Philosophy Dispelling Falsehoods about Thomism

Lanmandragon

Well-known member
Eh. This is true to some extent, but not universally so. Plenty of people today still get into fights over words.

Yes, the internet makes people mouth off a lot more, but people have been doing so all the way back to Martin Luther, and way before.

Personally, though, if I felt that someone was likely to respond with violence to something I said, I wouldn't show up to talk to them any way... and if I did, I'd bring a shotgun.
Fair enough but that's not my experience. Different lives and all that.
 

ATP

Well-known member
I knew little about philosophy - but i read Michał Heller/polish priest and scientist/ "Bóg i nauka,moje dwie drogi do jednego celu"/my translation - God and science,2 roads to one goal/
Science could be create thanks to Thomas bringing Aristotle - becouse as long as Christian keep to Plato,it was not possible.
Apparently,becouse Plato belived in ideas - which meant,that experiments was no needed,you only need to knew Ideas.
Aristotle belived in Laws of Nature - and those could be discovered by experiments.
 

The Name of Love

Far Right Nutjob
I knew little about philosophy - but i read Michał Heller/polish priest and scientist/ "Bóg i nauka,moje dwie drogi do jednego celu"/my translation - God and science,2 roads to one goal/
Science could be create thanks to Thomas bringing Aristotle - becouse as long as Christian keep to Plato,it was not possible.
Apparently,becouse Plato belived in ideas - which meant,that experiments was no needed,you only need to knew Ideas.
Aristotle belived in Laws of Nature - and those could be discovered by experiments.
That's... a somewhat vulgar view of Plato's epistemology. While it's true Aristotle's epistemology is more empirical, it wasn't anything like the modern empiricism we have today.
 

ATP

Well-known member
That's... a somewhat vulgar view of Plato's epistemology. While it's true Aristotle's epistemology is more empirical, it wasn't anything like the modern empiricism we have today.
Of course, it not started scientific method after all.But one of reason was lack of CHRYSTIANITY - if you think that slaves are tools, not humans, and that manual work is not for philosophers,all you could get are toys, like Heron steam machine.
 

The Name of Love

Far Right Nutjob
Of course, it not started scientific method after all.But one of reason was lack of CHRYSTIANITY - if you think that slaves are tools, not humans, and that manual work is not for philosophers,all you could get are toys, like Heron steam machine.
Are you a troll?
 

Scottty

Well-known member
Founder
Are you a troll?

I'm pretty sure he is in fact of the race of Men.

What part of his point do you have a problem with? (Besides the odd spelling of Christianity)
That the classical Greeks, being pagans, did not have the same concept of human rights as Christians do?
That slavery, and the idea that doing any sort of physical work is what slaves are for, slowed down the development of science and technology?

Is the simple truth that Aristotle was not a Christian something your worldview has a problem with?
 

The Name of Love

Far Right Nutjob
I'm pretty sure he is in fact of the race of Men.

What part of his point do you have a problem with? (Besides the odd spelling of Christianity)
That the classical Greeks, being pagans, did not have the same concept of human rights as Christians do?
That slavery, and the idea that doing any sort of physical work is what slaves are for, slowed down the development of science and technology?

Is the simple truth that Aristotle was not a Christian something your worldview has a problem with?
I just couldn’t understand what he said since it was so badly written.

No, it isn’t a problem that non-Christian thinkers aren’t Christian. St. Thomas grappled with this in his work, and he had to correct many of Aristotle’s errors.

Besides, it is hypocritical of Christians to condemn foreign intrusions on their religion yet preach about human rights. Human rights are a liberal innovation, not a Christian one, and liberalism is a Christian heresy.
 

ATP

Well-known member
I just couldn’t understand what he said since it was so badly written.

No, it isn’t a problem that non-Christian thinkers aren’t Christian. St. Thomas grappled with this in his work, and he had to correct many of Aristotle’s errors.

Besides, it is hypocritical of Christians to condemn foreign intrusions on their religion yet preach about human rights. Human rights are a liberal innovation, not a Christian one, and liberalism is a Christian heresy.

No, i am not troll.And i wrote as bad in polish.
It is,as @Scotty said - Greeks considered manual work as something for slaves,so they never conduct experiments.An why they should made real steam machine, if 20 or so slaves could do the same as early models ?
Althought,according to M.Heller there was one exception was Archimedes - but hide it and pretended to follow Plato,becouse in was in fashion.One of his letters to close friends was discowered ,sadly as palimpset,so only in 20th century we knew that.

P.S Christianity did not invented human rights, but God Rights to treat all others as brothers.That is why Chrystian belivers help others,when leftist belivers killed millions, becouse they care about future HUMANITY,not some dudes they meet.
 

