century makes the Taliban looked positively enlightened by comparison.
And no, the Roman army protected the Library against the Christian mob who were then allowed to sack and destroy the place as the price for letting the pagans sheltering there leave without being slaughtered.
Just out of interest how do you think the church got all that wealth in the first place. It certainly wasn't through honest trade.
Bill Gates is a hero. Bin Laden is someone who has failed to think.
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
Yes, but the church never gave us mobile phones, either. Or spreadsheets.
Impressive comeback. Obviously after 40 years voices don't sound the same but both songs sounded like Abba, with the harmonies and such well crafted music. That 'don't shut me down' is going to get stuck in my head.
Looking forward to listening to the full album.
And that new stadium so that they can do hologram shows in London will easily pay for itself and then some. It's actually really clever idea, allows them to keep creating music should they wish to and let the holograms play the visuals out on the screen.
Huge moment in music history, Abba is back.
I very much like this move, as they are all stonkingly wealthy and their songs have remained popular since they were released, so there's no reason to release more now other than they just really felt like working together and making some more music.
Yeah, if they want to keep making music for the fun of it this is the perfect way of doing it. It sounds like they enjoyed coming together for this new album.
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
The Library of the Serapeum was either destroyed by Roman soldiers or a mob rather than the Catholic church itself.
I am rather glad that Bill Gates is no Saint considering what many of the Christian Saints have done in the past. Not a bunch I would like to be associated with and frankly not much better than Osama Bin Laden. The early Christian Church - in fact the Church right up to the 18th century makes the Taliban looked positively enlightened by comparison.
And no, the Roman army protected the Library against the Christian mob who were then allowed to sack and destroy the place as the price for letting the pagans sheltering there leave without being slaughtered.
Just out of interest how do you think the church got all that wealth in the first place. It certainly wasn't through honest trade.
Most of the wars of the time were dynastic and inter nation rather than strictly led by the church as such. Of course by far the worst mass murderers of all time Mao and Stalin were both atheists.
As I said the destruction of the Library was a product of mob violence between Christian and non Christian elements on both sides. Indeed one source says pagans took captured Christians into the Serapeum, forced them to offer sacrifices to non Christian deities, tortured those that refused and offered blood sacrifices of the rest. So afterwards it is somewhat understandable if pagan images were destroyed, including with the assistance of Roman soldiers.
The church got wealth through tithes amongst other things, which tended to support good works in the parish, something which it is regrettable ended as it linked the parish and church community more closely together
@MikeSmithson, OGH - let's not have any religious headers of any sort.
I've written to you previously about your wonky child.
Poor innocent child.
Clearly you're not familiar with Proverbs 5:19 or Ezekiel 23:20 or Pulp Fiction, all of whom I am trying to work into PB headers.
I'm not. Perhaps revelation is at hand. Do expand on your beliefs.
I think most PBers know my beliefs. I'm the world's worst Muslim, the reality is I'm a Muslim two days a year for appearances.
I've been agnostic since my teenage years, however as a young child I've always been interested in religious histories of many faiths.
I love learning in particular about antipopes, Avignon popes, and The Borgias.
Love a bit of hot reformation action, also love the founding of the Church of England because of Henry VIII's lust and desire for a son.
As PB's preeminent historian I also love the historical angle of the battles involving faiths.
Religion and religious history is much more interesting when you don't have the worry about which bits, if any, to believe or support.
Many many years I visited China and I was utterly bemused to read a report on terrorism in Northern Ireland and see the IRA described as Christian freedom fighters.
I was amused many years ago about the probably apocryphal story about the atheist who visited Northern Ireland and was asked 'Is it Catholic God you don't believe in or the Protestant God you don't believe in?'
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
The Library of the Serapeum was either destroyed by Roman soldiers or a mob rather than the Catholic church itself.
I am rather glad that Bill Gates is no Saint considering what many of the Christian Saints have done in the past. Not a bunch I would like to be associated with and frankly not much better than Osama Bin Laden. The early Christian Church - in fact the Church right up to the 18th century makes the Taliban looked positively enlightened by comparison.
And no, the Roman army protected the Library against the Christian mob who were then allowed to sack and destroy the place as the price for letting the pagans sheltering there leave without being slaughtered.
Just out of interest how do you think the church got all that wealth in the first place. It certainly wasn't through honest trade.
Bill Gates is a hero. Bin Laden is someone who has failed to think.
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
Yes, but the church never gave us mobile phones, either. Or spreadsheets.
The mobile phone is a positive development?
It's the best constraint against nuclear war that we have.
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
The Library of the Serapeum was either destroyed by Roman soldiers or a mob rather than the Catholic church itself.
I am rather glad that Bill Gates is no Saint considering what many of the Christian Saints have done in the past. Not a bunch I would like to be associated with and frankly not much better than Osama Bin Laden. The early Christian Church - in fact the Church right up to the 18th century makes the Taliban looked positively enlightened by comparison.
And no, the Roman army protected the Library against the Christian mob who were then allowed to sack and destroy the place as the price for letting the pagans sheltering there leave without being slaughtered.
Just out of interest how do you think the church got all that wealth in the first place. It certainly wasn't through honest trade.
Damn beat me to it. I think Bill Gates comes out very well compared to many Popes of the past.
It would also be interesting to compare the wealth of the Churches in the past to the wealth of today's billionaires in real terms. Just guessing but I reckon the church wins.
Also a number of these billionaires have committed to giving away all their wealth over their lifetime I believe.
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
The Library of the Serapeum was either destroyed by Roman soldiers or a mob rather than the Catholic church itself.
I am rather glad that Bill Gates is no Saint considering what many of the Christian Saints have done in the past. Not a bunch I would like to be associated with and frankly not much better than Osama Bin Laden. The early Christian Church - in fact the Church right up to the 18th century makes the Taliban looked positively enlightened by comparison.
And no, the Roman army protected the Library against the Christian mob who were then allowed to sack and destroy the place as the price for letting the pagans sheltering there leave without being slaughtered.
Just out of interest how do you think the church got all that wealth in the first place. It certainly wasn't through honest trade.
Most of the wars of the time were dynastic and inter nation rather than strictly led by the church as such. Of course by far the worst mass murderers of all time Mao and Stalin were both atheists.
As I said the destruction of the Library was a product of mob violence between Christian and non Christian elements on both sides. Indeed one source says pagans took captured Christians into the Serapeum, forced them to offer sacrifices to non Christian deities, tortured those that refused and offered blood sacrifices of the rest. So afterwards it is somewhat understandable if pagan images were destroyed, including with the assistance of Roman soldiers.
The church got wealth through tithes amongst other things, which tended to support good works in the parish, something which it is regrettable ended as it linked the parish and church community more closely together
You know the more I read of what you write (which is garbage most of the time I am afraid) the more I can see you as a supporter and apologist for Franco. You would have fitted right in with that Catholic Conservative ideology, violence and all.
The destruction of the Great Libarary by Christian monks is a piece of Gibbon's mythology. If you want to blame any one individual, it should be Julius Caeasar, but the causes of its decline are multiple.
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
The Library of the Serapeum was either destroyed by Roman soldiers or a mob rather than the Catholic church itself.
I am rather glad that Bill Gates is no Saint considering what many of the Christian Saints have done in the past. Not a bunch I would like to be associated with and frankly not much better than Osama Bin Laden. The early Christian Church - in fact the Church right up to the 18th century makes the Taliban looked positively enlightened by comparison.
And no, the Roman army protected the Library against the Christian mob who were then allowed to sack and destroy the place as the price for letting the pagans sheltering there leave without being slaughtered.
Just out of interest how do you think the church got all that wealth in the first place. It certainly wasn't through honest trade.
Most of the wars of the time were dynastic and inter nation rather than strictly led by the church as such. Of course by far the worst mass murderers of all time Mao and Stalin were both atheists.
As I said the destruction of the Library was a product of mob violence between Christian and non Christian elements on both sides. Indeed one source says pagans took captured Christians into the Serapeum, forced them to offer sacrifices to non Christian deities, tortured those that refused and offered blood sacrifices of the rest. So afterwards it is somewhat understandable if pagan images were destroyed, including with the assistance of Roman soldiers.
The church got wealth through tithes amongst other things, which tended to support good works in the parish, something which it is regrettable ended as it linked the parish and church community more closely together
You know the more I read of what you write (which is garbage most of the time I am afraid) the more I can see you as a supporter and apologist for Franco. You would have fitted right in with that Catholic Conservative ideology, violence and all.
I am a traditional Tory and proud to be so, including support for Crown, Church and the landed interest.
I am most certainly not a libertarian like you so no surprise you dislike most of what I write and yes not everything Franco did was bad. He kept Spain together and kept the Communists out for example
The destruction of the Great Libarary by Christian monks is a piece of Gibbon's mythology. If you want to blame any one individual, it should be Julius Caeasar, but the causes of its decline are multiple.
To get us back to politics, betting and polling from religion, cricket and music, it's one country at a time tonight looking at today's polling so starting with Norway where it's just eleven days until the election.
