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Neil deGrasse Tyson on Islam (Read 48091 times)
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Re: Neil deGrasse Tyson on Islam
Reply #135 - Apr 29th, 2016 at 10:21pm
 
freediver wrote on Apr 29th, 2016 at 10:06pm:
What religion do you think was most cited by those who brought an end to slavery?

But did Christianity actually drive abolitionism? Christians had worked the slave trade for centuries? Wasn't it more likely enlightened  humanism influencing western European thought?

The British (by the 19th century) had definitely developed a repugnance of slavery... But then, the British had the concept of the working class to look to for their homegrown slaves... Not to mention using convicts as slave labour... They could afford to moralise.

Not sure Christianity made them abolitionists... Maybe it made them more inventive in disguising their own forms of slavery. I'd bet Charles Dickens would agree with that.

The Spanish (and a more Christian European country you will not find) weren't much into abolitionism... Until they were forced.

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Re: Neil deGrasse Tyson on Islam
Reply #136 - Apr 29th, 2016 at 10:35pm
 
NorthOfNorth wrote on Apr 29th, 2016 at 10:21pm:
freediver wrote on Apr 29th, 2016 at 10:06pm:
What religion do you think was most cited by those who brought an end to slavery?

But did Christianity actually drive abolitionism? Christians had worked the slave trade for centuries? Wasn't it more likely enlightened  humanism influencing western European thought?

The British (by the 19th century) had definitely developed a repugnance of slavery... But then, the British had the concept of the working class to look to for their homegrown slaves... Not to mention using convicts as slave labour... They could afford to moralise.

Not sure Christianity made them abolitionists... Maybe it made them more inventive in disguising their own forms of slavery. I'd bet Charles Dickens would agree with that.

The Spanish (and a more Christian European country you will not find) weren't much into abolitionism... Until they were forced.


Oh, so the British abolished slavery because they had the working class coming on tap, plus convicts so they calculated all that passionate stuff to cover up their scheme to access cheap Irish labour and the navvies and the working class generally? And the Spanish, not having access to the Irish navvies, resisted the whole 'no slavery' caper for HR reasons?

What kind of blinding resentment is fuelling this particular idiocy?

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Re: Neil deGrasse Tyson on Islam
Reply #137 - Apr 29th, 2016 at 10:48pm
 
Frank wrote on Apr 29th, 2016 at 10:35pm:
NorthOfNorth wrote on Apr 29th, 2016 at 10:21pm:
freediver wrote on Apr 29th, 2016 at 10:06pm:
What religion do you think was most cited by those who brought an end to slavery?

But did Christianity actually drive abolitionism? Christians had worked the slave trade for centuries? Wasn't it more likely enlightened  humanism influencing western European thought?

The British (by the 19th century) had definitely developed a repugnance of slavery... But then, the British had the concept of the working class to look to for their homegrown slaves... Not to mention using convicts as slave labour... They could afford to moralise.

Not sure Christianity made them abolitionists... Maybe it made them more inventive in disguising their own forms of slavery. I'd bet Charles Dickens would agree with that.

The Spanish (and a more Christian European country you will not find) weren't much into abolitionism... Until they were forced.


Oh, so the British abolished slavery because they had the working class coming on tap, plus convicts so they calculated all that passionate stuff to cover up their scheme to access cheap Irish labour and the navvies and the working class generally? And the Spanish, not having access to the Irish navvies, resisted the whole 'no slavery' caper for HR reasons?

What kind of blinding resentment is fuelling this particular idiocy?


Yes, I guess the British were lucky to have their entrenched class system and their aristocratic moralising to justify the likes of convicts as slaves. Easy to moralise about the venality of other countries' blatant slavery when yours has invented other means of enslaving people... Without the need for chains and whips (except for convicts, of course).

The 'great' Churchill was fond of reminding his politically  nearest and dearest of the inferiority of the brown and black races.
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Re: Neil deGrasse Tyson on Islam
Reply #138 - Apr 29th, 2016 at 11:06pm
 
NorthOfNorth wrote on Apr 29th, 2016 at 10:48pm:
Frank wrote on Apr 29th, 2016 at 10:35pm:
NorthOfNorth wrote on Apr 29th, 2016 at 10:21pm:
freediver wrote on Apr 29th, 2016 at 10:06pm:
What religion do you think was most cited by those who brought an end to slavery?

But did Christianity actually drive abolitionism? Christians had worked the slave trade for centuries? Wasn't it more likely enlightened  humanism influencing western European thought?

