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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Solon who wrote (33199)	10/16/2001 11:52:07 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

First of all, "the 20th century" is about one in 20,000th part of sapient history; so that, even if your statement was correct, it certainly would not gainsay mine. True but it is only a small part of history but through most of sentient history there were less people and the people had less ability to kill each other. The 20th century was almost certainly the most violent century in our history when measured by the number of people who where violently killed by other people. discover.com "Before the invention of agriculture, the global population was probably no more than 5 million to 10 million, kept low by the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. By A.D. 1 the population had risen to about 300 million, judging from fragmentary censuses in Rome, China, and the Mediterranean. Applying a high birthrate to that population, we can estimate a total 106 billion humans have been born. The 6.1 billion living at present therefore represent 5.7 percent of all who have lived. Rapid growth in developing countries has caused the global population to soar from just 1.6 billion in 1900, so the percentage currently alive compared with those ever born is actually rising. " Of course other estimates differ and certainly some of the people killed in the 20th century where killed by religious absolutists. I do not claim that my statement disproved yours merely that it provided evidence against it. Re: afterlife My apologies for any confusion which may have ensued from my slapdash response. Apologies accepted. If we then focus on absolutism overall rather then just absolutism that deals with visions of the afterlife, you have a much better case, since many people where killed by non religious absolutists and probably many of these killings where motivated by absolutist ideas. I think I can agree that is it likely that a lot, perhaps the majority of wholesale slaughter was committed for absolutist ideas, but I don't think it would be 99% or even close. War's and purges have been motivated by desire for land, or to decide who will be in charge, or because of family rivalries or personal insult or any number of other reasons. Also a lot of killings are "retail", individual murders, yes the hanging of the teenage girl as a which might be considered an "Absolutist" killing, but drug dealers fighting for territory, or someone someone committing murder in a fit of jealous rage when he found his sexual partner was cheating on him, are more common reasons for murder. The "wholesale" killings probably add up to a lot more then the "retail" killings but I would imagine they add up to less then 99%. My point was that most blood shed in human history was shed due to the intolerance, bigotry, and certainty, of those ignorant and insensitive people who, either wittingly, or unwittingly, believed in the certainty and "absolutism" of their point of view. I do accept as possible or even likely that most (meaning a majority) of human blood shed by other humans was due to intolerance, bigotry or certainty, but I don't think it reaches 99%. If you merely want to say 50+% then you might find it easier to get people to agree. Also I think relativists (or at least people who are not absolutists) can still be motivated by intolerance or bigotry. Like, what kind of a human being would hang a teen-age girl as a "witch"??, thus ending the life of an innocent human being?? What kind of a person or social unit could do that?? You believe in absolutism, right? Could you do that?? I wouldn't do that. Assuming the girl was innocent (and I see no reason to assume anything else) I would say that the killing was absolutely wrong. You point out absolutists and then seem to somehow try to connect their evil to me. Do you think that is fair? If I posted an example of a horrible murder committed by a moral relativist, would it be fair for me to imply a connection to you? Its not even like our absolute beliefs are the same. Would it be fair to draw a connection between the crimes of the communists and an absolute believer in either pacifism or capitalism? Tim