Things everybody knows that are actually wrong

[dead0man]

NO POLITICS IN THIS THREAD

But then it would lose most of its entertainment value

I thought it was plenty entertaining before politics invaded.

Agreed

[Hash]

Francois Bayrou is a centrist

(False: He's either a Bible-bashing Catholic or a secular leftie)

[Хahar 🤔]

It's 'liberal' to regulate and spend vast amounts of taxpayer money on the economy.

Read again the title of the thread.

I did.

You think that everybody knows this?

     The idea that he refers to is a common notion for Americans to hold, though I think that people in most other parts of the world are aware of how silly it is.

Americans are a strange people. I also find it weird that the USA uses Blue for Democrats and Red for Republicans. I've always thought red is the color of the left.

Not in Quebec!

[Sensei]

Francois Bayrou is a centrist

(False: He's either a Bible-bashing Catholic or a secular leftie)

Did you even read the last few posts before yours?

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

John Paul II was a progressive pope

Once again:

LEARN THE PURPOSE OF THIS THREAD OR SHUT THE FUCK UP.

How doesn't this fit the purpose of the threat?

Because it is not what is commonly believed.  I loved the man but he was no progressive- on moral matters or politics.  He literally shouted down the leftists and liberation theologists.  His Nicaragua homily was a fascinating exchange.  "Silencio."  At the same time he spoke out against some of the tinpot quasi fascist dictators in C. America   

Read an official Polish press and see, how he's rated as a "progressive"

And, BRTD, stop being agreesive and acting like Coburn in 2012 with red avatar, please

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

John Paul II was a progressive pope

Once again:

LEARN THE PURPOSE OF THIS THREAD OR SHUT THE FUCK UP.

How doesn't this fit the purpose of the threat?

Because it is not what is commonly believed.  I loved the man but he was no progressive- on moral matters or politics.  He literally shouted down the leftists and liberation theologists.  His Nicaragua homily was a fascinating exchange.  "Silencio."  At the same time he spoke out against some of the tinpot quasi fascist dictators in C. America   

Read an official Polish press and see, how he's rated as a "progressive"

And, BRTD, stop being agreesive and acting like Coburn in 2012 with red avatar, please

You are simply posting the opposite of truth in issues you really care about and not commonly held misconceptions, which is not the purpose of this thread. When has anyone besides Richius claimed he's a moderate or that Larry Craig is not gay? Also as vocal as the Birther/death panel types get, they are not anywhere near a vast majority.

[ilikeverin]

Francois Bayrou is a centrist

(False: He's either a Bible-bashing Catholic or a secular leftie)

Did you even read the last few posts before yours?

I don't think anyone reads the "no politics plz" posts anymore.  I mean, it's not like you can't talk about politicians (e.g. "Herbert Hoover was an uncaring person." is a definite untruth that everyone off the forum "knows"), but me posting, say "NANNY STATES ARE INHERENTLY EVIL" or "TIM PAWLENTY IS A MODERATE" as untruths are no-nos.

[12th Doctor]

Anyway back on track:

The Spanish Inquisition.

I hate to say it since it's sort of a backhanded defense of Catholicism, but the Spanish Inquisition wasn't anywhere near as remotely bad as the classic portrayals of it. Rather than the exquisite tortures one thinks of, the vast majority of those submitted to it were merely questioned and then forced to make some sort of public confession and apology for their "heresy", and maybe pay a fine. Very few people were executed and the infamous tortures weren't all that commonly used either.

Not only that, but Rome was usually more instrumental in stopping inquisitions than it was in starting them.  Indeed, it ordered an end to the Spanish Inquisition.

Inquisitions instigated by Rome were rarely violent.  Only a small percentage of them resulted in any bloodshed at all.

[12th Doctor]

The majority of Italians speak Italian and Spoke Italian during this period. Actually only at the very most 10% did. Perhaps as low as 2.5%

I have many conditions and corrections to place on your long list, but I will pick on this one, in particular...

