Human Population Through Time

[Jalpha]

The quote from Paul is advocating sacred virginity, and if you feel you can walk that path then you are certainly a better man than I. Paul is, however, not suggesting that a life of unmarried fornication -- which is usually the alternative -- is better than marriage.

Firstly I will quote the book itself instead of whichever priest has filled your mind with their own interpretation. You are adding a lot of words which aren't there. I quoted out of context. Honestly I was surprised you skipped over this and immediately began quoting your priests.

8 Now to the unmarried[a] and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. 9 But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

That leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Is this an intentionally vague statement written to be interpreted as is appropriate for an era now passed? You decide. What I will say though is that many of the issues which plagued society as a result of an openly expressed sexuality have been largely resolved... If you take appropriate precautions. Moses taught us not to fuck another mans woman (and vice versa). That is wholly different to rampant fornication in an age where the inherent risks of such actions are being increasingly mitigated. Something to think about.

We can start tearing apart the ten commandments if you wish. Personally I'd rather not have any more to do with that book than I have to. It does make excellent troll material though.

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

I like this, but it's from earlier in Genesis than the tower of babel. Again I reiterate; The petri dish is now full.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

The words of Jesus trump those of Paul I am not sorry to say.

[Jalpha]

Quit being Jordan Peterson and crediting western culture to Christianity. Everything good about Europe comes from the Greeks and Romans. All Christianity has done is hold us back, as evident by rapid ascendance of Europe just as the Church lost it's power and people rediscovered classic Greek works. If Europe was never christianized we'd probably have colonized Mars by now.

Haha, wow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_university

You have a point here. Many advancements in our understanding of the Universe came from priests. They had a lot of time to ponder things. More than anyone else.

The issue was that anything they learned had to conform to the religious understandings of the time, and progress stalled at several points as a result...

[Potjeh]

Quit being Jordan Peterson and crediting western culture to Christianity. Everything good about Europe comes from the Greeks and Romans. All Christianity has done is hold us back, as evident by rapid ascendance of Europe just as the Church lost it's power and people rediscovered classic Greek works. If Europe was never christianized we'd probably have colonized Mars by now.

Haha, wow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_university

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gymnasium_(ancient_Greece)

[Granger]

The programme of modernity -- contraceptives, conscription of females into the capitalist machinery, and increased age of marriage -- reduces fertility. My point exactly.

On further thinking:
What is bad about reduced fertility from levels caused by religion (or the failure to timely grasp that the mortality rate of your newborns fell drastically not that short ago) to a level that is sane as of being sustainable (or even, for a while, below that to reduce the total population so every single individuum has more free room to roam)?

Large, young families inevitable result in quickly (young = short generation cycle) rising overpopulation (large = more children than needed to keep the population at level) that must and will generate conflicts over the limited resources of a finite world.

Assuming this is true, which I don't think it is: And your proposed solution to life in that world of dog-eat-dog that you imagine is to lay down and be eaten? If the world is only conflict -- which I don't believe -- then how can you possibly advocate surrender?

In case birth rate exceeds the level needed to replenish the ones that die (so 2.<small-value> per woman to replace the two parents and to cover the ones that die from illness or accidents before being able to reproduce) by a nontrivial margin the total amount of humans increases, exponentially, up to a population that experiences massive resource shortage. Then you have dog-eat-dog, until enough died off (either passively from starving or actively been killed off in conflicts).

Bunny style breeding ceases to exist when advances in both medicine (so the newborn survive) and education (so the people get the first point and the consequences it brings) take place. Educated people whos children survive usually don't breed them in excess, as they know the unpleasant consequences such would bring - uneducated humans (and followers of certain religions who, in this context, tend to behave extremely stupid) though...

[sMartins]

Quit being Jordan Peterson and crediting western culture to Christianity. Everything good about Europe comes from the Greeks and Romans. All Christianity has done is hold us back, as evident by rapid ascendance of Europe just as the Church lost it's power and people rediscovered classic Greek works. If Europe was never christianized we'd probably have colonized Mars by now.

