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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 8acd734 | Unfortunately, there is no contemporary history of Rome prior to about 200 BC, when centuries of oral traditions were first committed to writing. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 07c5d3b | No wonder that progress was so slow within the ancient empires. Anything of value--land, crops, livestock, buildings, even children--could be arbitrarily seized, and as the Chinese iron magnates learned, it often was. Worse yet, the tyrannical empires invested little of the wealth they extracted to increase production. They consumed it instead--often in various forms of display. The Egyptian pyramids, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and the.. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 376a199 | Masoretic | Rodney Stark | ||
| 976d828 | But Christendom was not merely a community of warriors or even a community of the nobility. It was a civilization! Unfortunately, for generations everyone was taught that the era beginning with the fall of Rome and ending not long before the Reformations was correctly known as the 'Dark Ages'. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 8632561 | Data on children, in particular, show the auspicious results of religion on their well-being. According to sociologist John Bartkowski, professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, the children of parents who regularly attend religious services exhibit better self-control, social skills, and approaches to learning. He found that religious networks allow moms and dads to improve their parenting skills; the social support they find fr.. | Bill Donohue | ||
| 8c1f50b | the Romans knew of the watermill but made nearly no use of it, continuing to rely on muscle power to grind their flour.20 The Ottoman Empire prohibited the mechanical clock, and so did the Chinese. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 505fc01 | Plutarch (AD 46-120) estimated that Julius Caesar's campaign in Gaul yielded at least a million slaves. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 0d46ef6 | By the seventh century, Christianity probably was far stronger and more sophisticated in North Africa and Asia than in Europe. | Rodney Stark | ||
| d9a6829 | When the Greeks were free they created a civilization advanced beyond anything else in the world. When Rome imposed its imperial rule all across the West, progress ceased for a millennium. The fall of Rome once again unleashed creativity and, for good and for ill, the fragmented and competing Europeans soon outdistanced the rest of the world, possessed not only of invincible military and naval might but also of superior economies and standa.. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 8eef70e | The frequent claims that empty churches and low levels of religious activity in Europe today reflect a steep decline in piety are wrong--it was always thus. | Rodney Stark | ||
| a19cbdf | And therefore, according as any one is more anxious in demanding a reason, by so much will he be the firmer in preserving his faith.9 | Rodney Stark | ||
| 517c45f | For there is another truth: to the extent that other cultures have failed to adopt at least major aspects of Western ways, they remain backward and impoverished. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 64c0184 | In addition, since they were committed to reasoning about God, the Jews were quick to embrace the Greek concern for valid reasoning. What emerged was an image of God as not only eternal and immutable but also as conscious, concerned, and rational. The early Christians fully accepted this image of God. They also added and emphasized the proposition that our knowledge of God and of his creation is progressive. Faith in both reason and progres.. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 1d6d26a | Most assumed this was due to the fact that church services (with the exception of occasional brief homilies) were in Latin, a language that almost no one in the pews could understand. Thus, it was believed that as the Reformations ushered in preaching in the local vernaculars, widespread public ignorance would end. But it didn't. In part, because so few people came to church. In part, because so many who came paid no attention. And, in part.. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 0ae0554 | As the historian Edward Grant explained, 'It is indisputable that modern science emerged in the seventeenth century in Western Europe and nowhere else'. ... The crucial question is: Why? My answer to this question is as brief as it is unoriginal: Christianity depicted God as a rational, responsive, dependable, and omnipotent being and the universe as his personal creation, thus having a rational, lawful, stable structure, awaiting human co.. | science world-history | Rodney Stark | |
