List 10 of the most beneficial political books to human civilization,

[Lone_Wolf_Moderate]

in the last three centuries.

Here's mine:

The Bible
Locke's Two Treatises on Government
On Liberty by J.S Mill
1984, by Orwell
The Federalist Papers
Paine's Rights of Man
The Wealth of Nations
The Souls of Black Folk
The Basic Works Of Aristotle
The Basic Writings of Ralph Walso Emerson

This list is by no means complete, or definitive.

[jobycom]

1. How would the Bible and the Basic Works of Aristotle qualify

as the last three centuries?

[lenidog]

2. English translation and the actual availability to those who were not

rich.

[jobycom]

4. That would open up pretty much any book, wouldn't it?

[Lone_Wolf_Moderate]

5. I didn't say that had to have been written in the last three centuries.

[jobycom]

7. Ah! I see now. My bad. nt.

[Tux]

3. Bible?

More people died for the Prince of Peace than most any other cause.

Add Jefferson Bible and we can call it even.

[jobycom]

6. Nah, those people died because of greedy maniacs with weapons

who used the Bible as an excuse.

Think of the heavy metal albums that were blamed for suicides in the 80s.

I wouldn't put the Bible in the list, either, but not because of the number of people who died at the hands of idiots toting the Bible. I just don't see it as particularly important or beneficial in a political sense. It doesn't espouse democracy or freedom. Large segments of it are devoted to long outdated social, sexual and cultural laws. And while it does in some parts espouse peace, love and charity, and some could argue equality, those sections aren't particularly original.

As a religious book, as an historical book with great impact, it's tops, but as a political force, I don't see it.

[Tux]

9. WTF?!

:wtf: :wtf: :wtf: :wtf: :wtf:

Right now, Christians are just waiting to kill us all since their book says to do it. And you say it's not a political force? Do you need to see the furance I'll be burned in? I don't care who weilds it, Bible does promote killing of people for no reason. How can that be holy or sacred?

Not really fair but when when you're surrounded by fundies who think humanist want to make their kids gay, you'd be paranoid too.

[jobycom]

11. I'm in Texas

I'm as surrounded as it gets. The Bible says a lot of things, from Kill you neighbor, to Love your neighbor. There is no one underlying message through it. If you want to pick out one of the 66 (or however many) books and use it, go for it. But as whole, it says whatever the person using it wants to hear. It's the little voice inside the head, more than a book.

[Tux]

12. Well

All I hear from Christians is hate, hate, and hate. I can't even stand reading it. Once I get to the part of God having a fit over Adam and Eve gaining knowledge from the tree, I have to stop. Education isn't evil.

I'm on a rant tonight but I am sick of all this faith stuff lately. What happened to informed opinions, science, technology, and such?

[jobycom]

13. Keep in mind that

People like Martin Luther King, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, and Jesse Jackson also cite the Bible as their greatest influence. The hate of conservatives comes from within them, not from the Bible.

As for science, technology and such, not everyone who believes in the Bible are opposed to those. Carter was a nuclear engineer, as I recall. There's no reason faith in a religion has to preclude any of that.

Again, it is something inside these fundies that makes them the way they are, not in the Bible. If the Bible were to vanish, or if the Bible had never been written, most of those wars would have still been fought for other reasons. The Crusades, for instance, are taught as religious wars, but they were far more economically than religiously motivated. Religion was how the leaders motivated the soldiers, but not what caused the wars in the first place. Not very different than Iraq now.

As for education not being evil, I don't think that's the point of the Adam and Eve myth. It wasn't the Tree of Knowledge, it was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. I've never fully understood the whole myth, but I swear when I read it I don't think of the Creator God as good. You know how Zues and the Greeco-Roman gods roamed the earth and did lots of naughty stuff? I'm not sure that isn't the point of the apple story, either. I mean, God told them if they ate from the tree, they would die. The snake said they wouldn't. The snake was right. Also, the snake told them God was afraid they would gain the same knowledge he had. Again, the snake was right. I think the whole idea that God was good and the snake was evil is in the eye of the beholder. To me, the myth reads like a story about a jealous god making irrational decisions, like the Greek gods turning people into trees or spiders. All that other stuff was just the way Christians later interpreted it.

Sorry, just rambling. I think of the Bible as a bunch of different books and texts that have been used as excuses by people for good and bad actions for thousands of years. Those people don't care what the books actually say--they only care what they can make the books say.

[Tux]

14. Ack

My fundie family is pushing me to baptist church since I joined a UU church. My uncle claims that I am tearing the family apart (similar to my old Christian church that said my mom got Parkinson's because I left the church) by not being Christian. My family doesn't like science, liberals, intellectual activities, spirituality, most technology, views different than they have, reading books, writing anything (I do poetry once in a great while), and anything that may offend Falwell, Robertson, and Dobson.

[bhikkhu]

21. Jimmy Carter a nuclear engineer?

[DBoon]

8. Looking Backward by Bellamy

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
The Other America by Michael Harrington

[jobycom]

10. Okay, now that the Bible and Aristotle question are settled

I'll give it a shot, though this isn't my strong point. (I'm tempted to just take the conservatives' ten worst books... but I won't)

Das Kapital
Locke's Treatises
Paine's Rights of Man
The Declaration of Independence (if the Federalist Papers can be a book, so can the DoI!)
On the Wealth of Nations.
Freud's Totem and Taboo
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Woodward and Bernstein's WP exposes of Nixon.
The Jungle, Upton Sinclair

Sorry, stopped at nine.

[Tux]

15. You forgot the Constitution.

[jobycom]

16. Didn't forget it

I just think of it as a law code. The preamble is cool, but not long enough for a book, and it was pretty much a rehash of the Declaration as far as the purpose of government goes.

But since I only had nine books, what the heck, I'll make it my tenth.

[Lone_Wolf_Moderate]

18. Ultimately, I kind of got the idea from the conservatives'

top 10 worst. I wanted to build up, rather than tear down, so I decided to pick the ten best.

[BurtWorm]

17. I'm really puzzled why "The Origin of Species" isn't on there.

Or Copernicus's "De Revolutionibus."

Those books altered the way people viewed the world.

[Tenseiga]

19. "Beneficial" is extremely subjective

To those living in the lower classes of society, "The Communist Manifesto" might rank at the top of that list. They had revolutions over that book. People who understand the concept of "individual" despise that book. Since I have not actually read "the Communist Manifesto", I will refrain from commenting either way.

As to books I might consider "beneficial", the only answer I could come up with is The Republic. Barring anything being lost in translation, what makes this book "beneficial" is the way it logically breaks down down the virtues and vices of political systems, that there truly is no perfect system, and these various systems would be exclusive to one another.

Definitely worth two reads, I'm on my third.

[bhikkhu]

20. How many people have read them?

I read the bible in catholic school, 1984 in high school, and a bit of the wealth of nations. Others I have browsed, or read "about". Benefits are easily overstated. Having two children who are avid readers, I can say with little doubt that they are unlikely to ever read any of the books above except under compulsion, except perhaps 1984. Which leaves only vague and haphazard means for these texts to continue any shreds of influence, and our judgement of the soundness of the character of the last century or two to weigh their benefit.

The wrong books, I would say, or perhaps rather that the premiss may be negated: politics do not benefit civilization.

[fladonkey]

22. The Prince

[fladonkey]

23. The Prince