The one theology book all atheists really should read

Well, even if we want to accept that printing presses have a mind of their own, benevolently going around printing things for the greater good of humanity (or, if you subscribe to a world view of chaos, just randomnly producing subject matter for publication), you have 1000 year gap, so the world's your oyster.

But even if you want to fudge 1000 years and begin during the renaissance (now there's an interesting word ... a renaissance of what?) you will be fudging around the next 200-300 years until you come to a point where greek philosophy takes a serious departure from theological discourse.

 

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Is there anyone else here who doesn't know that the ancient Greeks could write?
Along with several peoples of Mesopotamia, India and China, who had were already writing down their ideas c 3000 BC.

 

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Your question as to the agency that brought Greek philosophy to our current age in no way entails that agency as being conscious, as if theology itself were somehow conscious. In no way has theology brought Greek philosophy to our current age like the printing press has. You can go to a bookstore and buy any of hundreds of books on Greek philosophy that have nothing to do with theology. In the thousand years before our current age church scribes (not theologians) translated the greek classics and made them available to universities. But this was still a very limited readership, and nothing like the access our current age has to those classics thru book printing. Theology has nothing to do with this.

 

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Just about all the ancient philosophical texts in existence today had been recovered in the Latin west by the end of the renaissance. They weren't pieced together from the more philosophical sorts of theological texts from late antiquity (I'm thinking of writers like the Cappadocians here) or from the theological writers (Anselm etc.) from the early high medieval period. Many of these writers used philosophical vocabulary for theological purposes (ousia, hypastases) but they didn't transmit the ancient philosophical texts themselves.

The appearance of these in the Latin speaking west was the product of a number of schools of translators in Spain, Sicily and in the Greek-speaking Byzantine empire, translating either Arabic translations of the ancient Greek texts, or copies of the Greek texts preserved by the Byzantines. There were even hugely influential Arabic commentaries on some of the texts, such as those by Averroes.

The Roman Catholic Church actually tried to prevent the spread of Aristotle's writings in the early universities, fearing that these pagan works contradicted Christian doctrine. But ironically, this proscription had the opposite of its intended effect, leading to underground popularity for Aristotle at the University of Paris. Soon everyone was reading him, even though they could be excommunicated for doing so. In the 1200's, more than 1500 years after his death, Aristotle had somehow managed to become a stylish Paris intellectual discussed in all the cafes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condemnations_of_1210–1277

Well, if you can't beat him, co-opt him. It was Thomas Aquinas that finally made Aristotle safe for Christianity, reinterpreting all of the central Christian doctrines in Aristotelian terms. And again ironically, Aquinas' synthesis of Christianity and Aristotle, known as 'Thomism', became the official philosophy of the Roman Catholic Church.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/medieval-philosophy/

Then in the 14th and especially in the 15th centuries, the rise of the renaissance (especially in Italy) brought with it a new fascination with the literature of antiquity. This was the time when the Muslim Turks were overrunning the last of the Byzantine empire (the surviving East Roman empire) and many Greek scholars fled to Italy with the most precious texts from their libraries. Italian scholars traveled the known world and searched through every library they could find, looking for ancient texts, or at least copies of them. Many of these scholars were looking especially for pagan literature, and much of the surviving scientific literature of antiquity was caught up in the net.

This is where the modern world got Plato's dialogues and the physico-mathematical works of Archimedes. And hundreds of other texts. Pretty much all of the ancient writings known today were known by the end of the renaissance.

These new materials had revolutionary impacts on European intellectual life. For example the recovery of Sextus Empiricus led to a 16th century vogue for Pyrrhonian skepticism, which in turn led to the work of people like Montaigne and Descartes a century or so later. And to some extent, the whole agenda of modern philosophy has been a battle against hydra-headed skeptical nihilism ever since. It's a big part of what created the modern intellectual world.

http://www.f.waseda.jp/sidoli/LE201_05_Renaissance.pdf

 

Then I guess you can look at the issue of how they are preserved ...simply in sterilized museums as artifacts from the past ... or within social conventions relevant to contemporary thought.
I mean there is a huge difference between cuneiform stocktakes or King Arthur and Plato's dialogues.

 

I'm not sure what you are trying to say by "conscious theology".
But, its clear that these works of Greece came to be viewed as "classical" (and not mere "antiquities") by theological thought, and subsequently by other branches of knowledge and academia of the western world. You want to say theology is not legitimate, yet history illustrates it is responsible for bringing the social institutions that "legitimized" them

.

Even analyzing the origins, developments (and controversies) of the printing press in the western world divorced from theology (because it is not, apparently, a legitimate field of study ...www.sciforums.com/threads/the-one-theology-book-all-atheists-really-should-read.161124/page-6#post-3537696 .... ) is a tall task.
It would be more honest if you were just forthright in saying that you have personal critical views of theology and deal with it on that level. There is no need to rewrite history for the sake of avoiding the entrance to the philosophical arena.

 

That's the wonder of the printing press. It could print all sorts of books, from illegitimate fields of study like alchemy and astrology, works of fiction, and fairy tales, to scientific treatises and greek classics. The fact that it published theological works in no way implicates that invention as some how part of the field of theology. It's a physical machine. It has nothing to do with theology.

 

As I mentioned, better to be forthright in your views and deal with them in the proper forum rather than trash history.
I mean, at the very least, works of alchemy etc didn't play a role in effectively splitting the western world in two in a manner that wasn't to be seen until the cold war. Books on theology were not just "another genre" of the printing press.

 

Yeah...I'm afraid that's all they were. And to this day, they are just another book genre in a library of hundreds of other genres. And one gathering dust at a rather alarming rate. There's something to be said for the progress of real knowledge in our current age.

 

Understood

Yet there is the possibility of knowledge in ancient times that could be applicable , now .

I don't know what that book it would be , but I'm sure that ancient knowledge is not restricted to that time .

 

Describing their dust gathering as "alarming" goes against your presupposition.
Flashing blue lights, sirens. Police tape.
Yes.
Sure.
Nothing to see there, just like the officer told me.

 

Most ancient writings have been gone over tooth and nail by now by scholars more qualified than most people. I doubt there's much that we've missed that could be of value.

 

True

What Scholars ? , and from where ? , and what is their motivation to find the truth ? In the end

 

We have people who devote their lives to studying ancient manuscripts. Why are you questioning this? I thought this was common knowledge.

 

Who is WE ?

Here is the thing , interperation of ancient manuscripts is the problem .

 

All human beings on planet earth. Except for you evidently.

 

Evidently

Not the first or last Human being to question , interperation

At least It better not be

 

Kudos for that.
Certainly got a chuckle at the accidental implication of catastrophic end days.

 

Dibs on this being the pivotal marker you will possibly be coming back to in 20 pages time, along with mention on relying on the charity of strangers to whom one doesn't respect, and walks up the garden path..

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It's like there's a special AI that all the overt Abrahamic theists use for posting on science forums, to dither their prose - move everything just enough off kilter so it suggests what they want it to (disparagement, insult, etc) without actually meaning anything or pinning anything on them.

How else would they so characteristically - the lot of them, not just this guy - come up with something like "mention on relying on the charity of strangers to whom one doesn't respect"? Afaik there isn't even a language that produces that from someone mentally translating into shaky English - and if there is, they can't all be native speakers of it.

And that remains far and away the most interesting feature of their posting here. It's striking. What is going on with these guys? Is this a product of a common bad faith and shared dishonest agenda, for example.