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[Linguoboy]

One thing that has always baffled me about Christian mythology (or whatever you would call it): why did Satan think he could successfully revolt against God given His well-known omnipotence?

How did he know God was omnipotent? Did He tell him so? And if he did, could Satan have suspected his was exaggerating to scare him into abandoning his plan to revolt?

[Moose-tache]

The tales of Satan may also predate the modern notion of the Infinite God. Early Hebrew scriptures talk about God like he's basically Ba'al. Even in Milton's time, God and Satan are talked about in the same terms as squabbling Olympian deities.

Pabappa: You've learned that French wine is a scam. Not only is the reputation of French wine inflated by marketing, but the price is inflated by limiting production to certain regions. Almost no wine is grown for export in Lorraine, for example, despite the climate being perfect for it (down the Moselle you'll find the most famous German wine producing region). All of this is done on purpose to help producers at the expense of consumers. But wine consumers are notoriously masochistic and snooty about price, so it works out.

The great irony is that wine grapes can't grow naturally in France. An aphid genus, Phylloxera, nearly wiped out wine grapes in France in the 19th century, and continues to wipe out any new vines that are planted normally. So now virtually every vine in France is grafted onto American roots.

[zompist]

The tales of Satan may also predate the modern notion of the Infinite God. Early Hebrew scriptures talk about God like he's basically Ba'al.

These are a bunch of different things...

Ba`al just means "lord"; referring to a god, it generally meant Adad or Hadad, the Canaanite and Akkadian storm god, who is certainly part of Yahweh's character. If you want a recipe for God, you can combine the creator god (El) plus the warrior/storm god Adad plus a personal god.

Satan appears in Job as a kind of prosecutor and damage-dealer, certainly not an opponent or enemy of God. If he tempts anyone in the story, it's God. The idea of demons (Satan isn't always their chief) seems to have grown in the post-Biblical era, possibly influenced by Zoroastrianism. Satan is prominent in the New Testament, but not in rabbinic Judaism, at least not until Kabbalah.

Even in Milton's time, God and Satan are talked about in the same terms as squabbling Olympian deities.

Because Milton was imitating pagan stories of squabbling Olympian deities.

[malloc]

Did religious authorities ever object to writers like Dante and Milton basing fiction on Christian lore? It seems dangerously close to heresy in the sense of inventing new doctrines or claiming some form of divine revelation. On the other hand, writing deliberate fiction about sacred figures seems to trivialize them.

[Raphael]

Did religious authorities ever object to writers like Dante and Milton basing fiction on Christian lore? It seems dangerously close to heresy in the sense of inventing new doctrines or claiming some form of divine revelation. On the other hand, writing deliberate fiction about sacred figures seems to trivialize them.

Might depend on which religious authorities you mean. Pretty much every Christian and Christian-inspired piece of writing - including each specific version of the Bible - has been condemned as heresy by at least some Christian authorities. Or at least that's my impression.

[Linguoboy]

Did religious authorities ever object to writers like Dante and Milton basing fiction on Christian lore?

Yes. Next question!

[Pabappa]

I only want to add that probably almost all of the people writing Christian fiction are Christians themselves, so .... count them at least as people in favor of it not being blasphemy. My favorite example .... if it's true, that is .... is the Lord of the Rings. My teacher told me that Middle Earth was Earth before Eden, .... that is, God created elves, dwarfs, orcs, and humans way back when ... and then decided that humans were the best, so He then started all over again with just us. Tolkien kept his mouth shut for the most part though on what inspired him so we really will never know.

[Raphael]

I only want to add that probably almost all of the people writing Christian fiction are Christians themselves, so .... count them at least as people in favor of it not being blasphemy.

Yeah, but generally, one Christian's pious expression of faith is another Christian's heresy or even blasphemy.

[alynnidalar]

On the contrary, Tolkien talked quite a lot about his inspirations, and never hid that he was writing from a devoutly Christian worldview. His letters talk about it all the time (one that comes to mind is the one about how there must be good orcs somewhere, because his religious beliefs didn't allow him to accept that an intelligent species could be 100% evil), and in the foreward to one of the editions of Fellowship of the Ring, he talks a bit about it as well. (where he famously pushed back on the idea that LotR is a straight allegory)

(Also, to be clear: your teacher isn't quite right about the origins of the different groups in-universe. To begin with, "God"--I assume they meant Eru--only directly created elves and humans. Dwarves were created later by Aule. The origin of orcs is a little murkier, but they were probably some other more "innocent" group first, then tortured and perverted by Melkor into their later form. And the elves weren't "supposed to" be the most powerful and then got replaced with humans; the idea that the elves would have a time of supremacy and then humans would inherit the earth was planned from the beginning. There are certainly very obvious parallels to Christianity, but Tolkien was also writing fiction and had no intention of hiding that.)

[Raphael]

I think Tolkien also wrote, at least once, that early in his creative process, he partly wanted to create an ancient mythology for Britain, because he felt that compared to other countries, Britain was lacking in that department.

[malloc]

So what kept them from hauling Dante before the Inquisition for making all these claims about Heaven and Hell without the proper authority? Either he lied about the Divine by writing things he knew weren't true or he espoused doctrines outside the accepted canon. It seems an open and shut case.