It depends on how you define "Italian".  All people in Italy spoke one dialect or another of the language.  But what we now think of as "Standard Italian" was derived from from Tuscan... and by "derived" I mean that it was Tuscan, though modern Tuscan has gone its separate way from the standard, as all dialects lucky enough to be picked as a standard ultimately do.  It was used as a standard in the upper-classes simply because most Italian intellectual work was written in this form going back to the 1400's.

While this could be said of any language, even today most Italians do not speak the "Standard" in unofficial contexts.  In fact, a four year old child from Venice and a four year old from Sicily would have serious trouble speaking to one another, because most children are not taught the standard until they go to school.

[12th Doctor]

Eh... what the Hell.

Thinking of Jmfsct here...

All original Christian thinkers (including it seems, Paul) denied the existence of demons and of the Roman gods. Actually no, they believed they existed but that they were inferior to the Christian God.

Paul mentions demons in his letters, so I am not sure who thinks of Paul in particular.

The thought on this has been cyclical.  Clearly, the very early Jewish writers were polytheistic, not in that they believed in many gods, but they believed that their god was the god who had power over all others.  By the later writings, this thought has changed to something more clearly monotheistic, but the idea of demons has become a bit more prevalent (duelist).  There seems to have been a reemergence of the "greater than all those gods" mentality in very early Christian writings. 

However, by the 6th century, it is very clear that the Church has become strictly monotheistic, and believed that witchcraft, and pagan religions were pure non-sense.  I am reminded of a quote (and I honestly can't remember who said it) "If you walk into a village of pagans, worshiping a tree, then do not cut it down, but rather consecrate it to Christ, and direct them to worship Christ there, as they would normally assemble.  The idea being that they feared nothing pagan anymore, because it was bogus, and so had nothing to fear by taking over pagan festivals, practices, etc so long as they were done in the name of Christ.

The European interest in the evils of witchcraft reemerged as a popular front, not from Rome, during the Black Death, and Rome (or actually Avignon, at this point) fought against it bitterly, at first.

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Again, there were currents, and cycles of how prevalent this think was, from Egypt, to Greece, to Rome.  Most Greek philosophers were strict monotheists.  In fact, it is often presupposed, through linguistic evidence, that the original Proto Indo Europeans were monotheists. As "Zeus" (which was not originally pronounced with a "z" sound, but rather a sound that I can't even render in English script, but sounds like a combo of a d-j-z)... and thus "Jupiter," and "Deus" all trace back through IE languages to a common word which simply means "God".

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Depends.  This too was cyclical, the most .  Also, the Vomitorium was real, it was just a linguistic misunderstanding, and "Vomit" is Classical Latin means simple to "exit".

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Our entire understanding of human sexual norms is quite different from that of people prior to the emergence of Protestantism, and has gone through more morphing since then.

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Not sure what you mean here.

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Linguistically, they are.  In terms of genes, there are definitely genes from the Celtic peoples within Irish populations, however, the majority of the genetic contribution comes from people who have been there since neolithic times.  In fact, the same could be said of all the remaining Celtic speaking peoples.  The reason they are still speaking Celtic Languages being very similar to the reason they remained genetically isolated.

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Depends on what you mean here.  The concept of a nation, though not so articulated, extends back quite a ways.  Though how people define it in general, and in relation to certain peoples in particular has changed.

We know that nations existed before Roman times, and that they were, for the most part, only put on hold in the West as a result of the commonality brought about by the expansion of Rome, and the proliferation of its cultural contributions through the 14th century.

[12th Doctor]

This is not a "thing everyone knows" but rather an addendum to my last point:

Contrary to what everyone today thinks, it was the Protestants who had this strange obsession with codifying, regulating, and normalizing sexual behaviors.

[paul718]

While this could be said of any language, even today most Italians do not speak the "Standard" in unofficial contexts.  In fact, a four year old child from Venice and a four year old from Sicily would have serious trouble speaking to one another, because most children are not taught the standard until they go to school.

