Is there anything you just find jaw dropping about History?

[citation needed]

just because you have a materialist conception of the universe and place a high value of empiricism doesn't mean anyone who doesn't is a fool. I doubt you could even defend materialism/empiricism if I asked you to.

The Battle of Muret. Even taking into consideration they were running, wouldn't there be more than 8 deaths purely from self-defense?

>Rome conquers the shit out of all thei neightbors and their neightbors
>massive amount of slaves start working for land owners
>normal farmres are not competitive anymore
>rural exode to roman cities
>massive amount of poor (but citizens after all) people overpopulate the main metropolis of the empire
>if the emperor dont do something his gonna face a lot of rebelions
>mayority of actual population are slave with many reasons to posibly join them
>emperors builds up free sanitary systems and entertaining services in order to calm them down
>money and resources are not a problem

basically this user

It's actually very easy to argue for materialism because it works.

Because I read Chemistry books, I know what will happen if I throw a bucket of gasoline into a fire. I know it will rain when I see grey clouds in the sky. I can predict the trajectory of planets with complete precision which is why there's always an eclipse when scientists say 'there will be an eclipse'. Dumb people like you might not realize it, but science is essentially making predictions and the scientific method always finds good ways to make accurate predictions. These empirically based predictions are the reason why calendars, computers, medicine, cars and the internet can work.

So how do YOU argue for immateriality?

Where would human civilization be if we disregarded every and anything material as but a creation of God? Where would we be if we were to believe some diseases are a punishment from God rather than a consequence of bacterial infection? People would still die from common cold and other mundane diseases. Where would we be if we were to believe the Earth is immobile and the center of the Universe rather than only one gear of a complex astrodynamics puzzle? We wouldn't have satellites, internet, phones, etc. Where would we be if we believed children naturally spawn in a woman's womb rather than be formed through sex? Childbirth would still be the leading cause of female deaths.

There is just no way to argue for immateriality because it's unfalsifiable by default and an immaterial world view has never been proven to work or do anything worth a damn, any particular immaterial world of view is as realistic as claiming this Universe is reigned by an upper layer of existence whereas My Little Pony characters are gods and they punish those who don't watch their show with eternal anal horse rape.

So just face it, your life has no meaning or purpose, you have no afterlife, and there is no god who cares about you.

You can lie to yourself if that makes you feel better though.

Pretty much everything involving death in China.

Mostly the medical shit back then. People having to go through surgery without any anesthetic and feeling everything.

>Where would human civilization be if we disregarded every and anything material as but a creation of God? Where would we be if we were to believe some diseases are a punishment from God rather than a consequence of bacterial infection? People would still die from common cold and other mundane diseases. Where would we be if we were to believe the Earth is immobile and the center of the Universe rather than only one gear of a complex astrodynamics puzzle? We wouldn't have satellites, internet, phones, etc. Where would we be if we believed children naturally spawn in a woman's womb rather than be formed through sex? Childbirth would still be the leading cause of female deaths.

Go back to r*ddit until after you've read a few books or go ahead and keep watching clickbait listicles about "X THING YOU WON'T BELIEVE THE B A C K W A R D S MIDDLE AGES PEOPLE DID!!!!!"

This is a very good one, modern medicine is a miracle.
I had my tooth pulled out a few weeks ago, after I got some anaesthetics and the dentist started pushing it to check if I felt anything, I said I felt a bit of a sharp pain, injected some more and I literally felt nothing when he pulled it out.
Then I think what people had to experience back in medieval shit and whatnot and I sometimes am left in awe of the wonders of modern medicine

>There is just no way to argue for immateriality because it's unfalsifiable by default and an immaterial world view has never been proven to work or do anything worth a damn, any particular immaterial world of view is as realistic as claiming this Universe is reigned by an upper layer of existence whereas My Little Pony characters are gods and they punish those who don't watch their show with eternal anal horse rape.

>So just face it, your life has no meaning or purpose, you have no afterlife, and there is no god who cares about you.

