Your least favorite historical figures?

Tracer Tong · **#41** by **Tracer Tong** » Oct 19, 2011 4:18 pm

Dicaeopolis the farmer.

rEvolutionist · **#42** by **rEvolutionist** » Oct 25, 2011 11:27 am

Hugin wrote:Marx is pretty high up on my list.

Not Chomsky?

rJD · **#43** by **rJD** » Oct 25, 2011 12:30 pm

I'm going to ignore the Hitlers, Pol Pots, Maos and Stalins - too many and too depressing, and avoid the originators - too difficult.

I'm just going to pick someone who represents a strain of christianity that grants a reputation for 'holiness' to people simply for being curmudgeonly bastards, St Cuthbert. This git was made a saint for, basically, hating people so much that he tried to live as much of his life as possible alone on a rock. Simon Stylites is another. Selfish bastards whose self-absorbtion and disdain for others is, to this day, promoted as some kind of heroism.

Evolving · **#44** by **Evolving** » Oct 25, 2011 12:40 pm

Wiki wrote:

...founding an oratory at Dull, Scotland...

I think I have encountered quite a lot of that school of oratory.

Tracer Tong wrote:Dicaeopolis the farmer.

What's wrong with him?

Tracer Tong · **#45** by **Tracer Tong** » Oct 26, 2011 12:42 am

Evolving wrote:
Tracer Tong wrote:Dicaeopolis the farmer.

What's wrong with him?

He's a stingy bastard.

Animavore · **#46** by **Animavore** » Oct 26, 2011 12:50 am

Is Steve Jobs an historical figure yet?

Liam Miller · **#47** by **Liam Miller** » Nov 29, 2011 3:59 am

William H. Taft is pretty damned boring.

I'm With Stupid · **#48** by **I'm With Stupid** » Nov 29, 2011 6:23 am

Stein wrote:Now I actually seriously considered Mao, since he happened to exterminate more civilians than either Hitler or Stalin. The reason why I chose not to -- and that could change -- is that when you look at the historic relationships, it's arguable that Mao is "copycat-ing" Stalin, who really set the mold. That gets back to my preoccupation with where a bloodlust starts, I suppose; who first "inserts" a destructive notion into human culture, etc. That's also probably why I view Pol Pot as second-tier as well. Like Mao, he seems to be chanelling Stalin.

I'm not sure I agree with that. I think Pol Pot in particular is worse than either. It's easy to look at the number of deaths and judge otherwise, but you have to remember that the vast majority of deaths under these dictatorship were the result of failures in food production. When you take responsibility for the entire food production of the most populous country on the planet, and cock it up, you're going to be responsible for a lot of suffering. And like any dictator, their denial of an obvious crisis (look at Hitler as Berlin was falling) probably lead to far more suffering. But I think this is a different kind of callousness to the institutionalized programmes of eradication that was saw from the likes of Hitler and Pol Pot. It's the difference between death being the aim of a policy and death being the bi-product of a policy. Of course Mao and Stalin did carry out murder too, just not on the same scale (relative to their populations) as the other two.

hoopy frood · **#49** by **hoopy frood** » Nov 29, 2011 6:50 am

I wouldn't know where to begin.

Vasili Blokhin springs to mind among many others.

Efilzeo · **#50** by **Efilzeo** » Nov 29, 2011 7:02 am

Abraham, Jesus, Mohammed. They destroyed the world.

hoopy frood · **#51** by **hoopy frood** » Nov 29, 2011 7:44 am

Efilzeo wrote:Abraham, Jesus, Mohammed. They destroyed the world.

There's no arguing with that selection. :thumbup:

But beyond their undoubted personal contribution to the ruination of mankind, we have mankind itself to blame, one way or another, for it's nature and willingness to embrace or at least tolerate such memes, for whatever reasons, then as now.

The best humanity can hope for is; the least they will tolerate. The historical precedents are not good in this respect.

Stein · **#52** by **Stein** » Nov 29, 2011 10:56 pm

Efilzeo wrote:Abraham, Jesus, Mohammed. They destroyed the world.

There is sufficient peer-reviewed secular scholarship to cast legitimate doubt on whether or not Abraham ever existed. That is not true of Jesus or Mohammed, for whom the most recent peer-reviewed secular scholarship now shows a greater likelihood than not that they really did live after all.

The slightly greater likelihood than not that a normal totally non-supernatural Jesus in Palestine did come to Jerusalem as an ethics/apocalyptic rabbi and get killed for good by the Romans after all is discussed ad nauseum in another thread (http://www.rationalskepticism.org/chris ... -t219.html). Moreover, the illegitimacy of viewing Jesus as a "classic SOB" has already been shown on page 2 of this very thread. So please do us the courtesy of reading that exchange first so we don't have to rehash old nonsense on later pages. Thank you. We're dealing here strictly with those figures who personally caused mass suffering by their own actions within their lifetimes. Jesus did not do that.