A Kantar poll earlier today showed the centre-right Blue bloc cutting the gap on the centre-left Red bloc with a 2.1% swing in the last few days to leave the Red Bloc leading the Blue Bloc 49-42.6.
The Red Bloc (Labour, Centre, Socialist Left and Red Party) are on 50.8% with the Blue Bloc (Conservative, Progress, Liberal and Christian People's Party) are on 40.7% so a respectable lead for the opposition albeit an election where the two main Norwegian parties look to be losing ground and parties of the Left look to be advancing.
On topic, what's the purpose of shove-you-down-the-stairs questions like that in the Rasmussen poll? In the good old days you'd just be laughed at cos you're so transparently desperate to fix the answer, but is it more important now to give your social media foot soldiers something to crow about? Of course some of the more..er..naive may think this is a reasonable question which gives a clear snapshot of where the US voter is right now.
Partly to give the right headline but partly also to spread propaganda directly to the people answering the poll – see push polling.
Looks like an SPD led coalition on the way. A few days ago my fellow Essex Man was postulating a break up of the CDU/CSU alliance and a separate Bavaria within the EU. I wonder!!!!
This is according to one pollster. Yes ,their claimed 7.5% SPD lead is large.
But look at the distribution - I don't think it's the CSU letting the side down*
(*don't overthink it)
On those results given the CSU will likely provide over half the remaining Union seats in the Bundestag hopefully they get more influence in selecting the chancellor candidate next time and Soder therefore gets the gig.
Clearly it is Laschet and the CDU who will have lost it this time
It's worth pointing out the CSU won all 46 constituencies in Bavaria in 2017 and many by huge margins. The most marginal seat is Nuremburg North (no giggling in the cheap seats) which the CSU won by 5.6 points in 2017. At the other extreme, Altoetting (I've told you once) was won by 41.4 points.
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
The Library of the Serapeum was either destroyed by Roman soldiers or a mob rather than the Catholic church itself.
I am rather glad that Bill Gates is no Saint considering what many of the Christian Saints have done in the past. Not a bunch I would like to be associated with and frankly not much better than Osama Bin Laden. The early Christian Church - in fact the Church right up to the 18th century makes the Taliban looked positively enlightened by comparison.
And no, the Roman army protected the Library against the Christian mob who were then allowed to sack and destroy the place as the price for letting the pagans sheltering there leave without being slaughtered.
Just out of interest how do you think the church got all that wealth in the first place. It certainly wasn't through honest trade.
Most of the wars of the time were dynastic and inter nation rather than strictly led by the church as such. Of course by far the worst mass murderers of all time Mao and Stalin were both atheists.
As I said the destruction of the Library was a product of mob violence between Christian and non Christian elements on both sides. Indeed one source says pagans took captured Christians into the Serapeum, forced them to offer sacrifices to non Christian deities, tortured those that refused and offered blood sacrifices of the rest. So afterwards it is somewhat understandable if pagan images were destroyed, including with the assistance of Roman soldiers.
The church got wealth through tithes amongst other things, which tended to support good works in the parish, something which it is regrettable ended as it linked the parish and church community more closely together
You know the more I read of what you write (which is garbage most of the time I am afraid) the more I can see you as a supporter and apologist for Franco. You would have fitted right in with that Catholic Conservative ideology, violence and all.
I am a traditional Tory and proud to be so, including support for Crown, Church and the landed interest.
I am most certainly not a libertarian like you so no surprise you dislike most of what I write and yes not everything Franco did was bad. He kept Spain together and kept the Communists out for example
Most traditional Tories - and most who support Crown and Church - would be ashamed of being associated with you.
On then to Germany and two new polls today continuing to show a desperate position for the Union.
Infratest tonight as follows (changes since 2017 election):
Social Democrats: 25% (+4) Union CDU/CSU: 20% (-13) Greens: 16% (+7) Free Democrats: 13% (+2) Alternative for Germany: 12% (-1) Left: 6% (-3) Other: 8% (+3)
That's a chunky 8.5% swing from the Union to the Social Democrats.
SPD plus Greens plus FDP would have a comfortable majority.
I've seen it suggested that the SPD are doing well because Scholz does the best Merkel impersonation (not literally of course). Is that a bit simplistic?
The destruction of the Great Libarary by Christian monks is a piece of Gibbon's mythology. If you want to blame any one individual, it should be Julius Caeasar, but the causes of its decline are multiple.
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
The Library of the Serapeum was either destroyed by Roman soldiers or a mob rather than the Catholic church itself.
I am rather glad that Bill Gates is no Saint considering what many of the Christian Saints have done in the past. Not a bunch I would like to be associated with and frankly not much better than Osama Bin Laden. The early Christian Church - in fact the Church right up to the 18th century makes the Taliban looked positively enlightened by comparison.
And no, the Roman army protected the Library against the Christian mob who were then allowed to sack and destroy the place as the price for letting the pagans sheltering there leave without being slaughtered.
Just out of interest how do you think the church got all that wealth in the first place. It certainly wasn't through honest trade.
Most of the wars of the time were dynastic and inter nation rather than strictly led by the church as such. Of course by far the worst mass murderers of all time Mao and Stalin were both atheists.
As I said the destruction of the Library was a product of mob violence between Christian and non Christian elements on both sides. Indeed one source says pagans took captured Christians into the Serapeum, forced them to offer sacrifices to non Christian deities, tortured those that refused and offered blood sacrifices of the rest. So afterwards it is somewhat understandable if pagan images were destroyed, including with the assistance of Roman soldiers.
The church got wealth through tithes amongst other things, which tended to support good works in the parish, something which it is regrettable ended as it linked the parish and church community more closely together
You know the more I read of what you write (which is garbage most of the time I am afraid) the more I can see you as a supporter and apologist for Franco. You would have fitted right in with that Catholic Conservative ideology, violence and all.
I am a traditional Tory and proud to be so, including support for Crown, Church and the landed interest.
I am most certainly not a libertarian like you so no surprise you dislike most of what I write and yes not everything Franco did was bad. He kept Spain together and kept the Communists out for example
I have a strong suspicion that Pinochet may have been your favourite leader. A bit tougher than Franco.
We do have some more recent regional German polling - this from Brandenburg (fieldwork 25/8-28/8).
Social Democrats: 29% (+11) Alternative for Germany: 18% (-2) CDU: 15% (-12) Linke: 11% (-6) Free Democrats: 9% (+2) Greens: 9% (+4) Others: 9% (+3)
That's pretty devastating for the CDU who in 2017 won 9 of the 10 constituencies in the region.
Also worth noting there are around 30 "minor" parties contesting the election - the biggest of which are the "Free Voters" who have polled 3% in some polls.
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
The Library of the Serapeum was either destroyed by Roman soldiers or a mob rather than the Catholic church itself.
I am rather glad that Bill Gates is no Saint considering what many of the Christian Saints have done in the past. Not a bunch I would like to be associated with and frankly not much better than Osama Bin Laden. The early Christian Church - in fact the Church right up to the 18th century makes the Taliban looked positively enlightened by comparison.
And no, the Roman army protected the Library against the Christian mob who were then allowed to sack and destroy the place as the price for letting the pagans sheltering there leave without being slaughtered.
Just out of interest how do you think the church got all that wealth in the first place. It certainly wasn't through honest trade.
Most of the wars of the time were dynastic and inter nation rather than strictly led by the church as such. Of course by far the worst mass murderers of all time Mao and Stalin were both atheists.
As I said the destruction of the Library was a product of mob violence between Christian and non Christian elements on both sides. Indeed one source says pagans took captured Christians into the Serapeum, forced them to offer sacrifices to non Christian deities, tortured those that refused and offered blood sacrifices of the rest. So afterwards it is somewhat understandable if pagan images were destroyed, including with the assistance of Roman soldiers.
The church got wealth through tithes amongst other things, which tended to support good works in the parish, something which it is regrettable ended as it linked the parish and church community more closely together
You know the more I read of what you write (which is garbage most of the time I am afraid) the more I can see you as a supporter and apologist for Franco. You would have fitted right in with that Catholic Conservative ideology, violence and all.
I am a traditional Tory and proud to be so, including support for Crown, Church and the landed interest.
I am most certainly not a libertarian like you so no surprise you dislike most of what I write and yes not everything Franco did was bad. He kept Spain together and kept the Communists out for example
I have a strong suspicion that Pinochet may have been your favourite leader. A bit tougher than Franco.
I read that as pinocchio initially. Had to double check.
The destruction of the Great Libarary by Christian monks is a piece of Gibbon's mythology. If you want to blame any one individual, it should be Julius Caeasar, but the causes of its decline are multiple.
You are confusing and conflating two separate events. The destruction of the Great Library at Alexandria occurred hundreds of years before the events I am talking about and the destruction of the Library of the Serapeum. The latter housed what had been salvaged from the Great Library after it was accidently burned during the Siege of Alexandria in 48BC. And it was all the more important for that. It was destroyed by a Christian mob at the order of the Christian Bishop of Alexandria Theophilus and the Christian Emperor Theodosius.
