If you could change one historic event...

[James]

If you could change one historical event to your liking, what would it be and why?

[CC]

The wheel. We'd be much better off still living in caves...j/k...sort of...:O)

[WatsonGlenn]

I would move the invention of the European style printing press ahead about 3000 years

[chadn737]

I would change my family's history so that Im born into a powerful and incredibly rich world where my every desire is satisfied. :D

[FruitandNut]

I would leave things largely alone as I cannot fully know all the consequences of my actions long term.

The one thing I might tackle though as an afterthought, is ignorance. For everybody to be really aware the full picture before engaging in anything.

[WatsonGlenn]

The one thing I might tackle though as an afterthought, is ignorance. For everybody to be really aware the full picture before engaging in anything.


Nothing would ever get done.

[Andacanavar]

I would change my family's history so that Im born into a powerful and incredibly rich world where my every desire is satisfied. :D

I like the way you think. :D

[TheMessiahTM]

I would have given the Virgin Mary an abortion.

[mask]

i would have simply told god where adam and eve were before they talked to the snake,
the world was a much better place when only 2 humans lived there

[Zenstone]

I could do without the invention of Limburger cheese.

[Slipnish]

Only one event?

I would move out west and buy California prior to the gold rush. Also large portions of Oklahoma, New York, and Florida.

With my luck all of the centers of population would move to Wyoming...

[KneeLess]

I'd make noone invest in Microsoft.

[SouthernDem]

Would have let Patton invade the USSR, and/or moved the nuclear testing site from New Mexico to Canada....dirty canadians....

[KevinBrowning]

I would have given the Virgin Mary an abortion.
You must consider yourself very witty. I think you are a disgraceful blasphemer.

[Razor-Tongue]

Change an event? Easy: in ancient Egypt there was a library where hundreds of years of philosophy, science, and mathematics were written on papyrus. Unfortunately for us all papyrus is extremely flammable and the library caught fire burning the entire building to the ground. Everything was lost and only what was remembered was able to be recovered. With that one event the human culture was set back a thousand years. 500 to catch up to where we were and 500 to scramble our way almost to where we should be today. Even now with all our technology we are a few hundred years away from where we should be.

[omaysis]

Change an event? Easy: in ancient Egypt there was a library where hundreds of years of philosophy, science, and mathematics were written on papyrus. Unfortunately for us all papyrus is extremely flammable and the library caught fire burning the entire building to the ground. Everything was lost and only what was remembered was able to be recovered. With that one event the human culture was set back a thousand years. 500 to catch up to where we were and 500 to scramble our way almost to where we should be today. Even now with all our technology we are a few hundred years away from where we should be.

very diplomatic of you to leave out WHY the library burned down ;)

[Razor-Tongue]

Well not everyone know politics, especially politics from 3000 BC, but I figured that it would probably effect a lot more people than anything other than Hitler continuing his air raid on Britain in 1943 and finishing the war in Europe right then and there. Leaving him free to set his sights on America which officially called of its neutral standing to loan and ship guns to London. If Hitler had won that the world would probably be speaking German right now, unless of course a last alliance of men and elves were formed to keep the shadow from spreading.

[Anywien]

I'd kill Hitler before he had the chance to get his racist little hands on any power.

[Andacanavar]

Unfortunately, it might have made the world worse off. We'll never know.

[Anywien]

Still, I'd be the only one in the world who could say I single-handedly defeated somebody responsible for the deaths of millions of people.

[Apokalupsis]

This reminds me of the movie "The Last Supper"...which btw, would make for EXCELLENT film group discussion. ;)

[KevinBrowning]

It's actually kind of surprising that Hitler never was assassinated. There were many who conspired against him in the Third Reich. He was frequently in heated disagreement with his top advisors. He even forced Rommel to commit suicide.

[KevinBrowning]

This reminds me of the movie "The Last Supper"...which btw, would make for EXCELLENT film group discussion. ;)
Any estimate yet of when we're going to start the film club?

[Apokalupsis]

Hitler had assassinated attempts made on his life, none succeeded. Some were even by his own senior officers.

re: film club, very soon.

[Fyshhed]

Smite the baby Jesus, thereby ending God's existence.
Smite baby Muhammad.
Smite all the conspirators who killed Caesar. As babies of course.
Smite the baby Abraham.
Smite Donny Osmond, the baby.
Smite baby Paul Wolfowitcz.
Smite baby Lee Harvey Oswald.
Smite baby OJ Simpson.
Push someone in the way of the bullet that hit Lincoln.
Smite the Kaiser pre-WWI.
Quite a few people can be killed or saved to make things more interesting. ;)

[RTShatto]

So your admiting that Jesus is god? since this is about real "historical events" :)

Oh, and Lee Harvey Oswald did not kill JFK!!!

