While I can't speak to the universality or novelty of the world falling apart, I feel the same way.
Some people aren't yet in a place to understand this perspective. Others have been hurt by Christians who failed to live their faith or were otherwise misguided in their actions or teachings. Some slander the faith based on ignorance or misunderstanding.
We're called to forgive our enemies and respond with patience, humility, and compassion. I've found that doing this without losing sight of God's commandments is a struggle that requires daily prayer and reflection.
A thing you might want to consider is that how "good" a person is is largely independent from their level of religious faith.
It is common for religious people to assume they are linked and that a religious person does good deeds because they are faithful while somebody who does bad deeds has less faith.
Which leads to an assumption by some that atheists are have no morals and priest are exception good.
I was raised atheist/agnostic and was one for decades. Now that I'm not, I frequently get unsolicited comments like the one you're responding to. People assume that I haven't considered foundational tenets of my religion, or that they're the first ones to raise basic ethical questions after thousands of years of tradition, teaching, and catechism.
There's a noticeable difference between those who are concerned but care about what I think, and those who have already made up their minds that I'm ignorant. It's tough, especially when it surfaces in longstanding relationships. I've had friends and family jump to all kinds of crazy conclusions about what I believe and why.
I'm not perfect, and I often reflect on whether I'm setting a bad example or being a poor witness to something that's a powerful source of strength and charity. Many times I've fallen short, and I ask for forgiveness. Christ asks me to pick up my cross and follow Him, and I pray for the humility and discernment to do so.
its a gracious outlook of you, to assign ignorance as the root cause of this behaviour. to me that dude looks like any other proselytizer - a man attempting to sway others views, without concern for their concerns. although if you try showing atheist proselytizers how similar they behave to preachers, or indeed compare any of their behaviour to religious zealots, this inevitably short circuits the proselytizer viewpoint and forces fight mode, resulting in termination of any productive discussion.
at the end of the day people say a lot of things, and until life teaches how little words matter, people do care about words by default. it is only those understanding life who look past words to see what truly matters. everything that anything living does in this existence is inherently selfish, otherwise it wouldnt happen, based on science and neurochemistry. this seeming impediment to becoming christlike is not an insurmountable obstacle, rather a beautiful choice we are offered - to accept animality, or to humbly push through the impossible and seek something more ...
may i ask a bit more specifically why your comment evaluating the abstract concept of goodness and its relation to faith is related to this sentence? i'm still not seeing the connection.
"who failed to live their faith" - ie if they had lived up to their faith would have been good. I'm saying that the practice of "faith" and being "good" are largely unconnected. There are plenty of faithful Christians in prison.
By "good" I mean nice, polite, not murdering people. Generally accepted moral behavior.
if someone agrees on what it means to be good, their definition of the term has been subjectively qualified. muslims agree its good to cover their women, you probably dont, both these statements are true. seems to be a central aspect of religion, agreeing on codified morality. im fairly confident that not killing is a moral purported by christianity, therefore it doesnt seem logical to label murderers as christians - based on their murderous behaviour, murderers do not agree with christianity, regardless as to what they verbally state. would you label buddhists as immoral if an individual decided to call himself buddhist post-massacre?
I had the same thought, glad someone else noticed this.
Comparing AI adoption to the Tower of Babel is a central theme to Magnifica Humanitas, but written by someone with a much deeper understanding of the Biblical narrative.
Respectfully, this is a stronger claim than I think anyone can make.
A more reasonable claim would be: "we cannot verify much of what's in Exodus using sources external to the Torah/Pentateuch." It's fair to also say something like "if X happened, it's surprising that we would not see physical evidence of it."
It starts with a survey of the academic field, an overview of relevant primary documents from surrounding cultures, and in-depth discussions of historical records and archaeological finds. There's meta-discussion about the role of comparative literature that I also found useful. I benefited from the author's perspective that there's a lot to learn from the Old Testament regardless of whether or not existing physical evidence satisfies our personal standard for determining whether something happened verbatim.
I like that it does so in a way that does not try to push an agenda. I interpret the author as trying to provide an entrypoint for anyone interested in the related academic fields, regardless of their background.
I've recommended the book to both religious and non-religious friends who enjoyed it. Take this recommendation as one made in good faith, and an opportunity to look at something from a new perspective. You're free to disregard it as you see fit.
I'd encourage you to re-read my comment and consider that you may have jumped to conclusions about what I'm trying to say.
> Nobody has a problem saying that "Romulus and Remus is an entirely fictional account it's not based on any real historical events."