On then to Germany and two new polls today continuing to show a desperate position for the Union.
Infratest tonight as follows (changes since 2017 election):
Social Democrats: 25% (+4) Union CDU/CSU: 20% (-13) Greens: 16% (+7) Free Democrats: 13% (+2) Alternative for Germany: 12% (-1) Left: 6% (-3) Other: 8% (+3)
That's a chunky 8.5% swing from the Union to the Social Democrats.
SPD plus Greens plus FDP would have a comfortable majority.
I've seen it suggested that the SPD are doing well because Scholz does the best Merkel impersonation (not literally of course). Is that a bit simplistic?
No, the irony is Scholz rather than Laschet has emerged as Continuity Merkel.
All the polls show Scholz well ahead in the "preferred Chancellor" numbers with Laschet third and falling. This may work out well for Soeder - he can rebuild the Union around the CSU in Bavaria and present himself as the genuine conservative candidate next time able to peel off some AfD votes.
There are two parts to this - the decision itself and the impact on Biden's brand / image, related to how he compares with Trump.
On the first part, I'd agree re Biden not taking a political hit. The US people generally want out of Afghanistan so it's a popular decision.
The problem for Biden comes with the second part. Three of his key election brand platforms were competence, compassion and decency. I'd argue the way the withdrawal was done has seriously damaged the first but maybe not permanently. However, he will definitely take a permanent hit on the other two (anyone who says Biden is compassionate will get laughed at given his "that was four or five days ago" comment).
All these three points were supposed to be differentiators with Trump. If you are going to pitch Biden as an hard ass, American first President, why not go for the real thing. That is another issue.
Finally, people had issues with Biden pre-Afghanistan - questions over his mental capabilities, the rise of inflation etc. What has happened only builds on these.
Agree with you on the compassion and decency point, but I would think on the mental faculties issue, Biden comes out of this being extremely hard-headed, Cynical actually
I thought he was coming out of it being completely deluded and incapable of coherent thought. That is, at least, the impression I have been getting of him. I am glad he won the election because... well, Trump. But I never had any illusions about him being any better as a president than the Golden Wigged One and sadly that has proven to be the case.
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
The Library of the Serapeum was either destroyed by Roman soldiers or a mob rather than the Catholic church itself.
I am rather glad that Bill Gates is no Saint considering what many of the Christian Saints have done in the past. Not a bunch I would like to be associated with and frankly not much better than Osama Bin Laden. The early Christian Church - in fact the Church right up to the 18th century makes the Taliban looked positively enlightened by comparison.
And no, the Roman army protected the Library against the Christian mob who were then allowed to sack and destroy the place as the price for letting the pagans sheltering there leave without being slaughtered.
Just out of interest how do you think the church got all that wealth in the first place. It certainly wasn't through honest trade.
Most of the wars of the time were dynastic and inter nation rather than strictly led by the church as such. Of course by far the worst mass murderers of all time Mao and Stalin were both atheists.
As I said the destruction of the Library was a product of mob violence between Christian and non Christian elements on both sides. Indeed one source says pagans took captured Christians into the Serapeum, forced them to offer sacrifices to non Christian deities, tortured those that refused and offered blood sacrifices of the rest. So afterwards it is somewhat understandable if pagan images were destroyed, including with the assistance of Roman soldiers.
The church got wealth through tithes amongst other things, which tended to support good works in the parish, something which it is regrettable ended as it linked the parish and church community more closely together
You know the more I read of what you write (which is garbage most of the time I am afraid) the more I can see you as a supporter and apologist for Franco. You would have fitted right in with that Catholic Conservative ideology, violence and all.
I am a traditional Tory and proud to be so, including support for Crown, Church and the landed interest.
I am most certainly not a libertarian like you so no surprise you dislike most of what I write and yes not everything Franco did was bad. He kept Spain together and kept the Communists out for example
I have a strong suspicion that Pinochet may have been your favourite leader. A bit tougher than Franco.
I read that as pinocchio initially. Had to double check.
Did Pinochet always let his conscience be his guide?
The regional splits are as always of greater interest. In British Columbia (43 ridings), the NDP lead the Conservatives 36-32 with the Liberals on 26%. In Ontario (121 ridings), Trudeau's Liberals lead the Conservatives 36-34 with the NDP on 22. In Quebec (78 ridings), the Liberals lead BQ 34-28.
The Conservatives have huge leads in Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan as you might expect.
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
I refer the honourable Gentlemen to the Dutch Republic of the seventeenth century, where private merchants managed to fund Rembradt, Vermeer, and the like.
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
I refer the honourable Gentlemen to the Dutch Republic of the seventeenth century, where private merchants managed to fund Rembradt, Vermeer, and the like.
They didn't call Lorenzo de Medici 'The Magnificent' for nothing..
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
The Library of the Serapeum was either destroyed by Roman soldiers or a mob rather than the Catholic church itself.
"Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world"
That's a lot of vaccines were one man to take. He must be really Polio resistant,
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
The Library of the Serapeum was either destroyed by Roman soldiers or a mob rather than the Catholic church itself.
I am rather glad that Bill Gates is no Saint considering what many of the Christian Saints have done in the past. Not a bunch I would like to be associated with and frankly not much better than Osama Bin Laden. The early Christian Church - in fact the Church right up to the 18th century makes the Taliban looked positively enlightened by comparison.
And no, the Roman army protected the Library against the Christian mob who were then allowed to sack and destroy the place as the price for letting the pagans sheltering there leave without being slaughtered.
Just out of interest how do you think the church got all that wealth in the first place. It certainly wasn't through honest trade.
Most of the wars of the time were dynastic and inter nation rather than strictly led by the church as such. Of course by far the worst mass murderers of all time Mao and Stalin were both atheists.
As I said the destruction of the Library was a product of mob violence between Christian and non Christian elements on both sides. Indeed one source says pagans took captured Christians into the Serapeum, forced them to offer sacrifices to non Christian deities, tortured those that refused and offered blood sacrifices of the rest. So afterwards it is somewhat understandable if pagan images were destroyed, including with the assistance of Roman soldiers.
The church got wealth through tithes amongst other things, which tended to support good works in the parish, something which it is regrettable ended as it linked the parish and church community more closely together
You know the more I read of what you write (which is garbage most of the time I am afraid) the more I can see you as a supporter and apologist for Franco. You would have fitted right in with that Catholic Conservative ideology, violence and all.
I am a traditional Tory and proud to be so, including support for Crown, Church and the landed interest.
I am most certainly not a libertarian like you so no surprise you dislike most of what I write and yes not everything Franco did was bad. He kept Spain together and kept the Communists out for example
How Franco kept the Communists out was barbaric.
I have a lot of time for your analysis normally, but your attempt to justify Franco's fascists is a dreadful disappointment.
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
The Library of the Serapeum was either destroyed by Roman soldiers or a mob rather than the Catholic church itself.
I am rather glad that Bill Gates is no Saint considering what many of the Christian Saints have done in the past. Not a bunch I would like to be associated with and frankly not much better than Osama Bin Laden. The early Christian Church - in fact the Church right up to the 18th century makes the Taliban looked positively enlightened by comparison.
And no, the Roman army protected the Library against the Christian mob who were then allowed to sack and destroy the place as the price for letting the pagans sheltering there leave without being slaughtered.
Just out of interest how do you think the church got all that wealth in the first place. It certainly wasn't through honest trade.
Most of the wars of the time were dynastic and inter nation rather than strictly led by the church as such. Of course by far the worst mass murderers of all time Mao and Stalin were both atheists.
As I said the destruction of the Library was a product of mob violence between Christian and non Christian elements on both sides. Indeed one source says pagans took captured Christians into the Serapeum, forced them to offer sacrifices to non Christian deities, tortured those that refused and offered blood sacrifices of the rest. So afterwards it is somewhat understandable if pagan images were destroyed, including with the assistance of Roman soldiers.
The church got wealth through tithes amongst other things, which tended to support good works in the parish, something which it is regrettable ended as it linked the parish and church community more closely together
You know the more I read of what you write (which is garbage most of the time I am afraid) the more I can see you as a supporter and apologist for Franco. You would have fitted right in with that Catholic Conservative ideology, violence and all.
I am a traditional Tory and proud to be so, including support for Crown, Church and the landed interest.
I am most certainly not a libertarian like you so no surprise you dislike most of what I write and yes not everything Franco did was bad. He kept Spain together and kept the Communists out for example
You are not a traditional Tory because you voted Remain.
Also saying "Franco kept the Communists out" is a bit like saying "Stalin kept the Nazis out of central and eastern Europe"!
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/02/roe-v-wade-texas-abortion-law-us-constitution It wasn’t just Roe that died at midnight on 1 September with barely a whimper, let alone a bang. It was the principle that nobody’s constitutional rights should be put on sale for purchase by anyone who can find an informant or helper to turn in whoever might be trying to exercise those rights... … The prospect of hefty bounties will breed a system of profit-seeking, Soviet-style informing on friends and neighbors. These vigilantes will sue medical distributors of IUDs and morning-after pills, as well as insurance companies. These companies, in turn, will stop offering reproductive healthcare in Texas. As of a minute before midnight on 31 August, clinics in Texas were already turning patients away out of fear. Even if the law is eventually struck down, many will probably close anyway.