[FruitandNut]

I would have given the Virgin Mary an abortion.

If the scriptures are correct, either you would have been prevented from thinking that way, or the 'Angel of Death' would intercept your action, possibly with great prejudice.

I think I might go further back to before Lucifer became a reb. and clue him in to the futility of thinking he could take on his Creator. That way, nasty little thoughts like yours might not have their advent.

ps. In one respect Karl Marx was an intellectual midget, He should have quicky spotted that communism is only sustainable and true in a perfect society or community. Humanity is far from perfect, therefore communism can normally only exist in a highly edited and subverted form.

pps. FISHY You would have to smite Almighty God and the Heavenly Host and get past their serious kick-ass kit before you could get close enough to smite the Christ child.

[Fyshhed]

pps. FISHY You would have to smite Almighty God and the Heavenly Host and get past their serious kick-ass kit before you could get close enough to smite the Christ child.
Are you of the opinion that God took a vacation to come down as Jesus during that little escapade, or that he was also keeping an eye on the Jesus-cam from the big base in the sky?

[FruitandNut]

The Trinity, man, the Trinity. The belief goes that God has more than one 'nature'.

If Mary is Jesus' mom and what is refered to as 'God the Father' or 'The Godhead', is the father, it would be reasonable to assume God 'cam' in the sky and His legions of angels would be in place for some serious aggrevation.

[Ebon]

I think I might go further back to before Lucifer became a reb. and clue him in to the futility of thinking he could take on his Creator.

And, as a Luciferian, allow me to say: It's not about winning and losing, it's about standing for what you believe in, no matter what the cost.


ps. In one respect Karl Marx was an intellectual midget, He should have quicky spotted that communism is only sustainable and true in a perfect society or community. Humanity is far from perfect, therefore communism can normally only exist in a highly edited and subverted form.

I think "intellectual midget" is a little harsh. "Hopelessly naive" would perhaps be better but in principle, I have to agree. Great system on paper, shame about the practice.

[Ebon]

I can't narrow it down to one but here's my top eight:

1) Assassinate Hitler and/or Stalin. Granted, things might turn out worse but with a death toll of around 11 million for Hitler and 25 million for Stalin, I'm buggered if I can see how.

2) Either A) Shoot Jesus before he gets nailed to the cross. Firstly, no-one, but no-one deserves to die like that and secondly, I honestly think the world would be a better place had Christianity never existed.

B) Feed Constantine some really good hallucinogenics so he doesn't get that vision of the cross therefore, Christianity never becomes the state religion of Rome and while it might still exist, it wouldn't have half as much blood on it's hands.

Or C) Kill off the Pope who okayed the establishment of the Dominican Order (a faction of which later founded the Inquisitions).

3) Tell Lincoln to give the theatre a miss that night.

4) Tell JFK to ride in a closed car.

5) Kill off teh SOB who came up with modern dance music.

6) Ensure Bill Gates and Steve Jobs get happy, well-paid jobs in something other than computers.

7) Give Linus Torvalds a million for each version of Linux he codes.

8) Somehow ensure that this bloody nasty, venemous, divisive and utterly illusory split between left and right never happens in teh US.

[Sam]

I would have stopped the law that allowed contraceptives to be legal.

[Fyshhed]

I would have stopped the law that allowed contraceptives to be legal.
I think the situation is that there is no law that makes them illegal ;)

[FruitandNut]

How about if that li'l ol' contentious issue of, 'No taxation without representation', had been settled sensibly and in a civilised manner. No Boston Tea Party, for instance. No shot fired at Lexington.

A UNITED STATES OF GREAT BRITAIN !!!!!!????? Such a concept would have probably stopped both the first and second world wars. At the very least, shortened them considerably and probably saved many lives, particularly among the Jews. There would have been a lot less pressure for an Exodus to the Middle East and the area would probably be a lot quieter and easier to 'manage'.


ps. Sam: between your rather radical suggestion and my much more modest one, the population of the world would be about double what it is today. The Almighty/nature has presented us with a finite world and an infinite capacity to procreate given time. The two are mathematically irreconcilable. Wars, disease, famine, pestilence, global dysfunction would have to figure at some time. Is that what you would wish on your children, let alone the children of others, on the grand scale that would occur?

[Atticus]

I'd kill Hitler before he had the chance to get his racist little hands on any power.

Ah, but then Einstein would never have come to America and the global social and scientifical ramifications would be most unpleasent.