I wouldn't go so far as to say this. We have artifacts and historical texts talking about them, so we at least know that Romulus and Remus are figures that ancient humans talked about.
If we had a time machine, could we go back in time and meet them? If there were two guys named that who generally did the things the Romans thought, were they actually raised by wolves? No idea with the former. The latter sounds unusual.
My point is that there are more interesting questions to ask than these. The book I recommended does a good job of this. It's a good read if you're interested in the cultural backdrop of the ancient near east.
> We have artifacts and historical texts talking about them, so we at least know that Romulus and Remus are figures that ancient humans talked about.
Well, yeah, but you seem to be confusing the authenticity of the writings as ancient artifacts with the historical accuracy of the contents of the writings. I don’t think anyone disputes that the Torah contains stories that had been widely spread and believed among the writers, compilers, and intended audience at the time.
Growing up, in popular media and my school textbooks, we learned certain foundational myths about the United States, the Founding Fathers, and other key figures around Colonial times and the American Revolution.
Come to find out that so many of these myths were not actually true: that they were legends built through the centuries to fluff up the importance and gravity of the United States in the eyes of naïve schoolchildren.
It was with some sadness that these myths were dispelled for me, but no less a sense of wonder to learn what had actually happened in this relatively recent history. There is still plenty of room for myth and legend in the popular imagination.
Not OP, but I learned just last week that Paul Revere would have never said “The British are coming!” because colonists considered themselves British. It’s more likely he would have said “The regulars are coming”, because that was the term used for permanent soldiers at the time. He’s one of many who would have spread the word, but the one who was named and lives on in infamy. The phrase changed in popular culture in the mid 1800s. Not terribly important in the grand scheme of things, but hundreds of millions of school children are taught a very specific quote that was never actually said.
Recognizing that the exposure myth of Romulus and Remus is an analogue of the exposure myth of Moses, of Cyrus, and of a host of other famous figures gets one thinking that early Roman history and early Jewish history, among others, map common Eurasian stories onto particular agendas.
Or perhaps its because infanticide via exposure was a very common and widespread practice for most of human history.
Either way, there's a large gulf between "Romulus and Remus weren't real" and "Romulus and Remus weren't exposed as infants." You obviously don't believe Cyrus is fictional.
> What's the corroborating evidence from ~750BC documenting their existence? Heck, where's that evidence from 650BC?
This is a totally unfruitful line of inquiry, unless you are an academic historian doomed to publish-or-perish; in that case, it's perfectly understandable that you have to make these arguments as part of your career.
Better questions, when it comes to ancient history are:
1. Is there any negative evidence?
2. Is there any reason to expect more evidence than what we have?
3. Did ancient historians with better sources believe it?
4. Is there anything inherently unlikely about the idea?
In this case there isn't any negative evidence, there's no reason to expect more evidence than what we have, ancient historians believed various versions of the same basic story, and there's absolutely nothing crazy about it - someone had to found the polity, and to declare them fictional results in there still existing a first king of Rome, just a guy with a different name for whom there is no evidence at all. You can certainly apply (4) to specific details of the different stories - for example, it seems much more likely Romulus was murdered by Senators than raptured by Jupiter, though perhaps something altogether different happened. There's even very weak archeological evidence - a chamber was found in an area where Romulus' (empty) tomb was supposed to be, although archeologists are debating over whether it really is that.
It's really not. This is the line of inquiry that leads you to understand the founding myth of Rome and what the motivations might have been to create such a myth. It also helps to place in time when the myth was concocted.
> Is there any negative evidence?
Is there any negative evidence against unicorns?
Things that don't exist don't leave evidence.
But yes, there is evidence. The lack of corroboration and the fact that the earliest mention of Romulus was ~300BCE is a pretty strong indicator that he didn't actually exist. Further, the fact that his story is a mishmash of common tropes and that his very name is a derivative of Rome is a pretty strong indicator that he was simply a product of myth making. There are written records from surrounding nations and people from 750BCE.
But further, we also have evidence that Rome itself is a lot older than Romulus is supposed to be. There's evidence that the first founders of Rome showed up around 1600BCE.
The fact that the first records of Romulus trace the lineage of the rule of the city directly back to him is a very good indicator that the author was myth making.
> Is there any reason to expect more evidence than what we have?
Yes. People write about their leaders. It's quite common. And very influential leaders tend to leave pretty extensive records.
That's why, for example, we are so certain Ramesses II existed.
> Did ancient historians with better sources believe it?