[Raphael]

So what kept them from hauling Dante before the Inquisition for making all these claims about Heaven and Hell without the proper authority?

Again, it's a question of which authorities. Not all Christian authorities think the same way.

[Linguoboy]

So what kept them from hauling Dante before the Inquisition for making all these claims about Heaven and Hell without the proper authority?

Which "Inquisition" did you have in mind? If it's the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (which is what many people mean when they use the term), it wasn't founded until two centuries after his death. There were, of course, other inquisitions (some Papal, some episcopal) around before that, but they tended to be local, convened to combat specific heresies like Catharism or Waldensianism, and my impression of Dante was that he was too clever to get caught out espousing a specific heresy anathemised by the RCC. He also was well-connected, so I assume his friends in power may have acted to protect him from any attempts at prosecution.

(Incidentally, I can't find any record of Divina Commedia being put on the Index of Prohibited Books, although at least one other work of his was. Maybe mediaeval Italians weren't as narrow-minded as you seem to think they should be.)

[Raphael]

and my impression of Dante was that he was too clever to get caught out espousing a specific heresy anathemised by the RCC. He also was well-connected, so I assume his friends in power may have acted to protect him from any attempts at prosecution.

For someone who's as interested in politics and history as I am, this is pretty embarrassing to admit, but, well, inspired by this discussion, I just tried to read the parts of Dante's Wikipedia article dealing with his various political activities and how they got him into various kinds of trouble at various points in his life, and, frankly, I found it all too complicated and difficult to follow.

[malloc]

Then it surprises me that the Church had no rule against making claims about Divine cosmology without the right authority. It feels like either overstepping one's bounds by claiming divine inspiration or making counterfactual claims about the sacred.

[Linguoboy]

Then it surprises me that the Church had...

You seem to spend a lot of your life surprised by how the Church works. This isn't particularly interesting for anyone else to read about.

In vagulely related news, here's a video I stumbled upon last week that goes on at some length about Dante and his relationship to heresy. I'm not quite sure I buy her thesis, but it was interesting to hear her argument nonetheless.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8qdqAE5ZKA

[Linguoboy]

Looking for studies on drunkenness and behaviour, I found this tidbit on placebo effects related to alcohol:

The placebo beverage was effective in older moderate drinkers, with 63% of participants who received placebo reporting that they received alcohol. Placebo beverage effectiveness influenced cognitive performance. Participants who received placebo, but reported they received alcohol, demonstrated slower reaction times on the covert attentional processing task, similar to those receiving alcohol. Placebo effects did not influence accuracy on the covert attentional processing task or self-reported measures of intoxication and impairment. As expected, participants who received alcohol had less accuracy on the covert attentional processing task and more self-reported impairment and intoxication than those who received placebo, regardless of placebo effectiveness.(Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2859785/)

So almost two-thirds of moderate drinkers who got fake alcohol got fake drunk, but it only affected reaction time, not accuracy or perceived impairment.

[chris_notts]

The great irony is that wine grapes can't grow naturally in France. An aphid genus, Phylloxera, nearly wiped out wine grapes in France in the 19th century, and continues to wipe out any new vines that are planted normally. So now virtually every vine in France is grafted onto American roots.

I've heard about this, but I grow a grape vine on its own roots in the middle of England. At least, the supplier claimed many years ago that it wasn't grafted, and it was a small nursery that did their own grafting so they should have known.

I wonder if the range doesn't extend so far north, or whether my single lone grape vine, a long way from any vineyard, is saved by its isolation. This claims it's not widely present in the UK:

https://www.vineyardmagazine.co.uk/how- ... k-disease/

Planting own-rooted vines
This is an option for UK growers, as phylloxera is not generally present, it is not a native insect. There are just a few vineyard locations where it is reported to exist in the UK. For one of these I am familiar with, the pest has come from the European nursery on grafted vines!

Own rooted vines are available now from a UK nursery. If you use them you need to maintain a sensible quarantine for your vineyard. Australia has achieved this for 150 years for most of its vineyards. I have seen a couple of old, own-rooted vineyards in the UK which are doing fine. Being isolated, as is customary here, helps maintain the quarantine.

[Pabappa]

As probably the heaviest drinker posting here ... I can attest that when I tried sleep medicine for the first time, I woke up ten hours later thinking I was drunk. But.... hand me a bottle of NOTHING and I will notice within ten seconds that I've been pranked.

I mean .....

Who are these people that can't taste what they drink? I know the second I swallow what I'm taking in... 63 per
cent of us don't?

I guess I'm not really a "moderate drinker " at this point but I'd think that those people less habituated to it would notice the taste first.

[Linguoboy]

Who are these people that can't taste what they drink? I know the second I swallow what I'm taking in... 63 per
cent of us don't?

I guess I'm not really a "moderate drinker " at this point but I'd think that those people less habituated to it would notice the taste first.

Maybe read the article and find out? (I'll just note here that even moderate drinkers have been known to drink drinks which conceal the taste of alcohol by means of various additives, colloquially called "mixers".)