You say that with some pessimism. I think we should actually be thankful to conclude an immaterial afterlife doesn't exist because it could be just as shitty as the my little pony afterlife you described. And we should be thankful our lives have no meaning, purpose or a higher humanoid creator looking over us.

Can you imagine if there actually was such thing? How would humanity exist knowing which god was the right one and with complete proof of his existence? It would mean billions of people are in Hell right now because they were born into the wrong religion and only a minority gets to enjoy eternal peace. It's better that life is simpler than that and much fairer that there is no afterlife. I'm relieved that this is the conclusion rather than something else.

you dig a tunnel underground and let water run through it.

Thanks for the reply.
Added to my "compilation of angry christians resort to ad hominem in internet arguments'.

oh, and if you mean the super sophisticated sanitation of rome, that's because they had centuries to build those up.

You don't seem to understand the topic being discussed at all. Predicting events empirically isn't the same as proving that empiricism is the best method for discovering the truth. What does prediction have to do with the truth?

Also, you are being very hypocritical.
>So just face it, your life has no meaning or purpose, you have no afterlife, and there is no god who cares about you.
>Where would human civilization be if we disregarded every and anything material as but a creation of God?....
>People would still die from common cold and other mundane diseases.....
You are saying that there is no meaning or purpose to life yet you are placing value on things like survival rates and proclaiming that human civilization is better now than it was back then. You are saying that the materialist worldview best fits how life should be while also saying there is no meaning. This is how confused you are.

Your understanding of spirituality's role in the natural sciences during the Christian period of Europe is brainlet-tier.

Study of the environment did not conflict with the Church's agenda during the middle ages until very late, if it even did then.

>Where would we be if we were to believe some diseases are a punishment from God rather than a consequence of bacterial infection?

The prevailing medical theory during the middle ages was that of the humors governing the body, inhierited from the Greeks I believe. Google it.

>People would still die from common cold
>

>Where would we be if we were to believe the Earth is immobile and the center of the Universe rather than only one gear of a complex astrodynamics puzzle?

Just about the same spot except we were to believe the Earth is immobile and the center of the Universe

Nothing of our current astronautical achievement clashes with the idea of geocentrism. We could still hurtle satellites into orbit and create the infrastructure necessary for modern telecommunication

>Where would we be if we believed children naturally spawn in a woman's womb rather than be formed through sex?

I don't even know how you manufactured this. Knowledge of conception is old as human civilization itself.

Your misconceptions are beneath entry-tier

>Because I read Chemistry books, I know what will happen if I throw a bucket of gasoline into a fire. I know it will rain when I see grey clouds in the sky. I can predict the trajectory of planets with complete precision which is why there's always an eclipse when scientists say 'there will be an eclipse'. Dumb people like you might not realize it, but science is essentially making predictions and the scientific method always finds good ways to make accurate predictions. These empirically based predictions are the reason why calendars, computers, medicine, cars and the internet can work.
This is the rambling of someone who has no idea what materialism is.

I mean basic shit like street cleaning. Garbage pickup. Sewage transport. Piping. Aquifers. Stables for horses.

As a civil engineer for a modern city the idea of a city of 1 million people in 15 BC just boggles my mind.

>Where would we be if we believed children naturally spawn in a woman's womb rather than be formed through sex?
God punished a dude for pulling out during sex cause he didn't want to get a woman pregnant, fuck off with your fedora-tier knowledge of the Bible.
Genesis 38:8 if you don't believe me by the way.

Fuck, meant Genesis 38 in general, not that particular part.

As i said, the system grew over time. the big advantage rome had is its long political stability. if nobody destroys the things youre forefathers build, you can expand that and in the span of a couple of centuries you can build a very impressive empire.