The Name of Love

Far Right Nutjob
No, i am not troll.And i wrote as bad in polish.
It is,as @Scotty said - Greeks considered manual work as something for slaves,so they never conduct experiments.An why they should made real steam machine, if 20 or so slaves could do the same as early models ?
Althought,according to M.Heller there was one exception was Archimedes - but hide it and pretended to follow Plato,becouse in was in fashion.One of his letters to close friends was discowered ,sadly as palimpset,so only in 20th century we knew that.

P.S Christianity did not invented human rights, but God Rights to treat all others as brothers.That is why Chrystian belivers help others,when leftist belivers killed millions, becouse they care about future HUMANITY,not some dudes they meet.
I must agree, you are not good at writing legibly. I’m not really sure what point you’re getting at here. Are you saying that the Greeks supported slavery, so we shouldn’t learn anything from them? What?
 

ATP

Well-known member
I must agree, you are not good at writing legibly. I’m not really sure what point you’re getting at here. Are you saying that the Greeks supported slavery, so we shouldn’t learn anything from them? What?
Nope.Greek philosophy,with Roman law and Christian morality,created Western Cyvilisation.We could not live without them.
I only said,that Greek would never made science,becouse of their slavery.Science could be created only in Western Cyvilisatin,which could not existed without Greek philosophy.That is all.
 

The Name of Love

Far Right Nutjob
Nope.Greek philosophy,with Roman law and Christian morality,created Western Cyvilisation.We could not live without them.
I only said,that Greek would never made science,becouse of their slavery.Science could be created only in Western Cyvilisatin,which could not existed without Greek philosophy.That is all.
And how are the economics of slavery relevant to a thread discussing the falsehoods about Thomism?
 

Scottty

Well-known member
Founder
Besides, it is hypocritical of Christians to condemn foreign intrusions on their religion yet preach about human rights. Human rights are a liberal innovation, not a Christian one, and liberalism is a Christian heresy.

Back up and rethink that. One of those things is not like the other.
If Liberalism is something that developed from Christianity, and human rights developed from Liberalism, then it's not an "intrusion" like pagan Greek philosophy.
But we'd need to be sure we were on the same page about what "Liberalism" means here.
 

The Name of Love

Far Right Nutjob
Back up and rethink that. One of those things is not like the other.
If Liberalism is something that developed from Christianity, and human rights developed from Liberalism, then it's not an "intrusion" like pagan Greek philosophy.
But we'd need to be sure we were on the same page about what "Liberalism" means here.

Liberalism developed from Christianity the same way Islam developed from Christianity: it's a heresy. This article explains.

Christianity arose in a position of extreme weakness relative to the state, and remained in this position for centuries. Moreover, despite unambiguously affirming the state’s legitimacy (as in chapter 13 of St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, for example), the early Church was subject to relentless persecution by the state. These contingent historical factors might have been enough to guarantee that Christianity would come to regard Church and state as having fundamentally different missions. But Christian doctrine entails that in any case. Though the Jews of his day hoped for a political Messiah who would take up arms and free them from Roman domination, Christ famously declared: “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). He also commanded: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's” (Mark 12:17), indicating that the political and religious orders are distinct. The letter to the Hebrews teaches that the patriarchs of old -- who are models for the Christian to follow -- “were strangers and foreigners on the earth” who “desire[d] a better country, that is, a heavenly one” and that God has indeed “prepared a city for them” (Hebrews 11: 13, 16). The letter to the Philippians says that “our commonwealth is in heaven” (3:20). St. Augustine distinguished between the “earthly city” and the City of God. And so forth.

There has from the very beginning of Christian teaching, then, been a clear distinction between the religious and the political, between the sacred and the secular, between Church and state. (Notice that I said a “distinction” between Church and state; I did not say a “separation,” which is a very different idea, to which I will return below.) The distinction would eventually come to be given a theoretical articulation in terms of a further distinction between the natural order and the supernatural order.

[...]

The liberal tradition essentially begins with Hobbes and Locke. What it inherits and preserves from Christianity is the idea that Church and state are distinct and have different missions, and that the state’s mission is something which can be determined from natural law or unaided reason rather than special divine revelation. But it departs from the Christian tradition in several crucial ways. First, it introduces a highly desiccated notion of the “natural” and thus a highly desiccated notion of reason and natural law. Second, it does not regard the state as natural but as entirely man-made, though it still regards the state as rational insofar as it takes us to have good rational grounds for creating it. Third, it tends to regard revelation, and indeed religion in general, not only as distinct from the order of natural or unaided reason, but as positively at odds with reason. Fourth, for that reason it regards the Church as something which is not only distinct from the state but which ought always and in principle to be kept rigorously separate from the state, or indeed even subordinate to the state. Fifth, given its desiccated notion of “nature” and tendency to pit religion in general against reason, it also has a tendency to exclude even the generic theism of natural theology from the political order. In short, from Christianity, liberalism “chooses” or “takes” the natural and secular, radically redefines them, and excludes the supernatural and the sacred. And in that sense it is a kind of “heresy.”

[...]