As for Mohammed, one could perhaps make an argument for his having caused some real mischief himself in the course of his lifetime. So of these three nominees, only Mohammed strikes me as having potential to be a legitimate candidate. At the same time, for his region and time, he's actually unusually fair and decent compared to his contemporaries. (That may not make a very good argument for his contemporaries.....................) Of course, Mohammed was no angel and at one point even slaughtered nearly a thousand helpless prisoners after one of his battles. Maybe that was customary for the time, and others of that period did far worse. I'm not disputing that. But it's still bad, and it has to be weighed against Mohammed's later efforts as a peacemaker.

Stein

Byron · **#53** by **Byron** » Nov 29, 2011 11:15 pm

I'm With Stupid wrote:
Stein wrote:Now I actually seriously considered Mao, since he happened to exterminate more civilians than either Hitler or Stalin. The reason why I chose not to -- and that could change -- is that when you look at the historic relationships, it's arguable that Mao is "copycat-ing" Stalin, who really set the mold. That gets back to my preoccupation with where a bloodlust starts, I suppose; who first "inserts" a destructive notion into human culture, etc. That's also probably why I view Pol Pot as second-tier as well. Like Mao, he seems to be chanelling Stalin.

I'm not sure I agree with that. I think Pol Pot in particular is worse than either. It's easy to look at the number of deaths and judge otherwise, but you have to remember that the vast majority of deaths under these dictatorship were the result of failures in food production. When you take responsibility for the entire food production of the most populous country on the planet, and cock it up, you're going to be responsible for a lot of suffering. And like any dictator, their denial of an obvious crisis (look at Hitler as Berlin was falling) probably lead to far more suffering. But I think this is a different kind of callousness to the institutionalized programmes of eradication that was saw from the likes of Hitler and Pol Pot. It's the difference between death being the aim of a policy and death being the bi-product of a policy. Of course Mao and Stalin did carry out murder too, just not on the same scale (relative to their populations) as the other two.

Interesting point of difference, this. From what I know of his period in power, Mao's millions of dead could be put down to gross criminal negligence over intentional homicide. As for Stalin, it depends whether the "Holodomor" allegations stand up.

Byron · **#54** by **Byron** » Nov 29, 2011 11:25 pm

And for my part, the perjuring murderer Titus Oates occupies a special little place of self-serving vileness. Others killed more, others killed worse, but there's something about Oates' combination of self-pitying malice and personal cowardice that marks him out. "Tailgunner" Joe McCarthy was an amateur compared to this sectarian weasel.

Animavore · **#55** by **Animavore** » Nov 29, 2011 11:35 pm

Jedward's worse.

jamest · **#56** by **jamest** » Nov 30, 2011 1:41 am

Stein wrote:
Efilzeo wrote:Abraham, Jesus, Mohammed. They destroyed the world.

There is sufficient peer-reviewed secular scholarship to cast legitimate doubt on whether or not Abraham ever existed.

I can't believe this. What evidence would one expect to see in relation to a man purported to have existed about 4000 years-ago?

proudfootz · **#57** by **proudfootz** » Dec 13, 2011 1:46 am

Socrates, the philosophic father of fascism.

But then, I guess someone had to do it...

Stein · **#58** by **Stein** » Dec 18, 2011 5:28 am

proudfootz wrote:Socrates, the philosophic father of fascism.

But then, I guess someone had to do it...

How do you derive that? Certainly Critias is the first one on record as having carried out systematic peacetime extermination. No, he wasn't the first horrible tyrant. Maybe Enetarzi is that. But Critias is the first one we know who carried out a program of cold-blooded killing, based on a premeditated articulated philosophy, and consciously aimed at many of his own people at a time when no belligerent outside threat to the state was involved in the policy.

Stein

proudfootz · **#59** by **proudfootz** » Dec 18, 2011 2:49 pm

Stein wrote:
proudfootz wrote:Socrates, the philosophic father of fascism.

But then, I guess someone had to do it...

How do you derive that? Certainly Critias is the first one on record as having carried out systematic peacetime extermination. No, he wasn't the first horrible tyrant. Maybe Enetarzi is that. But Critias is the first one we know who carried out a program of cold-blooded killing, based on a premeditated articulated philosophy, and consciously aimed at many of his own people at a time when no belligerent outside threat to the state was involved in the policy.

Stein

You're quite right in what you post.

Critias, like Alcibiades [traitor to democratic Athens] and Plato [author of the notorious Republic], was a student of Socrates.

Surely it's no concidence all the[se] bad apples came from the same barrel.

{edited for clarity}

Paul G · **#60** by **Paul G** » Dec 18, 2011 4:05 pm

Hugin wrote:Marx is pretty high up on my list.

Yeah, I'll put Adam Smith :roll:

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