Worse still, if women try to escape the state to access abortion services, their families will be on the hook for offering even the smallest aid. If friends or family of a woman hoping to terminate her pregnancy drive her across state lines, or help her organize money for a plane or bus ticket, they could be liable for “aiding and abetting” a now-banned abortion, even if the procedure itself takes place outside Texas.
Adding insult to injury, if a young woman asks for money for a bus ticket, or a ride to the airport, friends and parents fearful of liability might vigorously interrogate her about her intentions. This nightmarish state of affairs burdens yet another fundamental constitutional privilege: the right to interstate travel, recognized by the supreme court in 1999 as a core privilege of federal citizenship.…
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
The Library of the Serapeum was either destroyed by Roman soldiers or a mob rather than the Catholic church itself.
I am rather glad that Bill Gates is no Saint considering what many of the Christian Saints have done in the past. Not a bunch I would like to be associated with and frankly not much better than Osama Bin Laden. The early Christian Church - in fact the Church right up to the 18th century makes the Taliban looked positively enlightened by comparison.
And no, the Roman army protected the Library against the Christian mob who were then allowed to sack and destroy the place as the price for letting the pagans sheltering there leave without being slaughtered.
Just out of interest how do you think the church got all that wealth in the first place. It certainly wasn't through honest trade.
Most of the wars of the time were dynastic and inter nation rather than strictly led by the church as such. Of course by far the worst mass murderers of all time Mao and Stalin were both atheists.
As I said the destruction of the Library was a product of mob violence between Christian and non Christian elements on both sides. Indeed one source says pagans took captured Christians into the Serapeum, forced them to offer sacrifices to non Christian deities, tortured those that refused and offered blood sacrifices of the rest. So afterwards it is somewhat understandable if pagan images were destroyed, including with the assistance of Roman soldiers.
The church got wealth through tithes amongst other things, which tended to support good works in the parish, something which it is regrettable ended as it linked the parish and church community more closely together
You know the more I read of what you write (which is garbage most of the time I am afraid) the more I can see you as a supporter and apologist for Franco. You would have fitted right in with that Catholic Conservative ideology, violence and all.
I am a traditional Tory and proud to be so, including support for Crown, Church and the landed interest.
I am most certainly not a libertarian like you so no surprise you dislike most of what I write and yes not everything Franco did was bad. He kept Spain together and kept the Communists out for example
How Franco kept the Communists out was barbaric.
I have a lot of time for your analysis normally, but your attempt to justify Franco's fascists is a dreadful disappointment.
May not be a popular opinion but I have no time for his analysis.
He takes a view and is very good at finding a single strand of thought, or single opinion poll to match his own PoV. But then he dogmatically sticks to that PoV and sticks to reprinting that poll or that thought no matter what other evidence comes up, nor what points other people make.
To be good at analysis you need to go in with an opinion mind and be willing to change your mind when other facts come along. I've never seen any evidence of that. Other people may not change their mind but can at least generally listen to what is said or acknowledge a good point, but I've never seen HYUFD do that.
I said prior to the election that i wondered if the deal was to generate feel good headlines for Trump dealing with the Opioid crisis and it does rather seem to be a hell of a weak settlement overall.
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
The Library of the Serapeum was either destroyed by Roman soldiers or a mob rather than the Catholic church itself.
I am rather glad that Bill Gates is no Saint considering what many of the Christian Saints have done in the past. Not a bunch I would like to be associated with and frankly not much better than Osama Bin Laden. The early Christian Church - in fact the Church right up to the 18th century makes the Taliban looked positively enlightened by comparison.
And no, the Roman army protected the Library against the Christian mob who were then allowed to sack and destroy the place as the price for letting the pagans sheltering there leave without being slaughtered.
Just out of interest how do you think the church got all that wealth in the first place. It certainly wasn't through honest trade.
Most of the wars of the time were dynastic and inter nation rather than strictly led by the church as such. Of course by far the worst mass murderers of all time Mao and Stalin were both atheists.
As I said the destruction of the Library was a product of mob violence between Christian and non Christian elements on both sides. Indeed one source says pagans took captured Christians into the Serapeum, forced them to offer sacrifices to non Christian deities, tortured those that refused and offered blood sacrifices of the rest. So afterwards it is somewhat understandable if pagan images were destroyed, including with the assistance of Roman soldiers.
The church got wealth through tithes amongst other things, which tended to support good works in the parish, something which it is regrettable ended as it linked the parish and church community more closely together
You know the more I read of what you write (which is garbage most of the time I am afraid) the more I can see you as a supporter and apologist for Franco. You would have fitted right in with that Catholic Conservative ideology, violence and all.
I am a traditional Tory and proud to be so, including support for Crown, Church and the landed interest.
I am most certainly not a libertarian like you so no surprise you dislike most of what I write and yes not everything Franco did was bad. He kept Spain together and kept the Communists out for example
Out of interest, HYUFD, why do you consciously perceive yourself as a supporter of the landed interest ? The other two are much more common as publicly avowed tory loyalties.
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
The Library of the Serapeum was either destroyed by Roman soldiers or a mob rather than the Catholic church itself.
I am rather glad that Bill Gates is no Saint considering what many of the Christian Saints have done in the past. Not a bunch I would like to be associated with and frankly not much better than Osama Bin Laden. The early Christian Church - in fact the Church right up to the 18th century makes the Taliban looked positively enlightened by comparison.
And no, the Roman army protected the Library against the Christian mob who were then allowed to sack and destroy the place as the price for letting the pagans sheltering there leave without being slaughtered.
Just out of interest how do you think the church got all that wealth in the first place. It certainly wasn't through honest trade.
Most of the wars of the time were dynastic and inter nation rather than strictly led by the church as such. Of course by far the worst mass murderers of all time Mao and Stalin were both atheists.
As I said the destruction of the Library was a product of mob violence between Christian and non Christian elements on both sides. Indeed one source says pagans took captured Christians into the Serapeum, forced them to offer sacrifices to non Christian deities, tortured those that refused and offered blood sacrifices of the rest. So afterwards it is somewhat understandable if pagan images were destroyed, including with the assistance of Roman soldiers.
The church got wealth through tithes amongst other things, which tended to support good works in the parish, something which it is regrettable ended as it linked the parish and church community more closely together
You know the more I read of what you write (which is garbage most of the time I am afraid) the more I can see you as a supporter and apologist for Franco. You would have fitted right in with that Catholic Conservative ideology, violence and all.
I am a traditional Tory and proud to be so, including support for Crown, Church and the landed interest.
I am most certainly not a libertarian like you so no surprise you dislike most of what I write and yes not everything Franco did was bad. He kept Spain together and kept the Communists out for example
Most traditional Tories - and most who support Crown and Church - would be ashamed of being associated with you.
Given you are not a traditional Tory you cannot comment.
Even Churchill supported Franco in the 1930s to keep the Communists out of power in Spain and Franco was never a Nazi, he shrewdly kept Spain neutral in WW2.
Plus of course our sister party as Tories in Spain is the Popular Party which has Francoist origins
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
The Library of the Serapeum was either destroyed by Roman soldiers or a mob rather than the Catholic church itself.
I am rather glad that Bill Gates is no Saint considering what many of the Christian Saints have done in the past. Not a bunch I would like to be associated with and frankly not much better than Osama Bin Laden. The early Christian Church - in fact the Church right up to the 18th century makes the Taliban looked positively enlightened by comparison.
And no, the Roman army protected the Library against the Christian mob who were then allowed to sack and destroy the place as the price for letting the pagans sheltering there leave without being slaughtered.
Just out of interest how do you think the church got all that wealth in the first place. It certainly wasn't through honest trade.
Most of the wars of the time were dynastic and inter nation rather than strictly led by the church as such. Of course by far the worst mass murderers of all time Mao and Stalin were both atheists.
As I said the destruction of the Library was a product of mob violence between Christian and non Christian elements on both sides. Indeed one source says pagans took captured Christians into the Serapeum, forced them to offer sacrifices to non Christian deities, tortured those that refused and offered blood sacrifices of the rest. So afterwards it is somewhat understandable if pagan images were destroyed, including with the assistance of Roman soldiers.
The church got wealth through tithes amongst other things, which tended to support good works in the parish, something which it is regrettable ended as it linked the parish and church community more closely together
You know the more I read of what you write (which is garbage most of the time I am afraid) the more I can see you as a supporter and apologist for Franco. You would have fitted right in with that Catholic Conservative ideology, violence and all.
I am a traditional Tory and proud to be so, including support for Crown, Church and the landed interest.
I am most certainly not a libertarian like you so no surprise you dislike most of what I write and yes not everything Franco did was bad. He kept Spain together and kept the Communists out for example
I have a strong suspicion that Pinochet may have been your favourite leader. A bit tougher than Franco.
