Dear Squeers,

By the time Roman rule was overthrown, Roman rule and Christian rule had been united. Theodosius promoted Nicene Trinitarian Christianity within the Empire. On 27 February 380, he declared "Catholic Christianity" the only legitimate imperial religion, ending state support for the traditional Roman religion. Hypatia was murdered in 415 after Christianity became the official religion. Local officials probably collaborated in her persecution.

Diocese and other administrative terms of the Catholic Church are identical to the names of analogous units of the Empire. The Empire still exists in church structure,

Who burned the library is problematical.

From http://www.bede.org.uk/library.htm

“The suspects respectively are a Roman, a Christian and a Moslem - Julius Caesar, Patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria and Caliph Omar of Damascus. It is clear that the Royal Library could not have been burnt down or otherwise destroyed by all three of these characters and so we find we have too many sources for the event of the destruction rather than a paucity. As scholars of the Gospels will vouch, this too can be an embarrassment. How we decide to reconcile the stories will depend almost entirely on how we criticise the sources and which of them we choose to consider most reliable.”

Christians often accuse Muslims and vice versa. We really don’t know who did it.

lexie...heard of poetic licence
i would hate to be the one that needs remind you
poetry isnt science...nor is dream...

even if the earth was 'flat';
its unlikely you could physiclly see that far
[thousands of miles]...

as for jesus being shown 'all the kingdoms'
that would have been...'via vision'

please lexi your one of the more clever who visit here
people who quote...'bits'....clerly have an adgen da..for quoting that bit

those who revised the holy books...all had their adgendas

anyhow
i should finnish with the adnonisment my mother gave me
[just because peter...jumps off a bridge...would you?]

its only too easy to simplify things to absurdity
[yes im as guilty as any]

but clearly the evidence of a DREAM
or of a vision...well thats no evidence at all..

justy as the claim of xtian religeon
being the religeon of the peacemaker
or the koran a book of war

its just predigested bias
[but i love that you actually looked at their root]
and better posted the actual quote]

put me with those thinking you special
so we need to be speacially hard on our...man-godess
lest she feel..her feet arn't made of clay....like the rest of us

comes a time to make peace
but only..*by letting the dream's
delusion's../vision's..of the past....GO

they were never ..'the reality'...
for they were but im-ages/mir-ages
excuses given us by those..seeking only to make..their next war

Dear Squeers,

I am finally in front of a computer and not having to post via an Iphone.

I have had a chance to better review some of your links, especially Takis Fotopoulis, and I have to say you are well read with a mind notably better at understanding concepts than my poor brain. I will endeavour to give him another try.

My thoughts are mostly organically sourced and these coupled with a very modest ability to think a little spatially allows me to kick the traces every so often.

I gather that in many ways we are in complete agreement. Where we appear to diverge is where we are prepared to place responsibility, or rather to what degree it should be apportioned, for the actions of our government.

My contention is that in advanced democracies like Australia the governments we elect represent us, not just on paper but our aspirations, our fears, our prejudices, etc. while the governments we depose have found the corruption of power divorcing them from the same. I am of the firm opinion that the Australian people have mostly got it right in elections for the last thirty years.

We fail to truly understand democracy when we bemoan the election of Hamas, or a referendum that installs an Islamic state such as in Iran.

We also get uncomfortable when we fail to recognise the same mechanism is at play when a populace keeps a capital punishment advocating party at bay even though the majority supports it, and when a party that takes us to war while the majority oppose it.

I think the government and the media get to tinker, through our permission because we accept the way society frames these institutions, with a portion of our lives. But ultimately they are not the leaders on substantive matters no matter how much they might think they are, instead their success or otherwise is contingent on how well they follow.

Dear OUG,

I appreciate your posts and kind words. Over the centuries warfare has shaped and disrupted societies, altered the course of history, and led to the slaughter of hundreds of millions of people, combatants and non-compatants alike. Why do people go to war? The answer seems to be that war occurs as a result of a political decision - usually a decision by older men that younger men should fight for what older men believe to be worth fighting for. There can be no war unlesss the leaders of at least two societies with conflicting interests decide that they prefer war to any alternative means of settling their differences. The soldiers themsleves go to war - frequently not knowing what they are fighting for, and usually terrified of meeting the enemy in battle - because a legitimate political authority is determined on that course of action.

War is actually a highly structured social activity. It can't be sustained without a strong political authority that can persuade people to risk their lives for a purpose beyond themselves.

csteele,
I'm envious of the adventurous lifestyles you and davidf seem to enjoy. I've only "read" Don Quixote and cannot escape computer screens!

You're both too modest and too generous. I don't say so from too refined manners, but from being immersed in David Hume presently--and not due to Radio National's festivities over his 300 birthday, but for my own reasons. Thus your modesty is apposite, as like you Hume put no faith in his unassisted--by empirical evidence--reason whatsoever, seeing the "manifold" of outrageous "contradictions and imperfections in human reason" as incorrigible, "so wrought upon me and heated my brain, that I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another".
It's an enduring human conceit that we think our common opinions have any reference to the truth of common experience. We press on opinionated regardless..

I'd say our governments only represent and appeal to our crudest common denominations--institutions--and not individually at all. I therefore differ with you that Australian electorates have "got it right" for thirty years. For me, Labor and Liberal are indistinguishable and elections are fought over tiny variations on the same themes.
Capital punishment and war are perfect examples, but also religion, patriotism etc. Each of these captures sufficient discontented voters by default since Australia is a middle class nation whose members by and large, despite their misgivings, don't like change. The marginal parties are only there to field the protest votes and provide a valuable service to the majors.
The trouble is that democracies are no longer radical and elections provide a wealth of empirical data to the contenders. We're so caught up with our earth-shattering opinions that we don't realise we're being played. Democratic elections are a science in their own right and the phenomena long since gave up its secrets. Elections in countries like Australia decide whether it's Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum that get's the Lodge for the next 3 years.
The media knows all this but are forced to play the same populist game.

Dear Lexi,

I hope I haven't made the Mt Difficult sojourn more intrepid than what it really was. If rated as a climb it would be easy, as a walk it is rated difficult and while vertically it is under 500mts, the length of it at around 10kms round trip and the boulder hopping involved makes it unwise to try and cut any time off the trip which is what we foolishly attempted to do. Pushed ourselves well past what was wise.

The views however are stunning. This is a link to the site of someone who did it a couple of years back.
http://www.townsvillenet.com.au/mountains/mtdifficult.htm

Dear Davidf,

The trip sounds fantastic. For a long while I had a Zero bullet dug as a child from the side of a turret emplacement in Darwin and our landlord at the time had been a Hurricane pilot who flew from an airfield near Katherine.

His spirit visited my mother the night he died. What can I tell you, sometimes us rational types just have to shrug the shoulders and wear it.

As a teenager schooling in Singapore a group of us played in the gun emplacements and the deep tunnels of the abandoned British fortifications on Sentosa, now all developed of course. Some of the British maps were still on the wall of a command centre 100 feet down a ladder. All very Boys Own stuff.

And why shouldn't it grab the imagination of youths such as us. Who wants to load the dreadful toll of war on the young? Fortunately for the species experience and wisdom is sometimes respected but not always.

In many ways a young Australia reflected suffered from a lack of shared experience and wisdom about war. The Boer war was 18 months of mainly successes for the Australians and the spectre of mechanised warfare was only just being seen.

Perhaps new technologies recording oral histories can pass on the horrors of World Wars in a more visceral form to future generations though time's dilutions are difficult to combat while the stories of heroism only increase in their potency.