| abbf2b8 | While the other world religions emphasized mystery and intuition, Christianity alone embraced reason and logic as the primary guide to religious truth. | Rodney Stark | ||
| d1292a4 | Encouraged by the Scholastics and embodied in the great medieval universities founded by the church, faith in the power of reason infused Western culture, stimulating the pursuit of science and the evolution of democratic theory and practice. | Rodney Stark | ||
| e5eecea | The truth is that science arose only because the doctrine of the rational creator of a rational universe made scientific inquiry plausible. Similarly, the idea of progress was inherent in Jewish conceptions of history and was central to Christian thought from very early days. | Rodney Stark | ||
| ad29d53 | faith in progress was fundamental to western Christianity. As for Orthodox Christianity in the Byzantine East, it prohibited both clocks and pipe organs from its churches.51 | Rodney Stark | ||
| 7e6a769 | Even more important, Islam holds that the universe is inherently irrational--that there is no cause and effect--because everything happens as the direct result of Allah's will at that particular time. Anything is possible. Attempts at science, then, are not only foolish but also blasphemous, in that they imply limits to Allah's power and authority.53 Therefore, Muslim scholars study law (what does Allah require?), not science. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 953de64 | The reason so many innovations and inventions were abandoned or even outlawed in China had to do with Confucian opposition to change on grounds that the past was greatly superior. | Rodney Stark | ||
| b5dc023 | If you were asked what the most churchgoing age in America was, what would you say? Would you guess the 1950s? Sometime in the 1800s? The colonial times? The answer will surprise you. Professor Rodney Stark, whom we heard from earlier, explains that in 1776, only 17 percent of Americans attended a local church. These were the days when the church steeple was the central landmark of most cities. By 1850, that number mushroomed to 34 percent .. | Glenn T Stanton | ||
| c62c941 | I]n the years that followed the persecutions, Christianity came to see itself, with great pride, as a persecuted Church. Its greatest heroes were not those who did good deeds but those who died in the most painful way. If you were willing to die an excruciating end in the arena then, whatever your previous holiness or lack thereof, you went straight to heaven: martyrdom wiped out all sins on the point of death. As well as getting there fast.. | christianity equality madness martyrdom monotheism sacrifice | Catherine Nixey | |
| c415f70 | The Mormon definition of life makes the earthly sojourn basically an educative process. Knowledge is necessary to mastery, and the way to deification is through mastery, for not only does education aid man in fulfilling present tasks, it advances him in his eternal progress. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 53fae57 | Echoing his teacher, but using many more words, St Thomas Aquinas began his analysis of just prices by posing the question 'Whether a man may lawfully sell a thing for more than it is worth'.53 He answered by first quoting Augustine that it is natural and lawful, for 'you wish to buy cheap, and sell dear'. Next, Aquinas excluded fraud from legitimate transactions. Finally, he recognized that worth is not really an objective value - 'the jus.. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 89f3899 | Property is insecure. In this one phrase the whole history of Asia is contained. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 826c548 | En el verdadero amor no manda nadie; obedecen los dos. | Alejandro Casona | ||
| 75034ca | Llegaron juristas como Luis Jimenez de Asua; historiadores como Claudio Sanchez Albornoz; pedagogos como Lorenzo Luzuriaga; sociologos como Francisco Ayala; escritores como Rafael Alberti, Ramon Perez de Ayala, Ramon Gomez de la Serna, Juan Ramon Jimenez, Arturo Serrano Plaja, Rosa Chacel o Ricardo Baeza; musicos como Manuel de Falla; dramaturgos como Jacinto Grau y Alejandro Casona; artistas plasticos como Luis Seoane, Manuel Colmeiro y Al.. | Pacho O'Donnell | ||
| 3fe72fc | en cuanto sales de Europa, ya no hay mas que mosquitos. Unos mosquitos verdes, venenosos y pequenos, que se cuelgan por todas partes. Y que dan fiebre, y sueno... y a veces, la locura. Pero no te asustes tu, mi heroe..., tambien hay mosquiteros, y cremas especiales para la piel. Y luego, !la Ciencia! Por cada mosquito que produce Dios, producen una inyeccion los alemanes. | humor | Alejandro Casona | |