I can vouch for this.  When I was in Italy with my family around ten years ago, we hit it off with a family from Queens.  The mother and father were Sicilian, but only the father was educated.  The mother spoke neither English nor Italian, only Sicilian.  She was able to communicate only through her husband. 

Also, the Neapolitan I've grown up around is quite distinct from standard Italian.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

This is not a "thing everyone knows" but rather an addendum to my last point:

Contrary to what everyone today thinks, it was the Protestants who had this strange obsession with codifying, regulating, and normalizing sexual behaviors.

Yes - well it was always there within Medieval Catholicism, but they never particularly successful. Prostitution was legal throughout Europe in the Middle Ages. To give one example. It would however be wrong to claim that Protestantism is what brought about modern day prudery, that has a long tradition with all branches of Christianity (Just think of the Skoptsys) but gradually got more prounceded in Protestant regions and teachings. Which isn't very surprising given that Protestantism was considered at that time (by its followers) to be a reversion to the teachings of the church fathers - especially Augustine.

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Opinions of witchcraft changed over time in Rome. Though for most of the middle ages witchcraft was considered superstition by Rome - however this changed with a proclaimation by John XXII in the 1320s. The witch hunts of the Early Modern Period were though unusually intense, though regions where prosecutions were strongest varied - Protestant England and Catholic Spain were both skeptical - prosecutions were by far the strongest in the lands of the Holy Roman Empire.

I will also note when the witchcraft craze died down in the late 17th Century it wasn't due to religious factors.

As for the lack of belief in miracles in Late Antiquity, that's simply lol (and point of why one should not try and find out about Christianity in any period by studying the ideas of certain popes). It was not by subtle Theological arguments that the populace of Europe were over to their priest - if they were.

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It wasn't during the Black Death but about a century and a half when the mass witchcraft trails emerged, and two Rome and more accurately, the Roman Inquistion in many regions were the driving force behind the trials.

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I think you'll find the vast majority of Irish people speak English.

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Yes, but earlier. Actually iirc the French are more 'celtic' than the Irish.

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Ummm.. No, what nations are you referring to in pre-Roman times. While one may argue for the Greeks that it is highly controversial. There was, after all, no Greek State and the Greeks fought each other more than any outsider. What there was was a cultural and linguistic awareness (which of course stretched over areas far, far greater than the modern terriority of Greece) of being 'Greek'. Which isn't the same thing as the modern concept.

Not to mention that this awareness was probably shared by a minority of the population - including those that were literate.

I will also add another one: Ireland had a golden age of culture in the 6th-8th Centuries which was mainly due to Christianity and missionary activity. This is simply wrong - the Irish church in this period was de facto completely separated from Rome and many practices remained different for longer in the Celtic Churches than in mainland Europe - including the date for Easter. It was effectively heretical (though heresy would not be a huge issue in the church until the 11th Century or so - or at least not as crucial) and was so for a long time. When the Anglo-Normans invaded Ireland in the 1160s they actually had backing from - ironies of ironies this - the Pope, Adrian IV - as to make the Irish church conform more with mainstream western christianity. Though admittely by this point it was a very different church and Adrian IV was English.

As for the golden age of missionary activity; utterly false. There were men who travelled to ascestic centres across Europe from Ireland but this was not for missionary reason, this was rather to get out of an Ireland which was hardly christian or the most superficially christian and where the vast majority of population were considered by the aristocratic clergy to be sinners and condemned to hell. The purpose of going abroad to Europe or to Scotland was to search for intense ascetic experience not souls. The Intellectuals left Ireland as it was not to their to satisification, the people too backward in their estimation. As you can see by my posts, nothing has changed in the past 1500 years.

Even by the Eighteenth Century Roman Catholicism in the west of Ireland was basically paganistic. But then again the West of Ireland in the 18th Century resembled more, say, rural India than England at the same period.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Most people in Europe from about c5th Century AD till the Post-WWII era were Christians.

