91–100 of 114 posts
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I heartily recommend all Macauley books, but in this context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_(children%27s_book)
Also for a historical fiction take, Ken Follett’s “Pillars of the Earth” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pillars_of_the_Earth
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Belief in being created requires belief in some being (your creator, or their creator, etc...), _not_ being created - the prime mover. Unless you believe in an infinite regress of creators I guess.
Infinite regress of creators sounds the most compelling to me. Wouldn't God also wonder why he exists?
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I thought the Sagrada Familia looked better when it was unfinished. Now it's painted, it looks like something halfway between a particularly elaborate Christmas cake and a Terry Pratchett cover from the 1990s.
I was there 25 years ago, went up one of the towers. Was a magical place even though, or perhaps because, it was very much unfinished. Surely it still isn't finished? I thought it was expected to be finished in 2026. Do you have any urls showing the current state? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagrada_Fam%C3%ADlia
The Sagrada Familia is a marvel, and deserves to be finished, but it was somehow magical to be there while it was (long-windedly) being built, worked on by skilled artisans probably not too different from someone working on the cathedral in my own home town in the 1090s.
Cathedrals are fascinating storehouses of religious and general historical knowledge. If you're ever in the vicinity of a British cathedral, taking a decent guided tour is well worth the time, as the building will likely have gone through around a thousand years of slow (or dramatic) change, intimately linked to the history of the local area. In Hereford, for instance, the font has a lockable cover to stop locals ste…
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Russian Orthodox churches actually draw the same inspiration as most mosques. Roman church architecture started with this as inspiration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon,_Rome A famous example of the development is the Hagia Sophia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia There's many examples of Byzantine era architecture which were the inspiration for Islamic mosques (many actually being converted into mo…
Mike, thanks for the lengthy excursion into history, but for me it is not new information (and actually being from Russia I'm used to seeing russian churches all the time). And the thing is, traditional stock russian churches are rather different from Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, the latter being a rebuilt copy of a late 19th century design. And being such a late design (by the standards of our churches), it is h…
I mean, 5 domed churches are pretty common. Domed buildings with a similar proportion are pretty common. Here's an example that pre-dates the Taj Mahal by 100 years: https://www.advantour.com/russia/rostov/assumption-cathedral...
Similar proportions albeit slightly smaller and taller main dome (and slightly larger ancillary domes), but the curvature of the main dome is slightly more similar to the Taj Mahal's main dome. Christ the Saviour Cathedral is probably somewhere between this and the Taj Mahal for proportions.
> Famous Russian painter Vereshchagin (of the Apotheosis of War [1] fame) openly criticized the project for being a 'direct recreation of a Taj Mahal church from Acra'
Self-hating Russians (Slavs in general actually) has always been a thing. Self-hating Russian artists and writers in the 19th century was definitely a thing.
IMO, Slavs' self-hating nature and distrust of, well, everyone, is a mostly good trait but sometimes prevents them from seeing the positive side of things (my family is Ukrainian but I grew up in the west).
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Belief in being created requires belief in some being (your creator, or their creator, etc...), _not_ being created - the prime mover. Unless you believe in an infinite regress of creators I guess.
Doesn't the same infinite regress exist in physics? I know they argue that it's meaningless to ask what came "before" when the universe and time didn't exist, but the idea it all just started out of nothing or has always been seems to me as unsatisfactory as "God did it".
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Not the place for apologetics on either side, but I've never grasped how the idea that we weren't created can be logically persuasive. Emotionally persuasive, maybe.
Belief in being created requires belief in some being (your creator, or their creator, etc...), _not_ being created - the prime mover. Unless you believe in an infinite regress of creators I guess.
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Doesn't the same infinite regress exist in physics? I know they argue that it's meaningless to ask what came "before" when the universe and time didn't exist, but the idea it all just started out of nothing or has always been seems to me as unsatisfactory as "God did it".
Absolutely. If you say something came before the universe, then you need a new word to describe that, and what was previous called the universe is no longer (by definition/need for a term to encapsulate all). Personally I don't believe physics is yet equipped to answer such questions, nor can it be until we understand time (and so probably quantum gravity, due to relativity).
These are concepts that probably humans can’t grok because we are so wedded to time.
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Belief in being created requires belief in some being (your creator, or their creator, etc...), _not_ being created - the prime mover. Unless you believe in an infinite regress of creators I guess.
Infinite regress of creators sounds the most compelling to me. Wouldn't God also wonder why he exists?