You'd expect passing references to Romulus if they did. That doesn't exist.
> Is there anything inherently unlikely about the idea?
Yes, we have evidence Rome is a lot older than the Romulus myth. Seems pretty unlikely that Romulus founded Rome in 753BCE unless he was some sort of time traveler.
> ancient historians believed various versions of the same basic story, and there's absolutely nothing crazy about it
Ancient historians who wrote over 1000 years after the actual founding of Rome.
Imagine if I dubbed myself a historian and started writing about how China was founded by Jackie Chinamus in 1000AD, who also just so happen to have an army of pandas and consumed only bamboo. That is the problem with the Romulus founding myth. The historian placed the foundation WAY later than it actually was and wrote a fantasy story about Romulus where the only thing that could possibly be true is his name (Unless you want to claim it's possible Mars was his father).
> what the motivations might have been to create such a myth.
These are almost always absurdly simplistic, when they're not simply projections of how modern peoples think and what motivates them. It's really not useful to speculate about motives because you feel events resemble patterns of myth.
> Further, the fact that his story is a mishmash of common tropes and that his very name is a derivative of Rome is a pretty strong indicator that he was simply a product of myth making.
You could make precisely the same argument about Alexander founding Alexandria.
> There are written records from surrounding nations and people from 750BCE.
Very, very few, precious few. There are zero comprehensive timelines or histories of notable events of cities in the region at that time. Indeed this is transparently not true, because obviously if there were written records contradicting the early history of Rome we have, then we would be talking about those. Indeed most of what we do have we cannot understand, because it's in Etruscan, which we have a very limited understanding of...because a very limited amount of text survived. [Ed - in fact from a brief survey, and given what we can read of Etruscan, it appears there are no surviving Etruscan references to Rome at all. Maybe Rome didn't exist!]
> There's evidence that the first founders of Rome showed up around 1600BCE.
Cities were seldom founded in desert wastes. They were almost always founded on prior settlements where people were already living. There were settlements in the general area of Rome for many, many thousands of years, not just going back to 1600 BC.
> The fact that the first records of Romulus trace the lineage of the rule of the city directly back to him is a very good indicator that the author was myth making.
So who was the first king of Rome?
> That's why, for example, we are so certain Ramesses II existed.
Egypt famously has some of the best records and archeological evidence in the ancient world. (And there are nevertheless huge gaps and mysteries in ancient Egyptian history!) The amount of records and archeological evidence for this time period in southern Europe is comparatively scanty.
> And very influential leaders tend to leave pretty extensive records.
I see no reason to believe Romulus and Remus would have been "very influential" outside of central Italy, and even then, the phrase is probably a stretch.
> The historian placed the foundation WAY later than it actually was and wrote a fantasy story about Romulus where the only thing that could possibly be true is his name
And somehow magically convinced everyone else all the history they knew was wrong. And convinced all the people in the cities around them. Interesting hypothesis. It seems like a much more parsimonious explanation to say that there really was a Romulus that ruled Rome and founded or refounded the city, and that's why all the Romans thought there was. It also conveniently explains why there is an ancient temple under the Forum with an empty sarcophagus dated to the 500s BC that appears to be dedicated to Romulus.
> It also conveniently explains why there is an ancient temple under the Forum with an empty sarcophagus dated to the 500s BC that appears to be dedicated to Romulus.
Bad article.
Here's a better one [1]. What the archeologists found was a shrine to a "holy king". Because of it's location and time, the title of "Romulus" was given to it by the modern archeologists.
> So who was the first king of Rome?
Who knows. That could easily be lost to history. After all, Rome started small before it grew to it's historical peek size. But if a figure like Romulus existed, there would be additional documentation that didn't show up 1000 years later.
> And somehow magically convinced everyone else all the history they knew was wrong. And convinced all the people in the cities around them. Interesting hypothesis.
Not really magic or hard to believe. It's not as if the entire population was literate. And a founding myth is quite useful for current politics. For example, using the founding myth of Romulus allowed for the ancient Romans to claim the Senate was created by him and thus divinely inspired.
The parallel to this is the Bible, where the creation of Abraham and Moses served the original authors in endowing their king with supernatural power and origin. Much like the Egyptians did with their Pharaoh. It was a common practice in the region and at the time.
There’s no evidence it was done “all the time”; the most logical explanation is that all these figures were based on real people, even if their exploits and histories were exaggerated and mythologized over time, just as we see with figures like George Washington.