I was going to write something along the lines of "depends what you mean by Christian" until I realised that there's no point - if you hold that most of the people who more-or-less see themselves as Christians in Europe now are Christian, then you have to say the same of the same sort of people in pre-urban, pre-industrial Europe. And, more to the point, vice-versa. And, amusingly enough, there are now things in Western countries that might be called "folk religion" were they a few centuries earlier or in the Third World. Thinking especially of the macabre mountains of flowers that build up near the sites of road accidents.

Interestingly enough, church attendence rates in England weren't much higher in the 18th century than they are now. That the CofE was extremely weak in the early 19th century in the new industrial cities such as Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds is no surprise when you consider this context.

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Yeah, lol. That's a good one. Sort of like claiming that the modern residents of Caernarfon built the castle there.

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I see that you're taking issue with Max Weber now!

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Oh, here's a directly political one:

Harold Wilson claimed that he went to school barefoot.

No. He claimed that he went to school without shoes - in other words, that he (along with millions of other children before the War) wore clogs.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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Yeah okay it was slightly intellectually ambigious. It was really more of an attack on the annoying "Christian Europe is being CORRUPTED BY DECADENT LIBERALISM OMG!!11" school of thought, which actually influences our history in ways most people can't imagine. I blame the Victorians. For everything.

The CoE figures don't surprise me. Wasn't there like, no churches whatsoever in the newly industrialized cities at the start of the 19th Century?

As for the third world, interesting fact: The concept of witchcraft, which today has its stronghold in Africa (and is seen by many commentators as a sign of backwardness, stupidity, needs white people to rule them, etc) was originally imported into Africa from 16th Century European traders. While there were witch doctors and the like (white magicians) before then, the modern (mostly female) idea of witchcraft solely originated in Europe. Yet another Colonial blowback...

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Thankfully alot of people are more ignorant of folk sociology than before, but this one still sticks.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I blame the Victorians. For everything.

It's certainly tempting, though you should remember that many of the key features of the Victorian mindset (such as the ideology usually termed "Classic Liberalism" these days - not that anyone who calls themself a "Classic Liberal" now is actually one entirely, but that's different...) were in place before the convential beginning of the "Victorian" age.

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Yes (though there were often Nonconformist chapels). Most Anglican churches and cathedrals in industrial cities date from after the famous religious census (which panicked the church into action, basically). Of course there were several other factors here - most industrial areas in Britain were forest/upland/marshy hellhole (sometimes all three) before industrialisation and the CofE had pretty much never been seriously organised in such places. The new cities were also largely knocked up by speculative builders with no interest in such things as "community" (or "safety" and "sanitation", come to think of it) and a great interest in making a profit (ah, Capitalism! There's next to none of these houses still around now - the last were knocked down in the '60's (by which point they were literally falling apart anyway). They were horrors, real horrors. Some of the facts are hard to believe, even for someone of my political leanings. And yet, 'tis all true... for general descriptions, Engels is actually pretty good) and so no churches were built at the times of great population boom. And at the beginning of the 19th century there was a tremendous ignorance amongst the ruling elite of the new industrial areas - the classic example of which is the New Poor Law.

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bitter lolz all round

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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Ah yes of course. But it only got "institutionalized" (not the most perfect word but it will do) in that period. I mean romanticism (the good bits of it) was strong during the Regency and after, but public intellectual life in the Victorian period (with a few notable exceptions) was well....

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You know that sounds awfully familiar

[ilikeverin]

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Scholars aren't sure; according to Wikipedia, it was either [zd] (like in the middle of "Mazda") or [dz] (like at the end of "beds") or [z] (like... "z"...) or perhaps all three pronunciations coexisted.

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This is a rather silly argument, however.

[Хahar 🤔]

Syllable initial [dz] sounds much more natural than [zd]. But what do I know?