The British (by the 19th century) had definitely developed a repugnance of slavery... But then, the British had the concept of the working class to look to for their homegrown slaves... Not to mention using convicts as slave labour... They could afford to moralise.

Not sure Christianity made them abolitionists... Maybe it made them more inventive in disguising their own forms of slavery. I'd bet Charles Dickens would agree with that.

The Spanish (and a more Christian European country you will not find) weren't much into abolitionism... Until they were forced.


Oh, so the British abolished slavery because they had the working class coming on tap, plus convicts so they calculated all that passionate stuff to cover up their scheme to access cheap Irish labour and the navvies and the working class generally? And the Spanish, not having access to the Irish navvies, resisted the whole 'no slavery' caper for HR reasons?

What kind of blinding resentment is fuelling this particular idiocy?


Yes, I guess the British were lucky to have their entrenched class system and their aristocratic moralising to justify the likes of convicts as slaves. Easy to moralise about the venality of other countries' blatant slavery when yours has invented other means of enslaving people... Without the need for chains and whips (except for convicts, of course).

The 'great' Churchill was fond of reminding his politically  nearest and dearest of the inferiority of the brown and black races.

So today's pay-as-you- go taxpayers are simply the slaves of yesterday. Especially if they are non-white immigrants.

The British Navy's  stance against international slave trade was just a cunning plan - thanks, Boldrick.

You are out of your tree, pal. You have been captured by some monomaniacal ideology that will not let you come up for air.

What stance against slavery or other degradation would you recognise as honourable? Give us a historic example so we can know what strandards you are measuring the British against.i
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Re: Neil deGrasse Tyson on Islam
Reply #139 - Apr 30th, 2016 at 7:25am
 
Quote:
But did Christianity actually drive abolitionism? Christians had worked the slave trade for centuries? Wasn't it more likely enlightened  humanism influencing western European thought?


I think you are creating a false dichotomy here. Everyone had worked the slave trade since shortly after civilisation began. Tell me, what influence do you think the story of exodus might have had?

Quote:
Not sure Christianity made them abolitionists... Maybe it made them more inventive in disguising their own forms of slavery.


They hid their slavery by 'hiding' it in the form of 'not slavery'?

Quote:
I'd bet Charles Dickens would agree with that.


Speak for yourself. You do not know slavery, so you see it in being forced to get out of bed in the morning.

Quote:
The Spanish (and a more Christian European country you will not find) weren't much into abolitionism... Until they were forced.


The Spanish crown made genuine efforts to get rid of slavery, while they were at the top of their game making huge piles of money from it. No-one forced them. They too cited Christianity as a motivator. They were not as successful, but not through lack of will. Christian Europeans actually started banning slavery among themselves long before they managed to stop Muslims raiding the European coast taking slaves. The absence of slavery from civilisation was an almost exclusively European anomoly that they exported to the world in an unusually short time. The Europeans went from tribal backwater with no written history to leading and freeing the world in 1 to 2.5 millennia. Where Islam now dominates the bulk of the traditional western civilisation, they have had up to 12 millenia of civilisation and to show for it are squeezing out little nuggets like ISIS.

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Yes, I guess the British were lucky to have their entrenched class system


Crap. Their class system arose because of the absence of slavery. What do you expect? The Bible arrives on their doorstep and they decide overnight to free their slaves and establish a functioning, liberal democracy? Or better yet, they decide to abandon their wandering tribal ways and export liberty and democracy to the rest of the world? In a historical context, that is pretty much what happened. You can see quite clearly what they came from and where they went to. It is all around you, staring you in the face. But for some reason you blame them for what they came from and deny them any credit for where they went to.
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Re: Neil deGrasse Tyson on Islam
Reply #140 - Apr 30th, 2016 at 8:19am
 
It is a true irony that, while the British around the turn of the 19th century were vehemently resisting slavery (i.e. the trafficking of people as slaves to foreign empires and states), they were constructing a new form of slavery - this time with a moral argument more conducive to the captors' cause - Convicts.

As a British officer, Captain Hill, wrote of the conditions in the convict fleets -

"The slave traffic is merciful compared with what I have seen in this [second] fleet; in that it is in the interests of the masters to preserve the healths and lives of their captives, they have a joint benefit with the owners; in this, the more they can withhold from the unhappy wretches, the more provisions they have to dispose of at a foreign market, and the earlier in the voyage they die, the longer they can draw the deceased's allowance to themselves."