| 4631fe6 | Hoy el ingles se ha convertido en un idioma tan importante que hasta los norteamericanos van a tener que aprenderlo. | Alejandro Casona | ||
| 7ca93c9 | PASTOR- Mi nombre verdadero es Juan. Poca cosa, ?verdad? !Pero humano, senor, humano! Millares de Juanes han escrito libros y han plantado arboles. Millones de mujeres han dicho alguna vez en cualquier rincon del mundo <>. En cambio, ?quien ha querido nunca al <>? Juan sabe a pueblo y a eternidad: es el hierro, la madera de roble, el pan de trigo. <> es el nylon. | Alejandro Casona | ||
| 65eedc5 | Don't wait to give her a cookie when you're heading back inside together-- that's reinforcing her for leaving the yard, not going potty in it. You're better off casually following her around, saying "good!" as soon as she finishes," | Patricia B. McConnell | ||
| e390646 | I had always wanted to write but thought you needed a degree, or membership in a club nobody had asked me to join. I thought God had to touch you on the forehead, I thought you needed to have something specific to say, something important, and I thought you needed all that laid out from the git-go. It was a long time before I realized that you don't have to start right, you just have to start. Put pen to paper, allow yourself the freedom to.. | Abigail Thomas | ||
| 5837fdb | What is this longing, she will want to ask. This troubling feeling of more to come. You can make something out of it, I want to tell her. But that's what her life is for. | longing-for | Abigail Thomas | |
| cc37e1c | I went and bought Guitar Towns by Steve Earle instead of listening to my better self...After a bit, and despite my new relationship with time, I began to experience impatience. One song at a time was taking too long. I began to wonder if there wasn't some way I could cram all this music in at once. Oh hell. That's called fucking. | Abigail Thomas | ||
| edc2a6f | Don't worry," I say, putting a PG Tips tea bag in her mug. "It's been happening for years. It's not getting worse. Besides, I'm not hearing voice, I'm overhearing them. I just don't know what they are saying." | Abigail Thomas | ||
| 6e81484 | The thought that this happened and then this happened and then this and this and this, the relentless march of event and emotion tied together simply because day follows day and turns into week following week becoming months and years reinforces the fact that the only logical ending for chronological order is death. | Abigail Thomas | ||
| 1459d7a | our bodies often give us electric shocks, sometimes to the tune of dozens a day. It's not dangerous. We are electric after all, which is hard to remember because inside we are so wet. I breathe in and out, thinking we are really machines, fleshy machines, oxygen in, carbon dioxide out. Why am I not aware of this more often, us being such miracles, so well put together? Alive! | Abigail Thomas | ||
| 7cc1cc8 | But we're all looking for the place we belong. And what is home, anyway, but what we cobble together out of our changing selves? Maybe there isn't any it, as my friend said, only the longing | Abigail Thomas | ||
| 74048cd | He is wearing an old overcoat from the Salvation Army in Easton, Pennsylvania. It cost five bucks ten years ago, Louise remembers. Henry is not interested so much in the bargain, he wants ghosts in his clothes. He likes wondering what another man kept in those deep pockets. He writes poems about it. | old-clothes poems | Abigail Thomas | |
| 61e9846 | I have been trying to remember being young, which is hard because I don't feel old until I try to get up from my chair. Or when I look at the photograph Jennifer took of me sitting on a stool next to her twins, and really, from the back, it looks as if I have an open umbrella concealed under my skirt. How did that happen? I think, but, oh well, I was young once and slender and pretty and I made the most of it. It's somebody else's turn now. | Abigail Thomas | ||
| 30c96aa | DON'T KNOW WHO I AM," RICH SAYS OVER AND over. "There are too many thoughts inside my head. I am not myself." Yesterday he said, "Pretend you are walking up the street with your friend. You are looking in windows. But right behind you is a man with a huge roller filled with white paint and he is painting over everywhere you've been, erasing everything. He erases your friend. You don't even remember his name." The image makes me shiver, but .. | Abigail Thomas | ||
| 94128dc | the last several years my life had begun to feel shapeless, like underwear with the elastic gone, the days down around my ankles. | Abigail Thomas | ||
| 248850e | Good things happen slowly," said a doctor in the ICU months ago, "and bad things happen fast." | Abigail Thomas |