[Associate Justice PiT]

Syllable initial [dz] sounds much more natural than [zd]. But what do I know?

     I could only imagine [zd] being easily pronuncible if it were something more like Zih-dei-uss. It's probably okay though if you say it fast enough.

[Хahar 🤔]

Syllable initial [dz] sounds much more natural than [zd]. But what do I know?

     I could only imagine [zd] being easily pronuncible if it were something more like Zih-dei-uss. It's probably okay though if you say it fast enough.

The Armenian word for "please" is [Xnt4em]. Anything is possible (excpet the gray spots on the IPA chart).

[12th Doctor]

As for the lack of belief in miracles in Late Antiquity, that's simply lol (and point of why one should not try and find out about Christianity in any period by studying the ideas of certain popes). It was not by subtle Theological arguments that the populace of Europe were over to their priest - if they were.

I am somewhat confused as to what extent, if any, I made that argument.  I never said anything about miracles.

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Witch trails did spring up again during the Black Death, as I said, through a popular front, mostly along the Rhine.  Many people were persecuted for being either Jews or witches and blamed for the plague.  This is historically verifiable.  Witchcraft, and mass Jewish persecutions had been largely unheard of in Europe (with one very notable exception in England) for several centuries before that, and didn't become an issue again until after, as I said.

Makes sense, as the persecutions were typically the result of mass hysteria of some form or another.

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I'm pretty sure you know what I meant.

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That would be correct.  Hell, the English are more Celtic than the Irish, from a purely genetic standpoint.

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Ummm... yes.  A large part of the reason we don't know of many of these nations that existed before Roman times is because the Romans committed mass genocide against my of them... the Dacians come to mind here as just one of many examples.

It seems clear that every single group that the Romans conquered, from the Celts in France, to the the Britons, to the Israelites had some sense of a national community, and we know this, no less, because these traits are often ascribed to them by Roman historians like Tacitus.  The Speech of Calgacus smacks of nationalist sentiment, and while it was almost certainly manufactured by Tacitus, it very clearly demonstrates that these ideas were out there.

Maybe we should throw another one out here:

The nation is something that is an invention of people who only seek to use the idea to brainwash people into feeling a false sense of community, to whip the up into hatred against those not in that community. 

Utter rubbish, as you would say.  All sociological data shows that it is a natural phenomenon that extends from the bottom-up.  It is a natural instinct of people to find and define such identities.  In fact, it is usually the intelligentsia, the wealthy, etc. who will have the weakest sense of national feeling, as they are the ones with the weakest ties to the community.

You guys need to find a new line, psychology and history are proving you wrong.

The nation is a purely organic phenomenon that extends from the people, because it is the people.  Definitions change, from time-to-time and place-to-place, but they are just different states of matter, it doesn't change the existence of the concept.

If nationalism didn't arise until the industrial era, as Marxist, and other theorists contend, then you guys have alot of explaining to do about all the clearly nationalist stuff that existed for hundreds of years before that point.

[12th Doctor]

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Scholars aren't sure; according to Wikipedia, it was either [zd] (like in the middle of "Mazda") or [dz] (like at the end of "beds") or [z] (like... "z"...) or perhaps all three pronunciations coexisted.

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This is a rather silly argument, however.

From my understanding, all these words trace back to a word for one male deity, signifying the existence of this concept to the PIE speakers.  On the other hand, none of the words for the other gods in any of the other languages trace back to a similar origin, even between the Greeks and the Romans.  As a linguist, you know that it would be highly unusual for common words to not have been retained when a common concept was shared by speakers.  Thus, this concept of this one male god must predate all the other gods.  It is not conclusive, by any means, by it provides some challenge to the basic assumptions.

Also, the way I typically have heard it pronounced in something kinda like "j-dz-uice".

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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Yes I know what you meant... but it happens to be wrong.

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Okay yes, but the persecution of Jews and the persecution of Witches should most certainly be seen as two different things.

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So then how are we Celtic then?