The idea that some random historian or politician simply convinced everyone his fiction story was true and central to their identity - and it worked time after time AND everyone else bought into it - is clearly absurd. Just pointless cynicism with no basis in actual human psychology.
Moses and exodus are completely counterfactual and at once central to Jewish and Christian mythology and identity. Our foundational stories are mostly lies because reality is depressing.
Egypt exists even though the Exodus never happened. The mere existence of factual elements doesn't mean a foundational myth is real. Myths are normally interwoven with real elements.
Moses is almost entirely distinguished as a personage by elements we know are nonsense. If you found a Jewish leader named Moses who lived in a different year who experienced an entirely different history you wouldn't have found the real Moses so much insofar as the symbol Moses is a reference to the myth not the hypothetical actuality. Likewise finding an early leader wouldn't mean Remus was real
I don't see anything particularly counterfactual or unlikely about a group of Egyptian or Caananite-descended Egyptians leaving Egypt and returning to Caanaan, where they fused with an existing population. Can you explain this?
Egypt left for its era more than ample records. None of them record a mass population of Canaanite slaves escaping or existing, much less the direct interaction between any Pharaoh and a figure like Moses. If it wasn't dear to religion there would be no question about Moses being as imaginary as Noah.
> The idea that some random historian or politician simply convinced everyone his fiction story was true and central to their identity - and it worked time after time AND everyone else bought into it - is clearly absurd.
It's really not. It's exactly how Romans changed from their Roman worship to christianity. It's how they converted the pagans. It's how Muslims were able to rewrite Christianity into their own religion. It's how Mormons did the same.
This is such a fundamental part of humanity, it happens all over the place.
Having a charismatic and/or politically powerful person say "This is how things are, believe it or die" does wonders to spread belief.
> It's exactly how Romans changed from their Roman worship to christianity.
The conversion of the Romans to Christianity happened because of real events, even if elements of the stories became mythologized. Or are you saying there was never any man named Jesus who was crucified? I guess you may as well argue that - both him and Paul could have been invented.
> It's how Muslims were able to rewrite Christianity into their own religion.
I think Mohammed was almost certain real, although I guess according to your standards of corroborating evidence, maybe he wasn't. The core of his story is not "rewriting Christianity", it's that he claimed to receive direct revelation and he used incorporated what he knew of what he believed to be true history.
> It's how Mormons did the same.
I think Joseph Smith is rather too well attested to claim he did not exist.
> The conversion of the Romans to Christianity happened because of real events
Yeah, and in the process of converting to Christianity, Romans began rewriting their history and erasing their past. Which is exactly what we are talking about right now. You claimed "The idea that some random historian or politician simply convinced everyone his fiction story was true and central to their identity - and it worked time after time AND everyone else bought into it - is clearly absurd." And I'm giving you clear historic examples where exactly that happened. But now you want to make it about whether or not the people that did that existed or not.
> Or are you saying there was never any man named Jesus who was crucified?
Likely a man named Jesus existed because we have non-biblical documents from the time period (Josephus and the Sanhedrin) recording that he existed. Further, there are parts of the biblical narrative that are indicative that he was a real person. The census story in Luke, for example, is a convoluted story that you'd only tell if there was a real problem with Jesus, that he was well known to be from Nazareth and not Bethlehem. Were Jesus a complete myth there's no reason the gospel author wouldn't just say "And he was born in Bethlehem as prophesied"
> I guess you may as well argue that - both him and Paul could have been invented.
Again, nope, because we actually have a fair bit of contemporary documents about the existence of both. Something we don't have for Romulus.
> used incorporated what he knew of what he believed to be true history.
Right, I'm not arguing about Mohamed existing, I'm arguing that he made up history which people believed. Or more precisely, his followers did. Mohammad was illiterate and the Quran was written some 50 years after he died.
> I think Joseph Smith is rather too well attested to claim he did not exist.
Joseph claimed to be a historian who documented the events of the ancient americas. He claimed to have found records of those events and "transcribed" a book.
Quite similar to Romulus. And as it turns out, yeah, an entire religion of people believe him that Mormon and Moroni, Nephi and Lehi are all real people that really existed.
I mean, almost uncannily, the events he wrote about were 1000 years in the past from him.
Yes, Joseph Smith played a similar role to Romulus in the founding of Rome: the leader and lawgiver. It's the Joseph Smith of Rome you are wishing away, not Moroni. It also seems highly unlikely that Smith simply "made up" everything as some cynical ploy for power, as you describe the motivation of the ancient Romans and Jews. It seems much more likely he was a true-believing wacko.
