"Searles O'Dubhain"
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> "Tom"
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>> "Searles O'Dubhain"
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>>> The people generally did not live in "squalor and hardship" unless times
>>> were tough for everyone. You're projecting 21st and 20th century values
>>> and morality on much older practices which were fairly advanced for
>>> their times.
>>
>> I'm not projecting any modern values on that evaluation. It's not even
>> my evaluation. It's Julius Caesar, who actually saw real Druids, not
>> just the pretend one's you see now. From Caesar's "Gallic War Book VI":
>>
>
> Caesar was spouting propaganda in the worst way.
He was there. You weren't. If you want to refute him, you're going to need
some verifiable evidence beyond your mere say-so. The point here, however,
is that your claim that my description of the subjects of the Druids were no
more than slaves and lived in squalor is due to "projecting 21st and 20th
century values and morality on much older practices". That claim has now
been utterly refuted by the fact that Julius Caesar said the very same
thing.
>> "Throughout Gaul there are two classes of persons of definite account and
>> dignity. The common people are treated almost as slaves and are neither
>> heard nor listened to in councils. Most of them, in debt or under heavy
>> tribute or by the injuries of those more powerful commit themselves in
>> service to the nobles, who have over them all the rights which masters
>> hold over slaves. Of the two notable classes, one consists of druids and
>> the other of knights."
>
> Need I say more?
No, you needn't. You've already lost the argument irretrievably. Any
further comment from you won't change that.
>> If by "side-by-side" you mean in nearly complete ignorance of and
>> disinterest in one another, I'd agree. The Greeks had no interest in
>> conquest in that direction, since they didn't think the Celts had
>> anything worth fighting over. The Romans, on the other hand, turned
>> their attention west rather than get muddled up in the eastern conflicts
>> and rather easily swept away Europe's disorganized indigenous tribal
>> cultures, much as the Europeans later went on the sweep away the Native
>> American cultures they found once they stumbled across North and South
>> America.
>
> That's not true at all Tom. The Greeks hired Celts as mercenaries and
> eventually ceded them lands in what is now present day Turkey.
> These were the Galatians mentioned in Paul's writings of the New
> Testament.
The Celtic tribes that invaded Macedon around 300 BCE caused quite a bit of
trouble and were eventually pushed back to Turkey by what was even then a
fading Greek culture which no longer had much interest in what was going on
outside its own borders. After that they were largely ignored by the
Greeks. The Romans came along about a hundred years later and drubbed them
into submission. They were then incorporated into the Roman Empire and
never again gained any independence. They were protected thereafter by the
Pax Romana but ended up being completely assimilated by their neighbors in a
few hundred years.
>> The only difference is that the Romans themselves showed some respect for
>> the cultures they conquered, but the Roman-Celtic mixed cultures of
>> Europe showed no such respect to cultures on this side of the pond,
>> preferring genocide to assimilation. Might that indicate that Druidism
>> actually devolved the Roman ideal and made it less civilized?
>
> I don't follow what you are saying at all.
Of course not. You don't want to believe it.
>>> I'm recovering what was lost from the Brehon Laws in a reverse way of
>>> how Padraig and others edited them over the years.
>>
>> Sorry, but you don't have the raw material for such a recovery. Once you
>> kill the possessors of an oral tradition, that tradition is
>> unrecoverable. Any attempt to do so is frought with supposition,
>> inference, and blue-sky speculation. Your "recovery" of such information
>> is not dissimilar to the process of "recovering" repressed memories by
>> hypnosis. All you're doing is fantasizing and then convincing yourself
>> that the fantasy actually happened.
>
> Me thinks that you speak of things you don't know much about. It's easy to
> nay-say but much more rewarding to build. There's more to it than you've
> skimmed over here.
I sure won't learn about it from you. All you have to offer are claims for
which you have no evidence beyond romantic speculations.
>>> Your slant and spin on things seems to me to be very biased opinion.
>>
>> You discount any evidence that you find inconvenient and then accuse me
>> of "bias". You read my very specific and historically accurate example
>> of St. Patrick's admission of have edited the Brehon law in his codices
>> and then announced I had not provided "a singler valid example" of it.
>> That's what I'd call a whopping huge bias on your part.
>
> Actually, the evidence is that Padraig had little to do with editing the
> Brehon Laws and that this was an invention of the later Church and its
> scholars to establish a greater role for Padraig but the truth of that
> might be inconvenient for you.
What evidence?
> I like the story about Padraig and the eight other sages (six of whom were
> Druids) who edited the laws in the Introduction to the Senchus Mór. It's a
> fun read. There were 6 Druids on that committee. :-)
One of those "sages" was the King who was doing as Padraig suggested in
order to create a written record of the laws of Ireland. The rest were
brehons he appointed as sources for him and Padraig to record. It took them
three years and was declared afterwards by Padraig that anything conflicting
with Christian Doctrine had been expunged.
The whole thing was Padraig's project. It wasn't a "committee" of equals
and the result was not a consensus of all their viewpoints.
> You're providing children's evidence but I am indeed biased about Druids.
> There is a lot of truth to that.
I'm providing the only evidence at all in this conversation.
>>> Everyone has their own truth which establishes who they are and usually
>>> how they act.
>>
>> No, everybody has some excuse that they like to label "the truth" in
>> order to justify whatever it is they want to do. Not everybody has
>> "their own truth". Truth is not personal property.
>
> You're wrong that everyone does not have their own truth. Just ask a few
> people. Their answers will either be truth or lies. Who thinks of
> themselves as a liar? Is that everyone? Think again.
Everyone has their own truthiness, not their own truth. Truth does not vary
from person to person. Truthiness does, though. Lots of people fail to
understand the difference.
>>> Every society also has its own truths, traditions and laws. It is not
>>> slippery to acknowledge that this is so.
>>
>> Sure it is. Those are not "truths". Those are negotiated agreements and
>> tall tales. They are open to revision at will. Truth isn't something
>> you can simply decide for yourself, differently than anybody else.
>>
>
> Right Tom. Society is based on tall tales. Uhuh!
I'm glad you are finally willing to admit it.
> Let's get this straight.
> First you say society has no truth.
First, I didn't say that. I said that societies have stories and negotiated
agreements as to what will be allowed an what will be forbidden. Those are
not truths. Societies do live in a world of truths, but their laws and
traditions are not those truths.
> Then you say people have no truth.
I said that nobody "has" the truth. Truth is not something you can "have".
It cannot be owned. It cannot be kept.
> Then you say truth is not something that anyone can decide for themselves
> differently from others.
That's correct. Truth is not something that one "decides".
> It sounds as though you are saying that society
> does have a truth and that some people decide it together (like in a
> society).
Society does not "have" a truth and nobody "decides" the truth and I never
said anything that even remotely sounds like that.
> This is another great example of you saying two opposing things
> when you think they will support your assertion or position of the moment.
This is another example of you choosing to believe something in spite of
contrary evidence.
>> The motto "Truth against the world" is nothing more than an assertion
>> that you're going to hang onto your comforting lies no matter what the
>> evidence actually indicates.
>
> No it's not.
Thanks for that thoughtful explanation. Duh.
>> Truth is what remains after you do away with tradition, personal
>> experiences, logic, induction, and desire.
>
> No Tom.
Yes, Searles.
> What remains then is the nature state of the mind filled with
> nothingness. An act of nothingness is not an act of truth.
There is no such thing as "an act of truth" or "an act of nothingness". The
state of mind in which one is silent and attentive is one that allows us to
perceive what is true. The mind is not "filled with nothingness". That's
utterly ridiculous.
