Thread by @nntaleb

Mini-Symposium [thread]
Friends, I have to write a foreword for
@holland_tom's Dominion, as punishment for listening to @TheRestHistory at the (profane) gym.

1- Is Xrstnty the 1st "religion" to establish the separation holy-profane?

2- Is it the 1rst to eliminate hierarchies?

3- When did the distinction between Judean [יהודה] and Jewish [יהודי] appear?

4- Adding from here: how to transcend the verbalism about "religion".
A lot of modern Judaism comes from Christianity. The sequence Judaism -> Christianity -> Islam is not entirely in one direction.

medium.com/incerto/we-don…

5- Is there any form of creed before Christianity that extended compassion beyond its ethnic base, where the "other" is an outsider? I do not mean Axial-age type statements, but something more formalized.

6- Is Christianity (as per article in the prev. tweet) the only Abrahamic religion to establish a natural division between church and state?

7- Is there another religion, Abrahamic or not, that bases its creed on the skin-in-the-game of the central god, as in Christianity making its god suffer as a human?

8- Was Christianity the first to institute full monogamy? (Roman monogamy admitted concubines; Judaism was polygamous).
Another disruption of mother-daughter (Judaism-> Chr): did it cause Ashkenazi Judaism to embrace monogamy?

8b- According to Tom Holland, Christian sexual pudeur & chastity put an end to the use of slaves as sex toys; Romans were able do whatever they wanted w/their slaves [the only inhibition was the slave's value as a property]. It led to respecting other people's dignity etc.

9- Rediscovered this piece "The Opiate of the Middle Class": religious beliefs are not epistemic; were never meant to be so.
"Amen" means "I trust" not I believe in the scientific-epistemic sense.
Another error from the "enlightenment". You can learn from Pinker in reverse.

9- When you pledge allegiance or submission to a god, you are in fact pledging allegiance to a group,across generations Αι γενεαί πάσαι.
كامل الأجيال
Karen Armstrong discusses pblm w/"pisteuo" (tr. credo), a committment, not a belief in the modern sense.

medium.com/incerto/we-don…

10- The great mathematician Michael Atiyah visited a friend in North Lebanon (where Atiyah is originally from).
Atiyyah: "What is your religion?"
Friend: "I am atheist."
Atiyah: "Are you atheist Rum Orthodox, atheist Maronite atheist Shiite, or atheist Sunni?"

11- My approach to this is on how Christianity fares with respect to decision making under opacity and uncertainty.
I am not a theologian but a probabilist.

econjwatch.org/articles/relig…