> Likely a man named Jesus existed because we have non-biblical documents from the time period (Josephus and the Sanhedrin) recording that he existed. F
You continually imagine historical sources that do not exist. Josephus is real, of course (although the extent to which the alleged reference to Jesus is an interpolation is debated; I personally side with no), but there are no "Sanhedrin" documents about Jesus. You should probably ask yourself why you keep committing gross errors of historical fact (like your argument that there were plenty of records contemporary with the traditional date for the founding of Rome) while making this argument.
> Yes, Joseph Smith played a similar role to Romulus in the founding of Rome: the leader and lawgiver
No he didn't. You obviously know nothing about what his role was.
> It also seems highly unlikely that Smith simply "made up" everything as some cynical ploy for power
Literally exactly what he did, and it's well documented that's exactly the sort of person he was.
You are very uninformed on this topic.
> but there are no "Sanhedrin" documents about Jesus
> You should probably ask yourself why you keep committing gross errors of historical fact
Please just google before insulting someone that knows more about a topic than yourself.
Here's what I'm referencing [1] [2]. "In Sanhedrin 43a, the Talmud records that Jesus was "hung" because no one came to his defense for charges of practicing sorcery and apostacy."
Now that you are simply insulting me and not engaging, I'm done. Good luck with yourself.
> Romans began rewriting their history and erasing their past. Which is exactly what we are talking about right now.
I'm not sure that's true. Of course some some details might have been purposefully (or not) ignored or twisted. While obviously Christian scholars were quite picky on which pagan texts to preserve or not (due to various reasons) there is not a lot reason to believe that generally they did their best to copy them faithfully. Of course we are talking about a highly literate society with a strong tradition of analytical history (which was very unique by pre-medieval standards at least).
> Quite similar to Romulus
The claim that some specific historian might have invented him out of thin air is far fetched and not really substantiated. Much more likely that the legend evolved over many generations and became a mishmash of fact and fiction over hundreds of years before someone actually wrote it down. Based on other similar cases it's highly likely that there were many competing traditions by Livy's time. So yes, he did very likely tried to reconcile them and picked how to synthesize the narrative but it's hard to imagine he could have actually invented it because there were plenty of people and other historians who could have called him out on it.
> Much more likely that the legend evolved over many generations and became a mishmash of fact and fiction over hundreds of years before someone actually wrote it down.
I don't really dispute that this is the likely case. I more dispute that there was actually a person named Romulus who was in almost any way related to the stories told about him or the founding of Rome.
The name and the stories come a very long time after Romulus supposedly existed.
> but it's hard to imagine he could have actually invented it because there were plenty of people and other historians who could have called him out on it.
I disagree that they'd be called out, especially if this was something commissioned by the political powers of the time. These sorts of fanciful stories about the great founding of a powerful nation were commonplace. The Greeks and the Romans also enjoyed telling stories and integrating them in with their mythology. There wasn't the modern notion of history or historical accuracy at play. If someone wanted to say, for example, the founder of Rome was raised by a she wolf, then it makes for an interesting story and imagination so it gets passed off.
Similar to how Athens was supposedly named because Athena gave them an olive tree beating Poseidon in a competition.
You won't find a greek historian calling that story out as a fake or dubious.
> . I more dispute that there was actually a person named Romulus who was in almost any way related to the stories told about him or the founding of Rome.
You and many Romans. I mean we have Cicero's letters where he's saying that all the legends about Rome's founding are probably nonsense because nobody has any real records.
> There wasn't the modern notion of history or historical accuracy at play
Polybius and Thucydides might feel sad about you saying that.
They happen to have created the whole concept of analytical history. It's like saying that engineers in ~1800 didn't have a notion of how steam engines worked. I mean the invented the whole concept in the first place (however primitive their early methods were.
Even Herodotus often goes to great effort trying to separate fact from fiction even if understandably now always succeeding) although that would indicate what sort of poor sources historians had to work with when researching the earlier periods. It's a bit like if modern 19th century historians had to work without having any access to books and newspapers or other extended written material with their main source being the great-grandchildren of the people who actually lived then and the memories they passed down in addition to maybe some legal contracts, obscure religious texts and chronological lists (and if they wanted to go 5-10 generations further its even much worse). That doesn't mean they (largely) weren't doing their best.
I think the point is that Muslim accounts of the same events are sometimes very different to those of (Nicaean)Christians.
