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Is Blind Faith in God and the Bible a Modern Invention? | | AlterNet
Interesting analysis of the evolution of the meaning of the words "faith" and "belief" from early Christianity to today. Faith in the past was superior to today's, dealing with "commitment" instead of "blind belief that something is true."
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The term used in most New Testament texts (the Greek word pistis) meant something closer to loyalty or commitment, than unreasoning belief. When Jesus chastised his followers for their lack of faith, or commended a non-Jew for having faith, he wasn't talking about some unspoken creed. He certainly wasn't praising them for seeing that he was divine. He was talking about follow-through, about living up to ideas of selflessness and humbleness. Even the word "belief" has changed from a Middle English sense of "prize" to our modern idea of "accept at face value." Imagine how different every Christian creed would sound today if we replace "believe in" with "value" and "have faith in" with "commit myself to."
Why Neanderthals Really Went Extinct: Begley | Newsweek Voices - Sharon Begley | Newsweek.com
Córdoba: the city that changed the world | Spanish Tourist Board | guardian.co.uk
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Christopher Columbus and the Córdoba connection
It was here in Córdoba that Columbus obtained permission for his historical journey across the Atlantic.
The relatively modern statue in the garden of the Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos shows Columbus standing before the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabelle, asking them for the money to begin his voyage, which he believed would open up a much shorter trading route to Asia. The Genoese navigator had already been trying to raise money for his journey for seven years. Initially Isabella said no. But as Columbus was dejectedly leaving the court, the story goes, Ferdinand intervened, and the decision was reversed.
The journeys of Columbus began the colonial era, which inflicted suffering, slavery and death on indigenous peoples around the world. The diaries of Bartolomé de las Casas, the young Spanish priest who accompanied Columbus on his second journey, are eloquent, anguished records of the "cruelty on a scale no living being has ever seen or expects to see". It seems ironic that on the ruins of perhaps one of the most civilised and beautiful Islamic courts ever to exist, flowered the most brutal and bloody era of Christianity.
Mesopotamia, 8000–2000 B.C. | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Great timeline.
Before Lucy came Ardi, new earliest hominid found - Yahoo! News
Lucy's ancestor (?), 4.4 million years ago. We just extended our evolutionary knowledge back another million years.
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