The Reformation turns 500. Do you have your Luther Playmobil action figure at the ready? I do

[guillaumeb]

From the article:

The 500th anniversary of Martin Luther banging on the Wittenberg Door . . . or not exactly banging, as you can see below.
In honor of the birth of Protestantism, Craig Harline’s written A World Ablaze: The Rise of Martin Luther and the Birth of the Reformation (Oxford, October 3), focusing on the first several years of Luther’s rise.

To read more of this, in my view, hugely significant event:

http://religionnews.com/2017/10/18/2522013/

[Act_of_Reparation]

1. Next year we get to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the 30 Years' War.

For the 8 million that died, Wittenberg was indeed a hugely significant event.

[trotsky]

2. Neat. Let's celebrate one of Europe's worst anti-Semites!

On second thought, no thanks.

You can celebrate religious bigotry if you wish, guillaumeb. You might even get a few folks to join you.

[Act_of_Reparation]

3. He also threw his lot behind the nobility during the German Peasants' War.

[guillaumeb]

4. I would ask where you found this in my words,

but on second thought, why bother.

[trotsky]

11. Found what? A reason to praise Martin Luther?

I said I don't want to celebrate a horrible anti-Semite. That's just me.

I realize that you yourself are willing to just make up shit and accuse people of having said it, but that's not my thing.

[guillaumeb]

15. No, your history at DU certainly does not support

a claim that you reframe and mischaracterize. Never. Remember the whole "demon" claim that you made?

[trotsky]

27. Yeah, I remember that claim because I just got done proving it.

Oh I know, you say I didn't, but you can't explain why. You just stick your fingers in your ears and scream "la la la la la."

The fact remains, I documented my claim and you haven't. Fuck, at least I tried. You still haven't provided ONE lousy link to support your claim.

Everyone here needs to know about your tactics. I will be right here exposing them as long as it takes.

[Angry Dragon]

30. are you saying Luther was a demon??

[NeoGreen]

5. Meh...

...I prefer to celebrate the Enlightenment.

The so called reformation is a twaddle.

[Pope George Ringo II]

6. It did break the RCC monopoly on Europe

We'd never have had the Enlightenment without that fracture. While it's true that kings and queens fought for ten decades for the gods they made, the Reformation was paying the price in blood for the freedom that led to the Enlightenment.

[NeoGreen]

7. Ahhh...so Eurocentric. (nt)

[Pope George Ringo II]

8. I'm an EU citizen

I'm allowed.

[NeoGreen]

9. You win this round...

...but I'll get you next time and your little dog too!

[Voltaire2]

10. "We'd never have had the Enlightenment without that fracture" is a tough claim to prove.

the Reformation did indeed fracture the RCC monoply on religion, but the enlightenment did not depend on that. It's precursor, the renaissance, and modernity itself, emerged within the confines of the Roman church. Catholic France was the heart of the enlightenment.

[Pope George Ringo II]

12. No argument on the importance of the Renaissance

But consider the chain of events set in motion by the Reformation. The Thirty Years War is largely (and rightly) remembered for borderline-genocidal casualty rates in one of the ugliest conflicts in history, but a relevant point is that making such a mess required maintaining and projecting military forces on a scale seldom seen before. Without glossing over the negative consequences of such slaughter, meeting those logistical demands fed directly into the rise of the administrative state which was really required to eventually make the Enlightenment matter. As part of petty princelings and kings picking and choosing religions as the fortunes of war (or the marriage bed, in Henry VIII's earlier case) encouraged, that administrative state also gained a generally uncontested first claim on its citizens, which had previously been in dispute with the church. That's a heck of a basis to put concepts like Enlightened Absolutism into practice, and also fed into Enlightenment concepts like "separation of church and state" or "consent of the governed" replacing "divine right of kings" where the secular owes even nominal allegiance to the ecclesiastical.

As a more general statement, just learning to live with neighbors who were clearly vile heretics necessitated a certain opening of the mind. Problems with that concept led to things like the Huguenot exodus, with names like Pierre Bayle becoming prominent in Holland. Holland might well owe its very existence to the Reformation, and the Dutch role in trade, exploration, and finance was a huge contributor to an expanding world and expanding minds at the time of the Enlightenment.

And there can be little doubt a certain Frenchman had the Reformation at least partially in mind when he commented on absurdities and atrocities. Many of the great minds of the Enlightenment were deists, rather than some variety of christian. It is hard to imagine they would have been such, arrived at such conclusions, and publicly expressed such thoughts in a Europe of such uniformity as existed before Luther. Recall also Pierre-Simon Laplace and "I had no need of that hypothesis." We needed church power to be fractured before such an opinion could be stated in public.

I am a big believer in history being very interconnected. I wouldn't say the Reformation/Counter-Reformation was more important than the Renaissance by any stretch--and it certainly was less benevolent--but I do believe it was a vital link on the way to the Enlightenment.

[guillaumeb]

13. The enlightenment is a reflection of the Creator's light.

A pale reflection, but all part of humans being created in the image and likeness.

[AtheistCrusader]

14. There you go, trying to claim ownership of me for your god.

Please stop that shit.

[guillaumeb]

16. Ownership?

You own yourself. Obviously you have parents who physically created you, but they do not own you. You live in a universe that is the evidence of the Creator, but the Creator gave you free will and sentience for a reason. Ownership is not that reason.

[AtheistCrusader]

17. If you're going to make claim like "all part of humans being created in the image and likeness" then

you really need to prove it, because there's zero evidence, beyond YOUR CLAIM that I was created by a god, let alone in a god's image or likeness.

I am not your god's property. I am not your god's work. I am not your god's creation. I owe it nothing.

[guillaumeb]

18. Property?

Introducing another baseless claim?

I understand. Where did I say anything remotely like what you are arguing against?

Property? Ownership?

[AtheistCrusader]

22. When you mix labor and resources, what do you get?

There's an implication to your claim that at the very least, I owe my nature and my existence to something other than my parents.

[Voltaire2]

24. Its like Mormons baptizing dead people

into their silly religion. It’s sort of rude but hard to get offended by because it is so stupid.

[trotsky]

28. "You live in a universe that is the evidence of the Creator"

Totally unproven claim.

"the Creator gave you free will and sentience for a reason"

Another totally unproven claim.

[Cuthbert Allgood]

19. I'm going to have to agree that this is insulting and in poor taste.

Believe what ever you want, but keep me out of it. And don't claim everyone else in your beliefs either.

[Act_of_Reparation]

20. No it isn't.

[NeoGreen]

21. Thor? Zeus? or maybe Odin?

No?

Well, when you settle on a particular flavor of the poison, just remember...it's poison.

"Image and likeness", then how come we aren't all invisible?

And who created this so called 'creator', anyway?

[Fix The Stupid]

23. And people here wonder why trump got elected...n/t

[Voltaire2]

25. Replace reflection with rejection and you might

be on to something

[Pope George Ringo II]

26. Well put.

[Angry Dragon]

31. We are all gods

[gopiscrap]

29. Love it