Also we do know there were many competing narratives describing the life of Christ just a few hundred years after he died. After the Church become more established scholars spent a lot of time and effort trying to determine which ones were "accurate" or not and suppressing the other narratives. It's not like anyone can verify it they got it right or not, though.
Usually the arguments are not about whether a major historical figure like Christ or Mohamed etc. existed but the exact context and accounts of their lives, beliefs and actions. Also both of these men live in literate societies yet just a few hundred years after the deaths the facts already were very blurry and uncertain. Hypothetical Moses on the other hand lived in an illiterate society and history wasn't written down for 500+ (if not quite a bit more) years, even if there is a grain of truth in them (i.e. some sort of migration or interaction between Canaan and Egypt - which is not at all far fetched) the actual details might have become 99% fictional after being passed down orally through dozens of generations.
Of course there are, even among the canonical gospels. The length of Jesus' ministry is uncertain (1 year in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but 3 years in the later John). What Mary and Joseph did after his birth also conflicts among the gospels - according to Matthew, they fled to Egypt, and only returned after Herrod had died (4 BC) while according to Luke, they went to the Temple in Jerusalem to cleanse Mary, which would have happened 40 days after the birth. Some of the identities of the disciples differ between the Synoptic gospels and John (particularly, there is no Bartholomew, no Matthew, no James son of Alphaeus, and no Simon except Simon Peter). The various miracles and acts of Jesus, the exact contents of the sermon on the mount, the parables that he shared - there are many other differences between all the canonical gospels.
Of course, they all agree on a broad narrative - Jesus was born of a virgin Mother in Bethlehem, lived in Nazareth for some time, wandered for 40 days in the wild where he was tempted, then returned and was baptized by John the Baptist, collected a number of disciples while preaching in Galilee and performing various miracles, then during Passover entered Jerusalem, came into conflict with the Jewish religious authorities and/or the Roman authorities, had a last supper with his disciples, and was crucified, died, was buried in a tomb, and was resurrected.
This is about it in terms of the major plot points that are common. Major acts, such as expelling the money lenders from the Temple or the resurrection of Lazarus, are not part of the shared narrative - they either occur at different times (in John, expelling the money lenders is one of the first acts of Jesus, at the start of his ministry, not one of his last public acts at the end), or not at all (the story of Lazarus is only present in John).
I would say that there are indeed major narrative differences between the Gospels.
Well in Islam the story is different and they consider the canonical New Testament gospels not very accurate.
Then you have all the ancient texts here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel#Non-canonical_(apocryph... which were likely written very early and often conflict quite strongly with then New Testament narratives. We can assume that this is just an only very small sample of all the stories floating around.
Even the official gospels don't all match on all the details despite retelling the same story (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_source) since they are all included that would indicate a few hundred years later nobody really knew which story was true or not.
> which were likely written very early and often conflict quite strongly with then New Testament narratives.
They were not likely written very early in almost all of those cases (your own link dates every single one to well after the canonical gospels), and almost none of them have meaningful narrative differences (once again, as opposed to theological differences.)
> Even the official gospels don't all match on all the details despite retelling the same story (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_source) since they are all included that would indicate a few hundred years later nobody really knew which story was true or not.
The canonical gospels were all likely written within decades, not "hundreds of years"; and while you can argue canonization did not officially happen until much later, de facto canonization occurred very, very early. The others floated around, yes, but they were never mainstream in any sense.
> The idea that some random historian or politician simply convinced everyone his fiction story
Not on purpose, it's just that without written history it's very easy for stories to drift very far from the historical facts. There might haven been a Roman king Romulus who did something important (then again he might have been created over time by merging several figures - i.e. it's more likely that he was named after the city and not the other way around).
We actually have real documented historical cases of this process occurring, the whole genre of Germanic heroic legends. They include various historical figures like Theodoric, Attila the Hun and others but the actual facts were mostly corrupted beyond recognition. Also this process took 500-800 years and developed in environment in which existing historical written sources on the same events did exist (even if they weren't directly accessible to most).
You have a point, and I share your general concern with bureaucracy. However, I'd encourage you to consider how I've seen employment law situations like this play out in practice.
Some examples:
* Management pressuring someone to forge tax documents, and firing said employee when they refused. They even provided a written statement stating this as the reason.
* Someone getting fired for refusing to use grant funding outside of its designated purpose.
* A government employee was accused of corruption and was asked to step down quietly. The city wanted this employee's replacement to take money from one part of the budget for a hush-money payout, while keeping this secret from the city council.
* Someone taking maternity leave, then having her role eliminated. She was given the opportunity to apply for a new job when she returned from mat leave.