Pinochet did of course at least help the UK in the Falklands War, as Baroness Thatcher acknowledged
Looks like an SPD led coalition on the way. A few days ago my fellow Essex Man was postulating a break up of the CDU/CSU alliance and a separate Bavaria within the EU. I wonder!!!!
This is according to one pollster. Yes ,their claimed 7.5% SPD lead is large.
But look at the distribution - I don't think it's the CSU letting the side down*
(*don't overthink it)
On those results given the CSU will likely provide over half the remaining Union seats in the Bundestag hopefully they get more influence in selecting the chancellor candidate next time and Soder therefore gets the gig.
Clearly it is Laschet and the CDU who will have lost it this time
It's worth pointing out the CSU won all 46 constituencies in Bavaria in 2017 and many by huge margins. The most marginal seat is Nuremburg North (no giggling in the cheap seats) which the CSU won by 5.6 points in 2017. At the other extreme, Altoetting (I've told you once) was won by 41.4 points.
Makes one wonder about Bavaria. Wasn't Wagner Bavarian?
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
The Library of the Serapeum was either destroyed by Roman soldiers or a mob rather than the Catholic church itself.
I am rather glad that Bill Gates is no Saint considering what many of the Christian Saints have done in the past. Not a bunch I would like to be associated with and frankly not much better than Osama Bin Laden. The early Christian Church - in fact the Church right up to the 18th century makes the Taliban looked positively enlightened by comparison.
And no, the Roman army protected the Library against the Christian mob who were then allowed to sack and destroy the place as the price for letting the pagans sheltering there leave without being slaughtered.
Just out of interest how do you think the church got all that wealth in the first place. It certainly wasn't through honest trade.
Most of the wars of the time were dynastic and inter nation rather than strictly led by the church as such. Of course by far the worst mass murderers of all time Mao and Stalin were both atheists.
As I said the destruction of the Library was a product of mob violence between Christian and non Christian elements on both sides. Indeed one source says pagans took captured Christians into the Serapeum, forced them to offer sacrifices to non Christian deities, tortured those that refused and offered blood sacrifices of the rest. So afterwards it is somewhat understandable if pagan images were destroyed, including with the assistance of Roman soldiers.
The church got wealth through tithes amongst other things, which tended to support good works in the parish, something which it is regrettable ended as it linked the parish and church community more closely together
You know the more I read of what you write (which is garbage most of the time I am afraid) the more I can see you as a supporter and apologist for Franco. You would have fitted right in with that Catholic Conservative ideology, violence and all.
I am a traditional Tory and proud to be so, including support for Crown, Church and the landed interest.
I am most certainly not a libertarian like you so no surprise you dislike most of what I write and yes not everything Franco did was bad. He kept Spain together and kept the Communists out for example
Most traditional Tories - and most who support Crown and Church - would be ashamed of being associated with you.
Given you are not a traditional Tory you cannot comment.
Even Churchill supported Franco in the 1930s to keep the Communists out of power in Spain.
Plus of course our sister party as Tories in Spain is the Popular Party which has Francoist origins
I find it interesting that you think you have the right to decide if someone is or is not a Traditional Tory - as in my personal opinion you are not a Conservative in any shape or form...
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
The Library of the Serapeum was either destroyed by Roman soldiers or a mob rather than the Catholic church itself.
I am rather glad that Bill Gates is no Saint considering what many of the Christian Saints have done in the past. Not a bunch I would like to be associated with and frankly not much better than Osama Bin Laden. The early Christian Church - in fact the Church right up to the 18th century makes the Taliban looked positively enlightened by comparison.
And no, the Roman army protected the Library against the Christian mob who were then allowed to sack and destroy the place as the price for letting the pagans sheltering there leave without being slaughtered.
Just out of interest how do you think the church got all that wealth in the first place. It certainly wasn't through honest trade.
Most of the wars of the time were dynastic and inter nation rather than strictly led by the church as such. Of course by far the worst mass murderers of all time Mao and Stalin were both atheists.
As I said the destruction of the Library was a product of mob violence between Christian and non Christian elements on both sides. Indeed one source says pagans took captured Christians into the Serapeum, forced them to offer sacrifices to non Christian deities, tortured those that refused and offered blood sacrifices of the rest. So afterwards it is somewhat understandable if pagan images were destroyed, including with the assistance of Roman soldiers.
The church got wealth through tithes amongst other things, which tended to support good works in the parish, something which it is regrettable ended as it linked the parish and church community more closely together
You know the more I read of what you write (which is garbage most of the time I am afraid) the more I can see you as a supporter and apologist for Franco. You would have fitted right in with that Catholic Conservative ideology, violence and all.
I am a traditional Tory and proud to be so, including support for Crown, Church and the landed interest.
I am most certainly not a libertarian like you so no surprise you dislike most of what I write and yes not everything Franco did was bad. He kept Spain together and kept the Communists out for example
You are not a traditional Tory because you voted Remain.
Also saying "Franco kept the Communists out" is a bit like saying "Stalin kept the Nazis out of central and eastern Europe"!
Looks like an SPD led coalition on the way. A few days ago my fellow Essex Man was postulating a break up of the CDU/CSU alliance and a separate Bavaria within the EU. I wonder!!!!
This is according to one pollster. Yes ,their claimed 7.5% SPD lead is large.
But look at the distribution - I don't think it's the CSU letting the side down*
(*don't overthink it)
On those results given the CSU will likely provide over half the remaining Union seats in the Bundestag hopefully they get more influence in selecting the chancellor candidate next time and Soder therefore gets the gig.
Clearly it is Laschet and the CDU who will have lost it this time
It's worth pointing out the CSU won all 46 constituencies in Bavaria in 2017 and many by huge margins. The most marginal seat is Nuremburg North (no giggling in the cheap seats) which the CSU won by 5.6 points in 2017. At the other extreme, Altoetting (I've told you once) was won by 41.4 points.
Makes one wonder about Bavaria. Wasn't Wagner Bavarian?
Bavaria ofcourse being the original German nationalist stronghold in the 1920s. Quite ironic, actually, as it's ethnoculturally quite different from the Prussian and Nordicist ideals of the time.
I said prior to the election that i wondered if the deal was to generate feel good headlines for Trump dealing with the Opioid crisis and it does rather seem to be a hell of a weak settlement overall.
The Oxycontin 'business" is one of the most unpleasant and dangerous to have come into the market ever. Masood of Helmand with his opium exports was at at least relatively innocent of what he was doing.
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
The Library of the Serapeum was either destroyed by Roman soldiers or a mob rather than the Catholic church itself.
"Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world"
That's a lot of vaccines were one man to take. He must be really Polio resistant,
I would also like to see actual evidence to back up HYUFD's (probably libel) claim
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
The Library of the Serapeum was either destroyed by Roman soldiers or a mob rather than the Catholic church itself.
"Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world"
That's a lot of vaccines were one man to take. He must be really Polio resistant,
He gets 50 cents a shot of the first 100 million shots of AZ vaccine produced in India and significantly more after that
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
The Library of the Serapeum was either destroyed by Roman soldiers or a mob rather than the Catholic church itself.
I am rather glad that Bill Gates is no Saint considering what many of the Christian Saints have done in the past. Not a bunch I would like to be associated with and frankly not much better than Osama Bin Laden. The early Christian Church - in fact the Church right up to the 18th century makes the Taliban looked positively enlightened by comparison.
And no, the Roman army protected the Library against the Christian mob who were then allowed to sack and destroy the place as the price for letting the pagans sheltering there leave without being slaughtered.
Just out of interest how do you think the church got all that wealth in the first place. It certainly wasn't through honest trade.
Most of the wars of the time were dynastic and inter nation rather than strictly led by the church as such. Of course by far the worst mass murderers of all time Mao and Stalin were both atheists.
As I said the destruction of the Library was a product of mob violence between Christian and non Christian elements on both sides. Indeed one source says pagans took captured Christians into the Serapeum, forced them to offer sacrifices to non Christian deities, tortured those that refused and offered blood sacrifices of the rest. So afterwards it is somewhat understandable if pagan images were destroyed, including with the assistance of Roman soldiers.
The church got wealth through tithes amongst other things, which tended to support good works in the parish, something which it is regrettable ended as it linked the parish and church community more closely together
You know the more I read of what you write (which is garbage most of the time I am afraid) the more I can see you as a supporter and apologist for Franco. You would have fitted right in with that Catholic Conservative ideology, violence and all.
I am a traditional Tory and proud to be so, including support for Crown, Church and the landed interest.
I am most certainly not a libertarian like you so no surprise you dislike most of what I write and yes not everything Franco did was bad. He kept Spain together and kept the Communists out for example
Most traditional Tories - and most who support Crown and Church - would be ashamed of being associated with you.
Given you are not a traditional Tory you cannot comment.
Even Churchill supported Franco in the 1930s to keep the Communists out of power in Spain and Franco was never a Nazi, he shrewdly kept Spain neutral in WW2.