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Re: Neil deGrasse Tyson on Islam
Reply #141 - Apr 30th, 2016 at 10:01am
 
Do you think the British resistance to slavery has had a positive impact on the world? It's OK North, it won't hurt you to say it.
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Re: Neil deGrasse Tyson on Islam
Reply #142 - Apr 30th, 2016 at 10:06am
 
Looks like your crusade in the name of Freeeedom has come down to fighting slavery, FD - in all its 18th century forms.
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Re: Neil deGrasse Tyson on Islam
Reply #143 - Apr 30th, 2016 at 10:17am
 
freediver wrote on Apr 30th, 2016 at 10:01am:
Do you think the British resistance to slavery has had a positive impact on the world? It's OK North, it won't hurt you to say it.


No, North’s saying the end of slavery had little to do with Christianity (which was also used to justify slavery), and almost everything to do with economic and class interests.

William Wilberforce was more inspired by Enlightenment thinkers like Rousseau than Christianity, and this was quite normal for educated English men at the turn of the 19th century.

Britain did not deliver a "functioning liberal democracy" anywhere. In Britain itself, non-landowners only got the vote in the 20th century. The influence (fear) of communism did more to deliver liberal democracy to Mother than any noble sentiments in the British intellectual tradition. Not even Jeremy Bentham or John Stuart Mill called for universal suffrage.

Women - and working men - fought and died to be a part of "functioning liberal democracy". Every other European power had had revolutions to establish this.

Mother, in fact, was one of the last European monarchies, to reform.
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Re: Neil deGrasse Tyson on Islam
Reply #144 - Apr 30th, 2016 at 10:21am
 
Do you think European opposition to slavery began in the 19th century?

What influence do you think the identification with slaves through the story of exodus has had on the enlightenment?

You may speak for yourself Karnal.
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Re: Neil deGrasse Tyson on Islam
Reply #145 - Apr 30th, 2016 at 10:51am
 
freediver wrote on Apr 30th, 2016 at 10:21am:
Do you think European opposition to slavery began in the 19th century?

What influence do you think the identification with slaves through the story of exodus has had on the enlightenment?.


None. European powers did not identify as slaves. Britains, remember, "never never never shall be slaves".

Never ever, eh?

Britain didn’t have to give up slavery. In the 18th and 19th centuries, it had a labour surplus. Women did the domestic work, men did the manual labour and both worked in the factories that kicked off the industrial revolution.

Simply, Britain had no need for slave labour. In the colonies, it used indentured labour - Tamils, Cantonese, Kanacks. Australia was an aberration in the use of convict labour. Australia as a penal settlement was a short experiment, quickly abandoned.

The Americas relied on slave labour, and at the time of abolition, only a few British companies invested there.

Even in America at the time of the civil war, slavery had declined as a major source of  labour. While Christianity and Enlightenment ideals were certainly refered to - by both sides - slavery was killed off because of economic reasons.

It was interesting to watch Tarrantino’s move, Django Unchained. It showed the vast state-wide infrastructure necessary to keep (and discipline) slaves in the deep south. Think today how much it costs to keep prisoners. Alternatives to detention are far cheaper, and far more effective in preventing recidivism.

These ideas go back to the atheist Jeremy Bentham who, along with penal reform, was a strident campaigner against slavery. The utilitarians showed the economic importance of supporting and training the lower classes, and it was this movement more than any other that influenced the abolition of slavery.

Utilitarianism was also  the forerunner to modern.economics, with its creed, the greatest good to the greatest number, still the defining purpose of economics.
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Re: Neil deGrasse Tyson on Islam
Reply #146 - Apr 30th, 2016 at 11:41am
 
Mattyfisk wrote on Apr 30th, 2016 at 10:51am:
Britain didn’t have to give up slavery. In the 18th and 19th centuries, it had a labour surplus. Women did the domestic work, men did the manual labour and both worked in the factories that kicked off the industrial revolution.

Simply, Britain had no need for slave labour. In the colonies, it used indentured labour - Tamils, Cantonese, Kanacks. Australia was an aberration in the use of convict labour. Australia as a penal settlement was a short experiment, quickly abandoned.


Interesting post.

Yes, Britain had a labour surplus it could exploit with poor pay (or oftentimes none at all) - Britain's working class were indoctrinated in 'accepting their lot' by the aristocratic ruling classes and the Church of England all members of whom were, of course, Christians.

I haven't read where any Christian denomination played any significant part (or any part at all) in ending convict (slave) labour.