* Someone getting laid off while on mat leave. No option for another role.
On paper, all of this was highly illegal, and any employer operating in good faith should have been able to work out a solution when confronted. All of them dug in their heels and refused to consider that they were wrong. Followup generally looked like this:
* Employee escalates within the organization. This becomes a negotiation, where the org decides how much leverage they have. Note that the org might not read the law carefully or even at all. If it's gotten to this point, they've often already decided they can get away with it.
* Depending on the circumstances, reporting to some government agency may happen. There may or may not be an agency that can help. Even if there is, don't expect to become a priority or have significant resources devoted to you.
* More negotiation. The org may have lawyers who are already on salary, or at least an HR department that's ready to step in. You likely do not, and need to track down and pay for your own attorney.
* After a lot negotiation, there's some kind of settlement. If this has to go to a lawsuit, good luck paying for those additional costs and managing everything. Meanwhile, you need to find a new job. For the people you're negotiating against, it's just another day at the office and they have all the time in the world.
Having multiple statutes to establish legal claims can be redundant and annoying. It can also reduce ambiguity when negotiating with an employer who is unwilling or unable to respect their liability. Which ends up being more important will be influenced by the details of the laws and the circumstances of each situation.
This doesn't obviate your point, which I agree is important. It's dumb and sad that this is where we are.
> It can also reduce ambiguity when negotiating with an employer who is unwilling or unable to respect their liability.
I'm don't think your comment supports your conclusion. Your comment explains that employers are capable of ignoring the law wholesale and engaging in highly illegal acts, but then you conclude that adding more laws will influence them.
The link seems very tenuous, the comment actually seems to be making a good case that having a law saying "don't phone people" will do literally nothing.
I'm trying to say that clearly worded laws provide complainants with more leverage when it's time to negotiate. Ambiguous language or a lack of established cause of action make it easier for someone who doesn't want to listen to drag out the argument.
I've seen the presence of clear laws play out to the advantage of the employee. Eventually corporate counsel sees the liability the company is exposed to and convinces the employer to settle in a more generous fashion than they might otherwise.
It would be great if this need to negotiate could be avoided entirely, but I share your pessimism that written laws alone do not stop bad actors. They can come in handy when things devolve into a legal argument, however.
I loved this book in my high school AP Euro class. I revisited it much later in my studies, and was dismayed to realize how lacking in proper research and citation it was. Manchester makes numerous bold claims without mentioning resources, many of which were directly contradicted by the more thoroughly-established works I was then reading. I had learned a lot of "facts" that turned out to be inaccurate, imprecise, or speculative.
I'll let others with more knowledge correct me, but my overall impression is that he was pushing sensational narratives rather than advancing historical knowledge.
> One Summer: America
I haven't heard of this and will take a look. Thanks for the recommendation.
My wife had a brief career in state-level politics and this article resonated with me. Rather than national politics or media narratives, I thought of specific state level senators, representatives, and administrators she had to interact with.
It was common to run into not just politicians, but people working for state agencies or influential community members who were shockingly incompetent. While we did not know him, Leon Finney is a great example of the kind of wheeling and dealing I'm thinking of.
At the level we were familiar with, this wasn't a right/left paradigm (state bureaucrats are at least nominally non-partisan). It had more to do with which party had comfortable majorities, and thus offered safe career options. Our state senator is not an intelligent person. He votes along with whatever he's told to by party leadership, and struggles to articulate what's even at stake in the bills he discusses. All he knows is that if he toes the line, the party won't fund a primary challenger and he'll still have a job after the next election cycle.
> He votes along with whatever he's told to by party leadership, and struggles to articulate what's even at stake in the bills he discusses.
I think this is true of a lot of representatives at both the state and federal level in both the senate and house, in both parties. And it's a huge problem, because it means that the unelected party leadership wields a tremendous amount of power.
Absolutely. A state senator in my state was a strategy consultant for a cutthroat consulting firm whose major client was a hedge fund and happily did that for a while. Then she decided to get into politics. She is the right gender, but had to become a progressive to fit in. So she did that, and career has advanced accordingly.
My republican operative acquaintances report the same deal on the other side of the isle of course, though usually with more idiots as the right tends to disdain politics and smart people go into business, whereas many more smart people on the left go to politics.
> Cultures of patronage are fertile ground for mediocrity.
While judging that at such a remote is hard, the Roman Republic was such a culture, with strong patronage networks. And while we may or may not agree with Rome's goal, that culture didn't seem to produce mediocrity.