Plus of course our sister party as Tories in Spain is the Popular Party which has Francoist origins
Whenever people ask how it is that someone like Hitler managed to get to power in a modern European country all I have to do is point them in your direction. Ideology trumping basic common decency.
Oh and before you try to Godwin me, I have made no mention of the Nazi's until you decided to bring them into the discussion as a rather obvious diversionary tactic. But if the cap fits...
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
The Library of the Serapeum was either destroyed by Roman soldiers or a mob rather than the Catholic church itself.
"Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world"
That's a lot of vaccines were one man to take. He must be really Polio resistant,
He gets 50 cents a shot of the first 100 million shots of AZ vaccine produced in India and significantly more after that
External Link please to back up the allegation as the only thing I can see is that their foundation has subsidised the first 100 million shots produced there so they are sold for $3 each.
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
The Library of the Serapeum was either destroyed by Roman soldiers or a mob rather than the Catholic church itself.
I am rather glad that Bill Gates is no Saint considering what many of the Christian Saints have done in the past. Not a bunch I would like to be associated with and frankly not much better than Osama Bin Laden. The early Christian Church - in fact the Church right up to the 18th century makes the Taliban looked positively enlightened by comparison.
And no, the Roman army protected the Library against the Christian mob who were then allowed to sack and destroy the place as the price for letting the pagans sheltering there leave without being slaughtered.
Just out of interest how do you think the church got all that wealth in the first place. It certainly wasn't through honest trade.
Most of the wars of the time were dynastic and inter nation rather than strictly led by the church as such. Of course by far the worst mass murderers of all time Mao and Stalin were both atheists.
As I said the destruction of the Library was a product of mob violence between Christian and non Christian elements on both sides. Indeed one source says pagans took captured Christians into the Serapeum, forced them to offer sacrifices to non Christian deities, tortured those that refused and offered blood sacrifices of the rest. So afterwards it is somewhat understandable if pagan images were destroyed, including with the assistance of Roman soldiers.
The church got wealth through tithes amongst other things, which tended to support good works in the parish, something which it is regrettable ended as it linked the parish and church community more closely together
You know the more I read of what you write (which is garbage most of the time I am afraid) the more I can see you as a supporter and apologist for Franco. You would have fitted right in with that Catholic Conservative ideology, violence and all.
I am a traditional Tory and proud to be so, including support for Crown, Church and the landed interest.
I am most certainly not a libertarian like you so no surprise you dislike most of what I write and yes not everything Franco did was bad. He kept Spain together and kept the Communists out for example
Out of interest, HYUFD, why do you consciously perceive yourself as a supporter of the landed interest ? The other two are much more common as publicly avowed tory loyalties.
The Tories arose in the 17th century as the party of the landed gentry and the Anglican church, the Whigs were the party of the merchant class
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
But the state now provides much of the original role of the charities. Using taxes levied on the big corporations as well as the rest of us. Which is at least fairer than the Speenhamland system in England, and the presumption that parishioners in Scotland would cough up while businesses were left alone (before thew 1840s poor law changes).
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
The Library of the Serapeum was either destroyed by Roman soldiers or a mob rather than the Catholic church itself.
I am rather glad that Bill Gates is no Saint considering what many of the Christian Saints have done in the past. Not a bunch I would like to be associated with and frankly not much better than Osama Bin Laden. The early Christian Church - in fact the Church right up to the 18th century makes the Taliban looked positively enlightened by comparison.
And no, the Roman army protected the Library against the Christian mob who were then allowed to sack and destroy the place as the price for letting the pagans sheltering there leave without being slaughtered.
Just out of interest how do you think the church got all that wealth in the first place. It certainly wasn't through honest trade.
Most of the wars of the time were dynastic and inter nation rather than strictly led by the church as such. Of course by far the worst mass murderers of all time Mao and Stalin were both atheists.
As I said the destruction of the Library was a product of mob violence between Christian and non Christian elements on both sides. Indeed one source says pagans took captured Christians into the Serapeum, forced them to offer sacrifices to non Christian deities, tortured those that refused and offered blood sacrifices of the rest. So afterwards it is somewhat understandable if pagan images were destroyed, including with the assistance of Roman soldiers.
The church got wealth through tithes amongst other things, which tended to support good works in the parish, something which it is regrettable ended as it linked the parish and church community more closely together
You know the more I read of what you write (which is garbage most of the time I am afraid) the more I can see you as a supporter and apologist for Franco. You would have fitted right in with that Catholic Conservative ideology, violence and all.
I am a traditional Tory and proud to be so, including support for Crown, Church and the landed interest.
I am most certainly not a libertarian like you so no surprise you dislike most of what I write and yes not everything Franco did was bad. He kept Spain together and kept the Communists out for example
Most traditional Tories - and most who support Crown and Church - would be ashamed of being associated with you.
Given you are not a traditional Tory you cannot comment.
Even Churchill supported Franco in the 1930s to keep the Communists out of power in Spain.
Plus of course our sister party as Tories in Spain is the Popular Party which has Francoist origins
I find it interesting that you think you have the right to decide if someone is or is not a Traditional Tory - as in my personal opinion you are not a Conservative in any shape or form...
Given you aren't you have no right to comment either on whether I am or not
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
The Library of the Serapeum was either destroyed by Roman soldiers or a mob rather than the Catholic church itself.
I am rather glad that Bill Gates is no Saint considering what many of the Christian Saints have done in the past. Not a bunch I would like to be associated with and frankly not much better than Osama Bin Laden. The early Christian Church - in fact the Church right up to the 18th century makes the Taliban looked positively enlightened by comparison.
And no, the Roman army protected the Library against the Christian mob who were then allowed to sack and destroy the place as the price for letting the pagans sheltering there leave without being slaughtered.
Just out of interest how do you think the church got all that wealth in the first place. It certainly wasn't through honest trade.
Most of the wars of the time were dynastic and inter nation rather than strictly led by the church as such. Of course by far the worst mass murderers of all time Mao and Stalin were both atheists.
As I said the destruction of the Library was a product of mob violence between Christian and non Christian elements on both sides. Indeed one source says pagans took captured Christians into the Serapeum, forced them to offer sacrifices to non Christian deities, tortured those that refused and offered blood sacrifices of the rest. So afterwards it is somewhat understandable if pagan images were destroyed, including with the assistance of Roman soldiers.
The church got wealth through tithes amongst other things, which tended to support good works in the parish, something which it is regrettable ended as it linked the parish and church community more closely together
You know the more I read of what you write (which is garbage most of the time I am afraid) the more I can see you as a supporter and apologist for Franco. You would have fitted right in with that Catholic Conservative ideology, violence and all.
I am a traditional Tory and proud to be so, including support for Crown, Church and the landed interest.
I am most certainly not a libertarian like you so no surprise you dislike most of what I write and yes not everything Franco did was bad. He kept Spain together and kept the Communists out for example
Out of interest, HYUFD, why do you consciously perceive yourself as a supporter of the landed interest ? The other two are much more common as publicly avowed tory loyalties.
The Tories arose in the 17th century as the party of the landed gentry and the Anglican church, the Whigs were the party of the merchant class
You're a rare man who will publicly avow support for the landed class in itself, nowadays, though.
On a historical footnote, the Whigs drew aristocratic support with huge estate holdings, larger than the gentry's overall, but their publicly avowed values were quite different from the Tories', and more progressive.
Looks like an SPD led coalition on the way. A few days ago my fellow Essex Man was postulating a break up of the CDU/CSU alliance and a separate Bavaria within the EU. I wonder!!!!
This is according to one pollster. Yes ,their claimed 7.5% SPD lead is large.
But look at the distribution - I don't think it's the CSU letting the side down*
(*don't overthink it)
On those results given the CSU will likely provide over half the remaining Union seats in the Bundestag hopefully they get more influence in selecting the chancellor candidate next time and Soder therefore gets the gig.
Clearly it is Laschet and the CDU who will have lost it this time
It's worth pointing out the CSU won all 46 constituencies in Bavaria in 2017 and many by huge margins. The most marginal seat is Nuremburg North (no giggling in the cheap seats) which the CSU won by 5.6 points in 2017. At the other extreme, Altoetting (I've told you once) was won by 41.4 points.
Makes one wonder about Bavaria. Wasn't Wagner Bavarian?
Bavaria ofcourse being the original German nationalist stronghold during the 1920's. Quite ironic, actually, as it's ethnoculturally quite different from the Prussian ideal.
'Prussia' was of course originally what we would now describe as Polish. The North of Central Europe has seen more changes than our PM's had partners.
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
The Library of the Serapeum was either destroyed by Roman soldiers or a mob rather than the Catholic church itself.
"Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world"
That's a lot of vaccines were one man to take. He must be really Polio resistant,
He gets 50 cents a shot of the first 100 million shots of AZ vaccine produced in India and significantly more after that
External Link please to back up the allegation as the only thing I can see is that their foundation has subsidised the first 100 million shots produced there so they are sold for $3 each.
Does it fall to me to point out that Franco and Pinochet both violently overthrew democratically elected governments? And tortured and executed their opponents? Are these core Tory values?
