Historical Misconceptions That We Hate

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When done properly, hanging might actually be less painful than the electric chair.

If done properly. But if not...

I don't really 'hate' it, but....

"There are only two types of religions in this world; Christians and Non-Christians. All Christians are good, while all Non-Christians are bad."



There are many types of religions in this word. There is Christianity, yes, but there is also:
-Judaism (existed thousands of years BEFORE Christianity, BTW.)
-Islam
-Many types of pagan religions, like Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Norse
-Buddhism
-Shintoism
-Hinduism
-Nature Spiritualism

Second, and MOST importantly, what kind of religion you believe in and how intentionally good or bad you are are TWO very different things. I've seen people who "follow the light" to be malicious, while the "followers of darkness" tend to have a heart of gold.

Seriously, whatever's especially said on that Anti-NonChristian films God's Not Dead series and comic Chick Tracts (more like Chicken Craps) is just ridiculous.

Sometimes I feel like this world has turned into the anime A Certain Magical Index series (if anyone has heard of it).

This belief is itself a bit of a myth because it is an example of "over zealous debunking".

Its true that the Magna Carta was not 'an early call for democracy'.

But it is also true that the Magna Carta was vital in paving the way for the later evolution of democracy.

The reason for that is that buried within the now irrelevant depths of the document (stuff that has to do with tax relief for the nobles) is one little tiny thing. And that tiny detail is the assertion that "the king is not above the law". The Magna Carta enshrined the rule of law (as opposed to rule by fiat- rule by whatever the ruler says). You cant have democracy without the rule of law.

The document was drafted to resolve disputes between the monarchy and the feudal lords (part of the growing tension between feudalism and the rise of centralized monarchies throughout western Europe at that time of the late Middle Ages). Probably neither party (either the kings or the nobles) had any notion that the document would pave the way for both nobles and kings to eventually loose power, and paving the way for us (the rude common peasantry) to take over. Lol!

The rule of law is an important concept that shouldn't be forgotten today in Trump's America.

Sometimes I wonder if democracy was really an honest attempt to give power to the people or if it was really just a way to give power to rich people.

It's the perfect system to accomplish that goal. People vote for their leader. The leader with the most expensive advertising campaign wins. Billionaires fund the one they want to win. Afterwards the leader owes them a favour, especially if he wants continued funding for his second election.

Modern democracy was setup by rich guys and it continues to benefit rich guys. It truly is a continuation of the Magna Carta. That was written to benefit rich guys too.

That's...an open question. Yes.

This is fundamentally IT.
Nothing gets in the way of rich guys getting richer.

"Benjamin Franklin discovered electricity by flying a kite in a thunderstorm."

No. Electricity was a known phenomenon before Franklin's day, although it was not completely understood. Franklin believed that electric current was some kind of a "fluid" that went from one object to another, and that lightning was merely a dramatic display of static electricity.

We know that he published his groundbreaking diagrams for a lightning rod in May 1752, a month before his alleged kite escapade. The main source for the kite story is Franklin's friend, scientist Joseph Priestley, who wrote about it 15 years after the alleged event. Thus, it is an apocryphal legend that seems to fit the personality of Dr. Franklin, but that has no basis for belief other than it is an interesting story.

"The Confederacy fought the 'War of Northern Aggression' to preserve state's rights - not to keep slaves."

Bullsnot.

While it is true Abraham Lincoln did not declare war on the Confederate states to end the practice of slavery -- he declared war because the Confederate states were attempting to secede and he wanted to save a unified U.S. of A. -- it is also true that the Confederate states were in rebellion against federal laws that restricted the movement of its slaves in the North. The Confederate decision to secede from the Union was to free itself from federal interference in its slave trade.

They tried "States' Rights" under the Articles of Confederation. That didn't work.

So they called a Constitutional Convention.

Hence, our Constitution. Our Constitution is based on unity---including unity in getting rid of outmoded notions like the enslavement of a race of people.

I don't want to disillusion anybody about this, but:

"Christmas is a Christian holiday, and it's the day when Jesus was born."



First of all, there are many stories in the Bible questioning when exactly Jesus was born. One story says He's born in around April, while another said that He's born in around October.

Second, Christmas isn't exactly a Christian holiday. The feasting, the wreathes, the tree decorating, they were all from a pagan holiday celebrating the darkest day of the year (because, you know, it's winter), and, I don't know, the Christians have either adopted, or stole, the pagans' tradition from them, and made it into Jesus' birthday (again, there were many stories questioning His exact birthday).

Don't get me wrong though, I'm not saying that everyone should stop celebrating it, and I don't really hate Christmas like Scrooge or The Grinch either, but, seriously, they need to learn that Christmas is not an excuse for mass consumerism. Yeah, basically, holidays are really about spending time with your friends and family.

Christmas trees as we know them today - evergreens - probably had a much more recent introduction by Martin Luther, father of the Protestant Reformation. The tree worshiping Druids seem to have been more enamored by deciduous trees.

Heard a similar , but different story:that the tree thing was a thousand years earlier than Luther.

According to one issue of the Mark Trail comic strip I read in the Sunday paper, around Xmas time, back when I was a kid in sixth grade it was a missionary in the Dark Ages who was spreading Christianity from the Roman world to the Barbarian tribes of Germany who started it.

The pagan tribes worshipped oak trees. But the missionary made a spectacle of cutting down an oak tree with an axe, and told them "from now on venerate this little fir tree" because it symbolizes Christ. And it showed a picture of the guy pointing to a little fir tree next to the big thick oak he had just felled while the assembled crowd of tribesmen in the forest looked on.

I don't recall WHY a fir or pine trees or any needle tree would be linked to Christ, except maybe in the negative sense that its NOT a deciduous tree (which the locals associated with the Pagan gods). But that's what I read in Mark Trail.

The missionary guy might have been some well known saint. I don't recall for sure though.

Thing is, though, Luther's Germany was a thousand years after the introduction of Christianity. Very likely, it was still a later use of trees for Christmas, especially since the use of such trees had no historic basis before then.

I'd say fir trees and other conifers became associated with Christmas because they point upwards toward the traditional heaven, and because they're evergreen, the association being that Christ said he would always be with us year round.

Deciduous trees wouldn't work for Christmas in the northern climes as they wouldn't have any leaves!

As somebody who lives in the south here in the US one thing I hate is that belief northerners have that they weren't racist towards black people because they freed slavery after defeating us during the American Civil War.

That is a load of crap because they were very racist too. Black soldiers who fought for the Union were paid less than white soldiers for one thing, and many weren't even allowed to have guns they had to fight with shovels. In fact one of the reasons many black families stayed in the south after the war was because they could not find any work up north and they still had no rights and would not be given rights until almost 100 years later during the Civil Rights Movement.

I also would get disgusted at the history books in school that sugarcoated the way that they treated the south during and after the war. Things like "The wonderful Union felt sorry for the evil racist Confederates because they were dirty, smelly, starving, and had no shoes so they fed them food and help their southern brothers and sisters rebuild the south after everything was burned to the ground by General Sherman". Pretty much minimizing the part about how screwed up it really was that they starved us into surrendering by destroying our farms, cutting off our supplies, and looting our towns and that a lot of the people who helped "rebuild" the south were just carpetbagger scumbags who came down to profit from the devestation that was done to us and they took advantage of a lot of southerners. Damn Yankees...

Also those same merciful northerners wanted to have us all shot and executed as traitors to the country. The only thing that stopped them from doing that was President Lincoln who felt that it would be wrong.