>friendly discussion about history
>christians and new agers feel the urge to derail the thread into debating why their particular imaginary belief system is the right one
how typical

The fact that we can something like this. No other species has EVER done this before. In all of Earth's history - biblical or scientific - humanity has never been so advanced and powerful. Our clawless, fangless, bipedal bodies managed to be the most developed species evolution/God ever spit out. We bend nature, we breed new species in lieu of nature/God, our brains carried us outside the atmosphere and the tethers of the very planet that birthed us... we are a marvel. Even now, shitposting on some dying website that the Romans would have scarified ten thousand civilizations to have it for one day, we are doing something so profoundly amazing. We are communicating using electrons bouncing off one another across vast distances to machines formed from metallic rocks that think using a code of numerals rather than biologically like we do. Fucking insane

>mfw a materialist is having an autistic rant near me

If you want to read it: archive.org/details/pickleforknowing00dextrich

I get about eight pages in before my frontal cortex collapses

Yet even with all of this, the common man still persists to shitpost, as he used to.
pompeiana.org/Resources/Ancient/Graffiti from Pompeii.htm

The fact that it was the US's actions that facilitated the creation of both communist China and radical Islamic States.

The two biggest problems we have in the modern world.

...

I would say even better, wtf they had heating on their floors? we dont even have that now.

How is communist China a problem? The people's republic is literally the biggest poverty-destroyer in human history.

Thank you so much for this tip. Reading it now

It didn't work that well for most people desu
community.plu.edu/~315j06/doc/slums-sanitation.pdf

This to me is even more astonishing. Human behavior has changed very little in 2000 years.

2000 years ago romans were anonymously shit posting on a wall in a literal Italian grain forum.

also check this book out
libgen.io/book/index.php?md5=3FE7B7247D8B137B9B4938F23DB79345

Those minarets were a stupid addition

They, like my post, were put there to cause butthurt.

The fact that people still believe to this day that japanese war crimes happened.

Not to forget

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_concrete

What do you mean "addition"? they were there since the building of the mosque.

its only plus is weathering water much better than modern concrete, that's how it survived for so long
in terms of static strength it's completely BTFO by modern concretes

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haavara_Agreement

the creation of nuclear weapons is a jaw-dropper for me. Harnessing that massive energy, only 50 years after humanity even learnt how to fly (and lots of other stuff, the exponential rate of technological progression is astonishing). Just saying fuck it lets test it, no matter the consequences, sure they didn't actually believe they would ignite the atmosphere, but still. Than just turning something so awesome into a dick measuring contest and building bigger and bigger ones.

Not really jaw-dropping, but how about the fact that humanity (men) refuse to stop making the same fucking basic, yet fatal mistakes over and over and over and over and fucking over again throughout history?

And every single effort is geared toward one, singular end: self-annihilation. Fascinating.

That's human nature for you Michel...

Humanity is a cancer.

I was always very interested in the fact that war isn't just a group of guys trying to kill the other group. That is the byproduct of the real purpose, which is to attain certain explicit and concrete objectives, such as taking one single city along a front that covers a lot of territory.

Sometimes I get horrified of the fact that actual lives are lost at war, but then my depression kicks back in. Meh.

Anyone have that SMBC where they build evermore powerful doomsday weapons until they destroy causality and cause the big bang?

Found it.

If nothing has meaning or purpose, then why does it matter whether we believe everything is due to God or people die due to common cold?
If you care about these things then at the very least you are assigning meaning to them, so you contradict yourself. Not to mention meaning is not the domain of materialistic science, so you are showing there's more than that. inb4 i was pretending to be retarded

"He caned her for not sufficiently grieving his death"

What a madman kek.

For me it's the fact that people believe that the entire universe came from a small ball exploding and animals morphing from bacteria into other animals.

Also astounding to me is how much is lost in war. Aside from lives, health and personal relationships of course, so much work is lost in so many forms.
Work in the form of millions having to labor purely to fuel the war, in the form of resources that go only toward weapons and such, in the form of buildings and things that get destroyed, in the form of money that goes to finance the war instead of the economy.

That people make laws, try to change the world, or simply kill other people because of falsehoods that they believe to be true.

If there is one thing I could change about humans, it would be this.

what is your theory otherwise?

I think that there have been a shitload of other universes, one day, every blackhole will join together and there won't be anything left. Maybe that's how the Big Bang happened

Watson: God! You're just like Don Quixote, you think everything's always something else!