Britain used its own forms of slavery wherever it believed it needed to. Convict labour and press gangs, for instance, (as seamen were excluded from the Magna Carta - Not, by the way, a Christian doctrine!).

It is a truly facile argument that 'Christianity eliminated slavery'... Its been around for 2000 years, 1300 of which it was at the pinnacle of European power and influence. If it were so (Christianity's 'saving the slaves') why did it take 1300 years?

Clearly there were other reasons for the sudden distaste for slavery from the late 18th century.
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Re: Neil deGrasse Tyson on Islam
Reply #147 - Apr 30th, 2016 at 12:11pm
 
NorthOfNorth wrote on Apr 30th, 2016 at 11:41am:
Mattyfisk wrote on Apr 30th, 2016 at 10:51am:
Britain didn’t have to give up slavery. In the 18th and 19th centuries, it had a labour surplus. Women did the domestic work, men did the manual labour and both worked in the factories that kicked off the industrial revolution.

Simply, Britain had no need for slave labour. In the colonies, it used indentured labour - Tamils, Cantonese, Kanacks. Australia was an aberration in the use of convict labour. Australia as a penal settlement was a short experiment, quickly abandoned.


Interesting post.

Yes, Britain had a labour surplus it could exploit with poor pay (or oftentimes none at all) - Britain's working class were indoctrinated in 'accepting their lot' by the aristocratic ruling classes and the Church of England all members of whom were, of course, Christians.

I haven't read where any Christian denomination played any significant part (or any part at all) in ending convict (slave) labour.

Britain used its own forms of slavery wherever it believed it needed to. Convict labour and press gangs, for instance, (as seamen were excluded from the Magna Carta - Not, by the way, a Christian doctrine!).

It is a truly facile argument that 'Christianity eliminated slavery'... Its been around for 2000 years, 1300 of which it was at the pinnacle of European power and influence. If it were so (Christianity's 'saving the slaves') why did it take 1300 years?

Clearly there were other reasons for the sudden distaste for slavery from the late 18th century.


Utilitarianism ended penal settlements with the invention of the penetentiary, or what Bentham originally called the Panopticon.

The  18th and 19th centuries saw the rise of new technologies and methods of harnessing the labour of populations, not slaves. Factories, schools, hospitals, work houses and institutions all arose to mobilize the new proletariat class.

The 20th century, I think, saw them mobilized into new ways of fighting wars. When the wars were done, these populations were mobilised into new forms of mass consumption. New electronic media were crucial in this development, just as it is today.

When these new technologies were deployed, slaves - and convicts - simply became defunct.

Christianity had no part in this process whatsoever.
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Re: Neil deGrasse Tyson on Islam
Reply #148 - Apr 30th, 2016 at 12:43pm
 
Quote:
Britain didn’t have to give up slavery. In the 18th and 19th centuries, it had a labour surplus. Women did the domestic work, men did the manual labour and both worked in the factories that kicked off the industrial revolution.

Simply, Britain had no need for slave labour.


After they inherited the benefits of the absence of slave labour. The absence of slavery preceded your 'absence of the need for it'.

The decline of slavery had been happening since the fall of the Roman Empire, while Europe was a backwater. Those labour markets that fueled the industrial revolution only arose because of the absence of slavery. Britian did not get rich, then go back and change it's social history to support that wealth.

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It is a truly facile argument that 'Christianity eliminated slavery'... Its been around for 2000 years, 1300 of which it was at the pinnacle of European power and influence.


So tell us about these 1300 years north.
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Re: Neil deGrasse Tyson on Islam
Reply #149 - Apr 30th, 2016 at 1:12pm
 
freediver wrote on Apr 30th, 2016 at 12:43pm:
Those labour markets that fueled the industrial revolution only arose because of the absence of slavery.


No, they arose in the mid 1700s - when slavery was in full flourish.

You're conflating two separate things: there were never slaves (or very few) slaves in Britain itelf, but the wealth that Britain acquired from its empire relied heavily on the international slave trade (estimated 40% of all enslaved Africans between 1701-1800 were transported on British vessels). Without the lucrative slave trade before she abolished it - Britain almost certainly wouldn't have been to kick start its industrial revolution.

And as for the labor market for the industrial revolution, that came from the farming revolution, where technological advances released a mass of farm labourers - who migrated to the cities and were scooped up by industrialists to work in their factories.
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A resident Islam critic who claims to represent western values said:
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Outlawing the enemy's uniform - hijab, islamic beard - is not depriving one's own people of their freedoms.
 
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