Haha, wow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_university

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gymnasium_(ancient_Greece)

"Téchne d'anánkes asthenéstera makrô" v514 Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound

Technique is far weaker than the law of necessity that governs the nature.

Judaeo-Christian culture, later on, inscribe nature as a God's creature, so it becomes a good thing, that's gifted to man for his own domain.
In 1600, with Bacon, science is lodged in a religious picture.

In short, Christianity opened the door at science, as we know it today.
Of course Christianity is based on Greeks, so both contributed ... but what accelerated the process, with its huge thrust of optimism, it's definately Christianity.
For Greeks, today, we will be a bunch of people full of foolish pride ... those who believe they can tame nature, nothing is more fool and so dangerous overconfident for them than what we are right now.
That's why "technological progress" would never been so fast under Greeks culture .... and it wouldn't be a bad thing to me, tbh ... but who knows?

[Potjeh]

So why is it that science advanced rapidly in ancient Greece, but was at a virtual standstill in pre-Reformation Europe? I mean, can you even name any great medieval philosophers besides St Thomas Aquinas? And even he is nowhere near the rank of Aristotle or Plato. The only contribution of Church to science is preserving *some* of the ancient works while burning some works that were deemed heretical. I shudder to think how much knowledge has been lost by Chruch destroying "heretical" works. A great example is the Maya codices, the Church basically deleted entire culture worth of books. The Church was basically WH40k Adeptus Mechanicus.

[sMartins]

So why is it that science advanced rapidly in ancient Greece

Greeks invented pretty much everything we know ... they are our fathers, mainly with the invetion of a rational thought.
This doesn't mean that their organization was better than us, otherwise we would be Greeks right now, but we aren't.
Christianity unified all the west as we know it.
People working and living together in peace is more important than the accuracy of our thinking, to develop a community.

can you even name any great medieval philosophers besides St Thomas Aquinas?

Even pre medieval = Augustine of Hippo, who shaped some of the Greeks culture into the Christian vision.

The only contribution of Church to science is preserving *some* of the ancient works while burning some works that were deemed heretical. I shudder to think how much knowledge has been lost by Chruch destroying "heretical" works.

That was cause Man was still in charge, and as we know, men are not perfect. But trust me, far better than having a fucking computer that tells me what to do.
That always happened and will always happen in every society ruled by men.
I'm not so cultured to discuss the decisions of the representatives of one of the world's largest religion we ever had.
Probably some of them were good, some were bad, like always happen with men.
It's just the computer that is always right, not the real world. And what happens when it's wrong? when it fails? ..... nothing works anymore, everything stops.

[shubla]

Greeks invented pretty much everything we know ..

what

[sMartins]

Greeks invented pretty much everything we know ..

what

Name something, Greeks invented it. Math, physics, astro-physics, medicine, phylosophy, arts ... all the major tools to inspect reality. Everything later on it's just some improvements or development on the matter that can be attributed back to them, pretty much everything.
We do not have anything new that uses a brand new way of thinking ... I guess it will happen soon or later.

[shubla]

Greeks invented pretty much everything we know ..

what

Name something, Greeks invented it. Math, physics, astro-physics, medicine, phylosophy, arts ... all the major tools to inspect reality. Everything later on it's just some improvements or development on the matter that can be attributed back to them, pretty much everything.
We do not have anything new that uses a brand new way of thinking ... I guess it will happen soon or later.

Math was not "invented" by Greeks, Babylonians/Sumerians had all kinds of stuff that we can already call mathematics way before Greeks.
And guess what, its the same with astrology, Egyptians and Babylonians were doing this far, far before Greeks...
Medicine we have had for ages, herbs and different ways to treat illnesses.
Arts? invented by greeks? What madman are you, even the cavemen had cool paintings on their cave walls. People have been making art with things that they can use pretty much as long as there have been people.

Or in short.. none of those things were invented by the Greeks.

What is similar in Greeks, Babylonians, Egyptians then? Well. They were the first civilizations, that is why one may think that they "invented it all", it is because they were first ones that were civilized enough to even start thinking about stuff like that, and also write some notes about it.