Playfair/Holmes [Laughs]: Well he had a point. Of course, he carried it a bit too far. He thought that every windmill was a giant. That's insane. But, thinking that they might be... well… all the best minds used to think the world was flat. — But, what if it isn't? — It might be round — and bread mold might be medicine. If we never looked at things and thought of what they might be, why, we'd all still be out there in the tall grass with the apes.

I don't think I'd like to live in a world where we had 100% certainty of everything we knew desu.

I thought it was insane how people think Germany deserves to exist as a country after not just one world war caused by them, but two.

Third time's the charm?

I find this whole discussion itt to kind of stupid, and didn't want to contribute because people should believe in what they want to believe or not believe, but I really have to correct you, animals are eukaryotes and bacteria are prokaryotes, they have a common ancestor. The process of "morphing" is well understood (theory of evolution), granted abiogenesis isn't fully understood, which doesn't mean it won't be in the future, but stick to your beliefs, just don't force them on others.

Well, seeing as the region beyond the event horizon of black hole is meaningfully detached from the spacetime that is the foundation of our reality, it might be said that they are already independent occurences of existence. We may be living in a supercollapsed chunk of a higher order "universe" right now. Merely as a 3-dimensional stain occupying a neglible portion of some crazy looking 4-dimensional space.

When considering the ephemerality of things we see as so concrete, a little imagination can show one new worlds of pretty wild shit.

The Christmas Truce is a great story, but in the subsequent years the mood of the war had changed from simply providing military assistance to either side because of treaty obligations to revenge for the fierce fighting and atrocities of the opponent. The war was no longer a formality for most, as it was in 1914, so sadly the good nature did not last

T. Middleschooler

And the thing is, we will never know within our lifetime

I recall, years ago, going through a box of my great-grandmother's things and coming across a grade school notebook. In it, there were dozens of derogatory references to Germany and the Kaiser. Bear in mind, this was in Minnesota, but I wonder what the public really thought the war was about at the time. I'm sure there was a significant difference in the opinions of homebodies and the cannon fodder, but I've read very few first hand accounts of that time except as retrospectives or dramatizations after the fact.

The existence of religion and related structures. You make up something, people believe it and you are able to obtain your whole power on a bunch of stories. How absolutely unbelievable is that.

That right after the Revolutionary War which was triggered by some rich people being angered by their tea being taxed that but instantly after it the same leaders that were Rich tried to start taxing whiskey which led to the Whiskey Rebellion which was basically the same thing. What I'm trying to say is that the entire country was founded on a lie and that the people who started it didn't want taxes on the beverages for the wretch but instantly tried to tax beverages for the poor because their beliefs and Everyman create were created equal or something that they just created in order to justify getting poor people to fight for them. It's funny that almost no schools in America teach about the Whiskey Rebellion and how it was basically started by the hypocrisy of the quote on quote founding fathers.

Having spent the overwhelming majority of time as a disparate spattering of matter and energy before being chaotically flung into my current and corporeal state, I can't really say that I care too much about this tiny pinhole of perception that exists only for a short instant. My passions lie more in the sublimity of the greater reality to which I belong (hopefully). The fact that I do exist as a conduit through which the universe may observe itself is neat, but trivial. If there is nothing else, I am immensely entertained by the course of this strange, beautiful world. Though I may not know anything in absolute truth, the elegance of the cosmos that I have observed, learned of, or otherwise abstracted is deeply satisfying, in that I am assured it will continue on without me.

Think not of life as a possession, but a fragile and ephemeral state. In this framing, one can come upon his or her own death and, instead of being disturbed, exit this world as satisfied guest.

but i want to fuck life in the ass

May I recommend astroglide (now with existential-reinforced metaphysics).

Don't get me wrong, although we won't know for sure why the universe is like this within our lifetime, I'm not going to act all sad because of this, I would even go as far as saying that I wouldn't even care if I knew.
For example, when I'm out on a forest, the idea that the trees are pumping out oxygen and absorving CO2 doesn't cross my mind, or why the rock I'm sitting on happened to be there and how it ended up there. But anyways, we weren't born for the purpose of discovering and questioning, our true purpose in this world is to pay taxes and die.