Muhammad’s program was religious, to be sure, but by no means merely religious. Or to be more precise, he did not regard the cultural, moral, legal, economic, military, and political spheres as something distinct from the religious sphere, to which religion may or may not be applied. They were all just parts of one sphere, the religious sphere, from the get go. Muhammad was prophet, statesman, legislator, general, and cultural and moral exemplar, all rolled into one. And Islam was, accordingly, not merely a program of religious reform, but a program of complete social and political reform, every aspect of which -- not merely the theological aspect -- was grounded in the revelation Muhammad claimed to have received from God.

Not that everyone got with the program, at least not initially. Muhammad faced opposition, so much so that he famously had to flee from Mecca to Medina. But this opposition did not succeed for long, and soon the entirety of Arabia, as well as North Africa, the Levant, Mesopotamia and Persia, knew the power of Islam -- its temporal power, its political and in particular its military power, no less than its spiritual power. Muhammad’s kingdom, unlike Christ’s, was from the start very definitely of this world, and his servants certainly fought. And unlike the Church during the first centuries of Christianity, Islam was not in a weak position relative to the state. That is not because Islam controlled the state. It is because Islam was the state. The caliphate was not a secular power over which Islam had acquired an influence, not a state to which a distinct Islamic “Church” had been annexed. It was “Church” and state in one. Or rather, it was all just Islam, because there is in Islam no such thing in the first place as the notion of a “Church” understood as a purely religious institution, which might be distinguished from some other institution called “the state,” to which it may or may not be fused.

It is a fundamental error, then, to try to understand Islam or its history on the model of the relationship between Church and state in Christian history. To do so -- and to suggest on the basis of this analogy that the separation between Church and state that liberalism achieved might be duplicated in the Muslim context -- is simply to ignore the actual history of Islam (and, ironically, to impose alien Western categories on Islam in the very act of trying to defend it against its Western critics). It is particularly absurd to propose, as some Western liberals do, a “separation of mosque and state,” as if the notion of the mosque were the Islamic equivalent of the notion of the Church. For one thing, the word “church” is ambiguous in English. It can mean a certain kind of building, or it can mean the Church as an institution, distinct from other institutions like the state, the family, a business corporation, etc. There is no parallel ambiguity in the word “mosque.” It’s just a building. For another thing, it is not a building devoted merely to what Westerners think of as purely religious affairs. Rather, it is a place wherein the Muslim preacher might also just as well discuss politics, culture, economics, etc. -- because, again, these are all just as much a part of the concerns of Islam as purely religious matters are. The idea of a “separation of mosque and state” is therefore a muddle.

Liberalism and Islam are both simplifications of Christianity designed to appeal to different kinds of people, and as a result, they leave a lot out. Liberalism collapses the supernatural into the natural, and Islam does the opposite. Christianity has the two orders intertwined and working together, but distinct from each other at the same time. These faith traditions came out of Christianity, but they are both pretty different. So, if you want to take ideas from Liberalism you think are compatible with Christianity and then complain about Thomists doing the same with regards to Greek philosophy... I don't know what to say, except "don't throw stones through glass houses."

Relevant,becouse it explain why Aristotle could nod led to science, and Thomism developed from him could.One of difference is slavery in ancient Greece.
Science or technology? Because those two are different.
 

ATP

Well-known member
Even Homo Erectus had technology.No, i am speaking about Science.They as Christians knew,that there are rules of Nature,so they seek them,and,becouse they do not considered manual labour as unfitting,they could made experiments.
I read, that Cisterian abbeys were not only first manufacturies, but also reasarch centers,with monks conducting experiments.
 

The Name of Love

Far Right Nutjob
Even Homo Erectus had technology.No, i am speaking about Science.They as Christians knew,that there are rules of Nature,so they seek them,and,becouse they do not considered manual labour as unfitting,they could made experiments.
I read, that Cisterian abbeys were not only first manufacturies, but also reasarch centers,with monks conducting experiments.

Ancient Greek science would’ve advanced. Their technology wouldn’t have, for the reasons you give.
 

The Name of Love

Far Right Nutjob
If making steam and other machines as toys count as science,then you are right.
Their reliance on slave labor would've made innovation impossible. However, given their obsession with learning and contemplation, I doubt that their knowledge of the natural world wouldn't be advanced.
 

ATP

Well-known member
Their reliance on slave labor would've made innovation impossible. However, given their obsession with learning and contemplation, I doubt that their knowledge of the natural world wouldn't be advanced.
Contemplation was their problem.Unfortunatelly,Plato approach win,and even Archimedes played Plato follower.And you could learn only so much without experiments.Which Plato philosophy not used.
 

Scottty

Well-known member
Founder
Contemplation was their problem.Unfortunatelly,Plato approach win,and even Archimedes played Plato follower.And you could learn only so much without experiments.Which Plato philosophy not used.

If there's been more people like Archimedes, I wonder where things would be now...
 

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