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
The Library of the Serapeum was either destroyed by Roman soldiers or a mob rather than the Catholic church itself.
I am rather glad that Bill Gates is no Saint considering what many of the Christian Saints have done in the past. Not a bunch I would like to be associated with and frankly not much better than Osama Bin Laden. The early Christian Church - in fact the Church right up to the 18th century makes the Taliban looked positively enlightened by comparison.
And no, the Roman army protected the Library against the Christian mob who were then allowed to sack and destroy the place as the price for letting the pagans sheltering there leave without being slaughtered.
Just out of interest how do you think the church got all that wealth in the first place. It certainly wasn't through honest trade.
Most of the wars of the time were dynastic and inter nation rather than strictly led by the church as such. Of course by far the worst mass murderers of all time Mao and Stalin were both atheists.
As I said the destruction of the Library was a product of mob violence between Christian and non Christian elements on both sides. Indeed one source says pagans took captured Christians into the Serapeum, forced them to offer sacrifices to non Christian deities, tortured those that refused and offered blood sacrifices of the rest. So afterwards it is somewhat understandable if pagan images were destroyed, including with the assistance of Roman soldiers.
The church got wealth through tithes amongst other things, which tended to support good works in the parish, something which it is regrettable ended as it linked the parish and church community more closely together
You know the more I read of what you write (which is garbage most of the time I am afraid) the more I can see you as a supporter and apologist for Franco. You would have fitted right in with that Catholic Conservative ideology, violence and all.
I am a traditional Tory and proud to be so, including support for Crown, Church and the landed interest.
I am most certainly not a libertarian like you so no surprise you dislike most of what I write and yes not everything Franco did was bad. He kept Spain together and kept the Communists out for example
I have a strong suspicion that Pinochet may have been your favourite leader. A bit tougher than Franco.
Pinochet did of course at least help the UK in the Falklands War, as Baroness Thatcher acknowledged
You are crossing the line from loyal Conservative to fascist apologist with consumate ease this evening. Your views may not go down well with some people you hope will vote for you in future elections.
Some of these views are best kept to yourself, better still research fascist brutality in Spain, Chile and Argentina, and as a practicing Christian have a thought for those who were tortured and killed because of their political leanings. You would not be best pleased if British people disappeared without trace because they were Johnson supporting Conservatives would you?
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
The Library of the Serapeum was either destroyed by Roman soldiers or a mob rather than the Catholic church itself.
I am rather glad that Bill Gates is no Saint considering what many of the Christian Saints have done in the past. Not a bunch I would like to be associated with and frankly not much better than Osama Bin Laden. The early Christian Church - in fact the Church right up to the 18th century makes the Taliban looked positively enlightened by comparison.
And no, the Roman army protected the Library against the Christian mob who were then allowed to sack and destroy the place as the price for letting the pagans sheltering there leave without being slaughtered.
Just out of interest how do you think the church got all that wealth in the first place. It certainly wasn't through honest trade.
Most of the wars of the time were dynastic and inter nation rather than strictly led by the church as such. Of course by far the worst mass murderers of all time Mao and Stalin were both atheists.
As I said the destruction of the Library was a product of mob violence between Christian and non Christian elements on both sides. Indeed one source says pagans took captured Christians into the Serapeum, forced them to offer sacrifices to non Christian deities, tortured those that refused and offered blood sacrifices of the rest. So afterwards it is somewhat understandable if pagan images were destroyed, including with the assistance of Roman soldiers.
The church got wealth through tithes amongst other things, which tended to support good works in the parish, something which it is regrettable ended as it linked the parish and church community more closely together
Buit the Church of England itself was notably iconoclastic in its early days.
@HYUFD on PT. Good response 'You may have done but you didn't' re atheists not doing all the stuff that religious groups did in the past. Can't disagree with that.
But maybe if there hadn't been religion and hence everyone whapping great buildings for god and pictures of god and jesus, etc, they would have turned their hands to something else creative. As it was all the creative lot had their hands full of all the religious commissions.
Also, the atheists tended to get barbecued as well, so they had two reasons to miss the religious commissions.
And also, only some religions went all out for idolatry and art (not quite the same thing). Some eschewed them, and to this day I find the bare austerity of many Presbyterian kirks calming.
As so often said on PB: dodgy conclusions come from inherently biased samples.
Maybe but if you want to see great art and sculpture you go to the Vatican or even the likes of St Paul's cathedral not a kirk.
You can be an atheist and still appreciate the artworks the Vatican has and commissioned even if the kirk is more pious in its worship
You can indeed appreciate them but of course one of the reasons they were there as because the Church had all the wealth and all the power. It is easy to get all the best artists when you are the only ones who can actually pay them.
There were some bankers, merchants and traders around even then but I don't see many of the most profitable corporations around today funding art and new buildings as much as the Church did then.
Plus even today it is the church and religious bodies providing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, not big corporations
Which ignores the billions being put into improving human life by people like Bill Gates.
And of course you are also wrong about most big corporations. One company I have contracted to regularly has been meeting its commitment to donate several hundred thousand pounds each year to local charities even when it was £2 billion in debt. Perhaps the big difference is that a lot of companies just get on and do it without making a song and dance about it.
Oh and the idea that the Church should be praised for commissioning all that art and architecture when they would happily have condemned and probably killed off anyone who did the same thing but without the religious connections is rather perverse. They were more than happy to destroy any great works of art that were not 'Christian'. The destruction of the Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria is just one small example.
Bill Gates is also given a cut of every vaccine given in the developing world he funds and is buying up vast amounts of land to increase his influence. Plus he was a companion of Epstein's, he is no saint.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
The Library of the Serapeum was either destroyed by Roman soldiers or a mob rather than the Catholic church itself.
I am rather glad that Bill Gates is no Saint considering what many of the Christian Saints have done in the past. Not a bunch I would like to be associated with and frankly not much better than Osama Bin Laden. The early Christian Church - in fact the Church right up to the 18th century makes the Taliban looked positively enlightened by comparison.
And no, the Roman army protected the Library against the Christian mob who were then allowed to sack and destroy the place as the price for letting the pagans sheltering there leave without being slaughtered.
Just out of interest how do you think the church got all that wealth in the first place. It certainly wasn't through honest trade.
Most of the wars of the time were dynastic and inter nation rather than strictly led by the church as such. Of course by far the worst mass murderers of all time Mao and Stalin were both atheists.
As I said the destruction of the Library was a product of mob violence between Christian and non Christian elements on both sides. Indeed one source says pagans took captured Christians into the Serapeum, forced them to offer sacrifices to non Christian deities, tortured those that refused and offered blood sacrifices of the rest. So afterwards it is somewhat understandable if pagan images were destroyed, including with the assistance of Roman soldiers.
The church got wealth through tithes amongst other things, which tended to support good works in the parish, something which it is regrettable ended as it linked the parish and church community more closely together
You know the more I read of what you write (which is garbage most of the time I am afraid) the more I can see you as a supporter and apologist for Franco. You would have fitted right in with that Catholic Conservative ideology, violence and all.
I am a traditional Tory and proud to be so, including support for Crown, Church and the landed interest.
I am most certainly not a libertarian like you so no surprise you dislike most of what I write and yes not everything Franco did was bad. He kept Spain together and kept the Communists out for example
Most traditional Tories - and most who support Crown and Church - would be ashamed of being associated with you.
Given you are not a traditional Tory you cannot comment.
Even Churchill supported Franco in the 1930s to keep the Communists out of power in Spain.
Plus of course our sister party as Tories in Spain is the Popular Party which has Francoist origins
I find it interesting that you think you have the right to decide if someone is or is not a Traditional Tory - as in my personal opinion you are not a Conservative in any shape or form...
Given you aren't you have no right to comment either on whether I am or not
Unless you provide evidence to confirm your statements about Bill Gates I'm putting you down as an idiotic conspiracy follower without the brains to see through obvious lies.
Comments
Pulp Fiction quotes the bible, after a fashion.
Yes there are a few exceptions but Apple has a net worth of $2,450 billion, Microsoft of $2,160 billion, Amazon of $1,830 billion and Alphabet of $1,750 and even Facebook of $996 billion, far more than the Catholic church now has. None of them have given away percentage wise of their net worth anything like as much as the church has over the centuries.
The Library of the Serapeum was either destroyed by Roman soldiers or a mob rather than the Catholic church itself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-2_Mu_variant
Looking forward to listening to the full album.
And that new stadium so that they can do hologram shows in London will easily pay for itself and then some. It's actually really clever idea, allows them to keep creating music should they wish to and let the holograms play the visuals out on the screen.
Huge moment in music history, Abba is back.
Or spreadsheets.
I've been agnostic since my teenage years, however as a young child I've always been interested in religious histories of many faiths.
I love learning in particular about antipopes, Avignon popes, and The Borgias.
Love a bit of hot reformation action, also love the founding of the Church of England because of Henry VIII's lust and desire for a son.
As PB's preeminent historian I also love the historical angle of the battles involving faiths.
With most of the research being carried out in English then translating Greek into foreign languages.