It's a representation of power, and reality is that some people are leaders, and some are loyal vassals or subjects. Most legislative people are idiots and are really supposed to be idiots. Typically an executive cares about a set of issues or objectives, and puts the A-Team there.
At a state level, you may have 3-5,000 appointments to make in a big state, so there's a hierarchy of need. The A-players go to the priorities, the more professional "players" go to the operationally critical entities (Think your DMV and Tax Collections) and loyal idiots get scattered around the various places where the staff keep the plane flying.
The cult of personality around MAGA brings more different people. They'll absorb into the system or go away eventually.
I did as well! @rimunroe I don't remember my handle, but you took me down a nice little path on memory lane.
The Warcraft mod was a little goofy, but as a younger kid who couldn't appreciate the hardcore competitive scene I liked the variety and silliness it brought.
I spent way too much time finding custom skins online to keep things interesting. Good times.
Having grown up in Hawai'i, I know both people who worked in the observatories (or who reserve time on its telescopes for academic work), as well as people who have opposed the continued growth of facilities on the mountain.
While this became a salient topic in the media during the proposed TMNT telescope construction, there's an angle to all this that has been lost in the national media. Some of the voices quoted as opposed to development tended to be the loudest, and in my opinion least reasonable, ones. These arguments tended to hinge on Native Hawaiian identity politics and cultural grievances - while there might be something there, such statements could come across as close-minded, and I think they mischaracterized the debate as about science and progress versus NIMBYism and indigenous rights.
The more legitimate concern has been the State of Hawai'i's general mismanagement of development on the mountain, and the failure of its relevant Board of Trustees to fulfill their contractual obligations. Many private/public construction projects in Hawai'i have the unfortunate tendency to turn into haphazard federal cash grabs: the exploding costs and years-behind-schedule rail system in Honolulu is a good example, and there's a fair argument to be made that the thirteen telescopes on Mauna Loa have followed a similar pattern. Some of these were legally supposed to have been cleaned up years ago.
As mentioned, I know people who've used some of the telescopes for research and I don't think many people in the islands question the value or substance of their work. I also personally prefer it to local government's addiction to developing tourism. At the same time, I think there's a fair debate that's less "we don't like scientists," and more "please clean up your old messes like you promised."
This is all tangential to TFA, and I doubt the current federal administration cares about it. I'll still be curious to see how this plays out. Pulling funding could hurt efforts to responsibly steward the site, which would be bad. At the same time, it could discourage the Board of Trustees from continuing to chase the next federal money hose opportunity in a questionably sustainable way.
In an ideal case, those involved will find a way to continue pursuing research, while those managing the site will pursue a more organized, transparent, and responsible development plan for the land in question.
I’ve lived in the neighborhood for over sixteen years and am raising a family there.
There’s a lot to say about the crime factor, and it’s complicated. I will say that it’s common to miss it if you don’t happen to witness it. Streets that look quiet, well-developed, and peaceful will suddenly become violent and then go back to normal as if nothing happened.
I also lived on Drexel for a few years. A graduate student was shot and killed nearby while walking home. Another night we witnessed a drive-by shooting while eating dinner. I’ve got a number of crime-related stories after living here that range in severity from “funny-in-retrospect” to “somebody died.”
Something that still strikes me is how crimes can happen right outside homes without anyone noticing. The University Police have a daily email list of “serious” incidents that I check - I’ll often notice a carjacking or home invasion within 500 feet of where I was taking a nap on my couch.
It’s a great neighborhood with a lot going for it, which is maybe part of what makes the crime issue so hidden. It doesn’t look sketchy or violent until it suddenly is.
> It’s a great neighborhood with a lot going for it, which is maybe part of what makes the crime issue so hidden. It doesn’t look sketchy or violent until it suddenly is.
This conversation is fascinating to me. When I lived there, not one person had any illusion about the fact that we lived in a very violent place. The regularly-heard gunshots on 53rd got rid of those notions very quickly.
Students are regularly held up at gunpoint, sometimes shot and killed.
How on earth can you live in Hyde Park and not know of the violence?
Some people aren't yet in a place to understand this perspective. Others have been hurt by Christians who failed to live their faith or were otherwise misguided in their actions or teachings. Some slander the faith based on ignorance or misunderstanding.
We're called to forgive our enemies and respond with patience, humility, and compassion. I've found that doing this without losing sight of God's commandments is a struggle that requires daily prayer and reflection.
Have a good weekend, and peace be with you.
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