I would recommend taking an interest in maths. It really sorted me out to have an understanding of a sort offundamental structure to work with. Of course, I was a feckless transient with a heavy methamphetamine habit before I returned to school and eventually ended receiving my Phd. Each case is different, but I feel that we all, in our own way, must find some sort of solid ground with which to use a reference for our respective world views. I don't know what yours is, but I find the absolute, uncompromising nature of numbers is pretty effective.

For me is Justice, I'm planning on studying Law and becoming an investigator in my country's judicial police. Basically I hope to put people like the guy who sold you methamphetamines behind bars, and hopefully, the guy who made them. Cracking down and arresting anyone involved in a terrorist act is also a task I hope to perform.

Also congratulations and massive respect for leaving methamphetamine use.

You're both retards, that isn't the hagia sofia.

Modern world only started like 400 years ago.

We stand on eggshells and pretend its stone.

It would be even better than today. Can you imagine having qt slave nowadays?

Thank you, but it was more a natural progression of events that lead me away from my habits. I only did what felt right, and it required little effort, believe it or not.

It is good to hear that you have found a cause so noble you can devote yourself to it. Having been on the other end of the law for much of my life, however, I hope you can take some empathy with you in its practicing. The whole span of impulses and actions that range from good and evil and right and wrong, do not negate the benefit a bit of humanity can bring to each consideration.

The steady progress of medicine. For just 300 years ago almost none believed in the existence of germs and now we are about to find ways to use animal organs in human bodies in a broad scale.

>For me it's the fact that people worshiped imaginary deities and believed in an afterlife for thousands of years.
The hook was baited from the start.

*tips fedora*

>For me it's the fact that people worshiped imaginary deities and believed in an afterlife for thousands of years.
Thats just your ignorance showing.
Study the history of Philosophy and it's a pretty clear line of progression with the God stuff.

That jews still exist

I will take your advice in consideration, thank you and have a good life.

Except half the city's population was enslaved.

Surgeries in some cases were done routinely without proper anesthesia for most of the 20th century. In some cases it still happens today.

Nice digits Satan

In 1917 the Germans, knowing that support for both the War and the Tsar was collapsing in Russia, encouraged their soldiers to fraternize with Russian soldiers in no-mans land. They hoped that this would make the Russian troops even less interested in attacking.

They had to stop because the Russian soldiers were giving the German troops Bolshevik literature and encouraging them to tell their officers to fuck off.

Then they found out that the Russian soldiers were telling the German soldiers ab

Ab... ab what? Continue

1. The Church accepted certain lines of inquiry while censuring others. That's why Galileo spent part of his life under house arrest, he reported things that clashed with accepted dogma.
2. During the early Middle Ages in particular, and throughout the ancient and medieval worlds, it was widely believed that different diseases had divine significance. Leprosy in Europe was revered as a sort of holy penitence, the viral equivalent of self flagellation. Also, doctors and "scientists" believed that the body functioned in specific ways that depended upon the existence of an intangible soul. Believing in humors was closely tied to the concepts of sin and redemption. Google it.
3. Literally all of our satellite expeditions to other planets depend on predicting the correct timing when two celestial bodies with differing orbits come close together. How are you uninformed enough not to think of this?
4. What the first user was talking about is the idea of "spontaneous generation", which was theorized by Aristotle and widely accepted by two thousand years of immaterial thinkers until Louis Pasteur decisively disproved it in 1859. Believing that mice randomly appear in warehouses full of grain, or that flies auto-generate on a corpse, is just as retarded as believing that a baby comes from nowhere - which is assuredly how ancient humans without scientific knowledge thought.

tl;dr you completely failed to rebut anything you responded to and should probably go enjoy some Saturday night activity with other people that doesn't involve heavy thinking instead of trying to wade into a discussion with people that find you tiresome and foolish.