I did see the Lambada variant a while back.
We're going to have fun with the upsilon variant I foresee.
Also up there with Girls Aloud reforming in 2013. Sadly they won't be reforming as a full set and I'm utterly heartbroken about that.
And no, the Roman army protected the Library against the Christian mob who were then allowed to sack and destroy the place as the price for letting the pagans sheltering there leave without being slaughtered.
Just out of interest how do you think the church got all that wealth in the first place. It certainly wasn't through honest trade.
As I said the destruction of the Library was a product of mob violence between Christian and non Christian elements on both sides. Indeed one source says pagans took captured Christians into the Serapeum, forced them to offer sacrifices to non Christian deities, tortured those that refused and offered blood sacrifices of the rest. So afterwards it is somewhat understandable if pagan images were destroyed, including with the assistance of Roman soldiers.
The church got wealth through tithes amongst other things, which tended to support good works in the parish, something which it is regrettable ended as it linked the parish and church community more closely together
I was amused many years ago about the probably apocryphal story about the atheist who visited Northern Ireland and was asked 'Is it Catholic God you don't believe in or the Protestant God you don't believe in?'
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/healthcare/biotech/healthcare/controversial-vaccine-studies-why-is-bill-melinda-gates-foundation-under-fire-from-critics-in-india/articleshow/41280050.cms
It would also be interesting to compare the wealth of the Churches in the past to the wealth of today's billionaires in real terms. Just guessing but I reckon the church wins.
Also a number of these billionaires have committed to giving away all their wealth over their lifetime I believe.
Tofu-dreg project
Meaning a poorly constructed building, or shoddy workmanship.
I'm sure this can be extended to politics. "This policy is utter tofu-dreg!"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tofu-dreg_project
The destruction of the Great Libarary by Christian monks is a piece of Gibbon's mythology. If you want to blame any one individual, it should be Julius Caeasar, but the causes of its decline are multiple.
This is a very learned article on the topic.
https://historyforatheists.com/2017/07/the-destruction-of-the-great-library-of-alexandria/
https://olympics.com/tokyo-2020/paralympic-games/en/results/all-sports/medal-standings.htm
I am most certainly not a libertarian like you so no surprise you dislike most of what I write and yes not everything Franco did was bad. He kept Spain together and kept the Communists out for example
This is a very learned article on the topic.
https://historyforatheists.com/2017/07/the-destruction-of-the-great-library-of-alexandria/
An interesting website, from articles people have linked to in the past.
To get us back to politics, betting and polling from religion, cricket and music, it's one country at a time tonight looking at today's polling so starting with Norway where it's just eleven days until the election.
A Kantar poll earlier today showed the centre-right Blue bloc cutting the gap on the centre-left Red bloc with a 2.1% swing in the last few days to leave the Red Bloc leading the Blue Bloc 49-42.6.
We've now had the latest Respons poll:
Changes from the 2017 Storting election:
Labour: 23.2% (-4.4)
Conservative: 20.1% (-4.9)
Centre Party: 12.6% (+2.3)
Progress Party: 11.5% (-3.7)
Socialist Left: 10.4% (+4.4)
Liberal: 5.5% (+1.1)
Greens: 4.9% (+1.7)
Red Party: 4.6% (+2.2)
Christian People's Party: 3.6% (-0.6)
The Red Bloc (Labour, Centre, Socialist Left and Red Party) are on 50.8% with the Blue Bloc (Conservative, Progress, Liberal and Christian People's Party) are on 40.7% so a respectable lead for the opposition albeit an election where the two main Norwegian parties look to be losing ground and parties of the Left look to be advancing.
Infratest tonight as follows (changes since 2017 election):
Social Democrats: 25% (+4)
Union CDU/CSU: 20% (-13)
Greens: 16% (+7)
Free Democrats: 13% (+2)
Alternative for Germany: 12% (-1)
Left: 6% (-3)
Other: 8% (+3)
That's a chunky 8.5% swing from the Union to the Social Democrats.
SPD plus Greens plus FDP would have a comfortable majority.
Monks probably don't burn books. In fact I'd suggest that was almost axiomatic.
Floridia has a 17 point lead for keeping Abortion legal.
https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/compare/views-about-abortion/by/state/
This is going to have big betting implications for upcoming races.
Social Democrats: 29% (+11)
Alternative for Germany: 18% (-2)
CDU: 15% (-12)
Linke: 11% (-6)
Free Democrats: 9% (+2)
Greens: 9% (+4)
Others: 9% (+3)
That's pretty devastating for the CDU who in 2017 won 9 of the 10 constituencies in the region.
Also worth noting there are around 30 "minor" parties contesting the election - the biggest of which are the "Free Voters" who have polled 3% in some polls.
All the polls show Scholz well ahead in the "preferred Chancellor" numbers with Laschet third and falling. This may work out well for Soeder - he can rebuild the Union around the CSU in Bavaria and present himself as the genuine conservative candidate next time able to peel off some AfD votes.
A larger sample than other pollsters (3,011) but an online poll.
The headline figures are:
Conservative: 33%
Liberal: 30%
NDP: 22%
BQ: 6%
Greens: 4%
People's Party: 4%
The regional splits are as always of greater interest. In British Columbia (43 ridings), the NDP lead the Conservatives 36-32 with the Liberals on 26%. In Ontario (121 ridings), Trudeau's Liberals lead the Conservatives 36-34 with the NDP on 22. In Quebec (78 ridings), the Liberals lead BQ 34-28.
The Conservatives have huge leads in Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan as you might expect.
That's a lot of vaccines were one man to take. He must be really Polio resistant,
I have a lot of time for your analysis normally, but your attempt to justify Franco's fascists is a dreadful disappointment.
Also saying "Franco kept the Communists out" is a bit like saying "Stalin kept the Nazis out of central and eastern Europe"!
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/02/roe-v-wade-texas-abortion-law-us-constitution
It wasn’t just Roe that died at midnight on 1 September with barely a whimper, let alone a bang. It was the principle that nobody’s constitutional rights should be put on sale for purchase by anyone who can find an informant or helper to turn in whoever might be trying to exercise those rights...
… The prospect of hefty bounties will breed a system of profit-seeking, Soviet-style informing on friends and neighbors. These vigilantes will sue medical distributors of IUDs and morning-after pills, as well as insurance companies. These companies, in turn, will stop offering reproductive healthcare in Texas. As of a minute before midnight on 31 August, clinics in Texas were already turning patients away out of fear. Even if the law is eventually struck down, many will probably close anyway.
Worse still, if women try to escape the state to access abortion services, their families will be on the hook for offering even the smallest aid. If friends or family of a woman hoping to terminate her pregnancy drive her across state lines, or help her organize money for a plane or bus ticket, they could be liable for “aiding and abetting” a now-banned abortion, even if the procedure itself takes place outside Texas.
Adding insult to injury, if a young woman asks for money for a bus ticket, or a ride to the airport, friends and parents fearful of liability might vigorously interrogate her about her intentions. This nightmarish state of affairs burdens yet another fundamental constitutional privilege: the right to interstate travel, recognized by the supreme court in 1999 as a core privilege of federal citizenship.…
He takes a view and is very good at finding a single strand of thought, or single opinion poll to match his own PoV. But then he dogmatically sticks to that PoV and sticks to reprinting that poll or that thought no matter what other evidence comes up, nor what points other people make.
To be good at analysis you need to go in with an opinion mind and be willing to change your mind when other facts come along. I've never seen any evidence of that. Other people may not change their mind but can at least generally listen to what is said or acknowledge a good point, but I've never seen HYUFD do that.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/09/billionaire-sacklers-granted-lifetime-legal-immunity-in-opioid-settlement/
I said prior to the election that i wondered if the deal was to generate feel good headlines for Trump dealing with the Opioid crisis and it does rather seem to be a hell of a weak settlement overall.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsBqU1RzV7o
Even Churchill supported Franco in the 1930s to keep the Communists out of power in Spain and Franco was never a Nazi, he shrewdly kept Spain neutral in WW2.
Plus of course our sister party as Tories in Spain is the Popular Party which has Francoist origins
Though I note you failed to mention that on that link 50% of Texan voters think abortion should be illegal to only 45% who think it should be legal
Masood of Helmand with his opium exports was at at least relatively innocent of what he was doing.
Oh and before you try to Godwin me, I have made no mention of the Nazi's until you decided to bring them into the discussion as a rather obvious diversionary tactic. But if the cap fits...
That's from this https://www.wsj.com/articles/gates-foundation-teams-up-with-vaccine-maker-to-produce-3-covid-19-shots-11596804573 btw...
On a historical footnote, the Whigs drew aristocratic support with huge estate holdings, larger than the gentry's overall, but their publicly avowed values were quite different from the Tories', and more progressive.
Are these core Tory values?
Some of these views are best kept to yourself, better still research fascist brutality in Spain, Chile and Argentina, and as a practicing Christian have a thought for those who were tortured and killed because of their political leanings. You would not be best pleased if British people disappeared without trace because they were Johnson supporting Conservatives would you?
Your move....