[Telex]

And, as a Luciferian, allow me to say: It's not about winning and losing, it's about standing for what you believe in, no matter what the cost.

If you were being serious, you should make a post about Luciferianism and why you believe it. I would find it interesting, and I'm sure others would too, because the entire concept of worshipping the devil seems completely stupid to me.


Ah, but then Einstein would never have come to America and the global social and scientifical ramifications would be most unpleasent.

Not only that, but the USA would not be the superpower that it is today. I'm not saying thats worth the killing of 6 million people, but it's something to think about.


As for mine, I dunno...although I've always wondered what the world would be like if Russia won the Cold War.

[Fyshhed]

If Einstein developed his sciences for Germany we would have killed or abducted him and stole them. Either way America wins. We wouldn't let Russia have him anyway :D

[FruitandNut]

Ebon: If everything on your wish list was granted, I don't think the outcome would be at all what you may wish.

Just off the top of my head, I don't think that Kennedy would have been the politician he was without having been introduced to and touched by some 'Christian values' - don't get Christian values mixed up with workings of 'the Devil's political fifth column' that always seeks to subvert the finest of ideals.

Without Christianity it would probably be a pre-industrial world in which rickets, diptheria, scarlet fever, smallpox, TB, typhoid, typhus, yellow fever, cholera and leprosy etc. would killed off more than guns and bombs.

To ensure that differences of opinion don't occur - ref. your comment on left and right politics - you would have to go back to the time your old mate Lucifer had a run in with The Management and got kicked down stairs. Lucifer et al got the grumps and has sought to confound and subvert the best of human endeavours ever since. He has done a pretty 'good' job of it so far, but I believe that good will be first to the tape in the human race.

[PallidaMors]

Without Christianity it would probably be a pre-industrial world in which rickets, diptheria, scarlet fever, smallpox, TB, typhoid, typhus, yellow fever, cholera and leprosy etc. would killed off more than guns and bombs.

I absolutely disagree with you here. Can you imagine how far along we would be in the absence of organized religion? If it were possible to simply educate humans regarding right and wrong, rather than create the many versions of essentially the same mythos, and everything those would later entail? All of the hatred, the bloodshed, the manpower and money put into religion, its absolutely enormous. What if all of that (well, save the hatred) had been put into the advancement of the species, more specifically the advancement of the sciences? I don't advocate killing the baby Jesus or Mohammed, but I do advocate finding another way to simply not let mankind's SILLY crutches hold us back....

[Sam]

I think the situation is that there is no law that makes them illegal ;)


Now there is not. However Margaret Sanger fought to have the the laws against contraceptives changed(with much success).

[Zhavric]

Without Christianity it would probably be a pre-industrial world in which rickets, diptheria, scarlet fever, smallpox, TB, typhoid, typhus, yellow fever, cholera and leprosy etc. would killed off more than guns and bombs.

Absurd.

Support, please.

Christianity has very little to do with modern medicine which is what allows us to not have to worry about most of the illnesses you listed.

[Zhavric]

If I could change one event, it would be to go back in time and fix the constitution:

1) The Judicial branch would have an extra check/balance on the legislative and executive branch in that each legislator or executive would need to go through judicial hearings under oath to be considered fit for the position they wish to be in. Their decision is appealable to high courts in the case of smaller elected positions and is appealable to the Supreme court in the case of presidential candidates.

The overall goal would be to have every candidate be interviewed about themselves under oath.

2) The second amendment would be clarified. Either the framers wanted the average citizen to be able to carry a gun, or they wanted the average citizen to be able form a militia. In my mind, it's worded ambiguously / militia is ill-defined.

3) Allow freedom to slaves and voting rights to all citizens. Second class citizenry contradicts the notion that all men are created equal.

4) Eliminate the electoral college. I have this funny idea that the guy who gets the most votes of the most people should get to be in office.



That's all I can think of right now.

[FruitandNut]

Absurd.

Support, please.

Christianity has very little to do with modern medicine which is what allows us to not have to worry about most of the illnesses you listed.


It was in monasteries and other religious institutions that pharmacy, medicine, ideas on nature and the beginnings of the understanding of the natural world took early flower. Yes, yes, yes, these early pioneers got things wrong from time to time, both in detail and conceptually, but so to did later much later secular study. Yes, yes, yes, they were challenged and threatened by those ensconced in old ideas, but again that has not changed since much of learning was secularised.

Mikolaj Kopernik, or Nicholaus Copernicus, as he is better known, recieved his formal education, including humanist values, from Church Institutions. Gregor Mendel was a monk. Punch their names into Google search if you need references, I am sure it is there.