• 9 Posts
  • 141 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 13th, 2023

help-circle

  • I think it’s a reaction to another institutional tendency, which is to treat the best known theories as if they were incontrovertible facts.

    Science and history are largely the search for closer and closer approximations to truth, but those approximations are always flawed and incomplete. And if they’re presented as already-attained truths, a critic can point out the flaws as evidence of deliberate deception—and then present any alternative they like without its being subjected to the same scrutiny.














  • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.worldtoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world*Permanently Deleted*
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    edit-2
    2 days ago

    Everyone’s citing Christianity, but that’s not completely accurate—monogamy isn’t really promoted by the New Testament outside of the letters of the apostles, who were trying to appeal to a Roman audience. The Christian church enforced monogamy through the Middle Ages, but it was originally adopted from the Romans.

    As for why the Romans practiced it, there are several theories—one is that Roman women had relatively higher status compared to women in most Middle Eastern cultures; another is that the prospect of marriage for more men made Roman armies more effective.